Viet World Kitchen

Vietnamese Street Food Giveaway Winner!

Thanks everyone for enthusiastically entering the giveaway. There were about 160 entries and I have to say, I loved learning about your favorite Vietnamese foods! 

Okay, so the winner was entry number 55 -- Stephan Kieu! Congratulations. 

I feel bad that I only have 1 copy to giveaway. Perhaps I'll have to cook another recipe from the book! Stay tuned... 

Vietnamese Street Food Tips and Cookbook Giveaway

In 2010 when I was in Hanoi on a press trip, I met Tracey Lister, an Australian expat with active passion about Vietnamese food. She’d been living in Vietnam’s capitol for many years, exploring the food scene then writing about it as well as  running the Hanoi Cooking Centre, a terrific place to take classes. She has a quiet curiosity about food and is highly observant – traits that she poured into her latest book, Vietnamese Street Food.

She authored the charming book with her husband, Andreas Pohl. The location photography gives a true sense being in Vietnam. It’s a book that anyone who’s traveled to Vietnam should have, not just as a keepsake but to cook from. It’s also terrific for armchair travelers and cooks. Many people are interested in street food nowadays so I asked Tracey to share her thoughts and expert advice on what to eat in Hanoi.

Asian Tofu Makes IACP Cookbook Award Finals

Great news everyone! The Asian Tofu cookbook is a contender for an award by the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP). I was in New York for the Piglet cookbook tournament party when the list of finalists was released. Crazy, eh? Asian Tofu is like the little bean curd that could...

In the world of cookbook writing and publishing, getting the nod from IACP is a great honor. The cookbook committee members are my peers who cook from the books as part of the judging process. This year there were over 400 books submitted for the awards.

I have had the priviledge and honor of being nominated for all the books that I have written. This time, the nomination means alot because Asian Tofu represents a global effort by many people who joined me to tell tofu's remarkable story. Team Tofu (see the book's "Acknowledgments" section or the listing at the bottom of this page) put a lot of heart into the cookbook.

Asian Tofu is in the "Single Subject" category. The other cookbooks nominated in that same category are written by friends of mine, Diane Morgan and Martha Holmberg. Their works on root vegetables and sauce making along with mine prove that cooks want to hunker down, be hyper-focused, geek out on food.

The entire list of finalists is here; you'll see a nice showing of Asian cookbooks. IACP will announce the winners on April 9 at an awards ceremony in San Francisco. It's one of the high points of the annual IACP conference, which I'm attending to teach a tofu class and moderate a panel on influential women who've paved the path for Chinese food in America.

Sorry to make this post short. After New York, I flew to visit my parents; my dad was hospitalized recently for a potential heart attack. He's at home and recovering well. We're still not sure what the situation was and is so he's monitoring his condition.

3/6/13 follow-up: On the heels of the IACP announcement, the Splendid Table (National Public Radio) rebroadcasted an interview that I did with Lynne Rossetto Kasper. Listen to the fun conversation here.

Piglet Cookbook Face-Off: Asian Tofu vs. Japanese Farm Food

Today, the Piglet cookbook tournament released Chef Wylie Dufresne's judgment of Asian Tofu versus Japanese Farm Food. A very accomplished chef known for his work in molecular gastronomy, Dufresne is a thoughtful person. At the outset he wrote, "I wondered if it was not imbalanced to compare the two."

Nancy Hachisu's book, which I cooked from earlier, is a unique survey of a cuisine whereas tofu is a single-subject book that spans the Pacific Ocean. One is relatively broad and the other hyper-specific. We're talking oranges vs. kumquats. 

Dufresne cooked a couple of recipes from each of our works and deemed it a stalemate. At the end of the day, it boiled down to pictures and presentation. Japanese Farm Food prevailed over Asian Tofu.

Am I sore? Not really. Dissappointed? Yes, but frankly, not by much. Dufresne's review, just like all the others, was subjective. (Ain't that most of life?) The face-offs are surprising and unusual, tough calls to make for each judge. It was nice to see three Asian cookbooks in the tournament this year.

The Piglet is a fun and great for focused discussion on cookbooks and home cooking. Now if Asian Tofu was reviewed against another tofu book, that would be a different situation . . . 

Seriously, the bottom line is this: There are tons of cookbooks published each year and to get into the ring with 16 of the best -- that's winning already. 

Do you agree or disagree with Dufresne's call? Read his review and vote! 

Related posts: 

• My thoughts on when Asian Tofu bested Jerusalem (the NY Yankees of cookbooks)
• Fried Ginger Chicken (Karaage) from Japanese Farm Food

Piglet Tournament Judgment: Asian Tofu vs. Jerusalem

Because I've chosen to champion yet-to-be-super-popular subjects, my writing career has been that of the underdog. That's why I was resigned to not winning round 1 of the Piglet cookbook tournament. From the get go, Food52.com readers had predicted that Jerusalem would win the entire competition. Yotam and Sami's book is wildly popular, beautiful, and engaging.

Asian Tofu is compelling in its own right, but it's also a misunderstood subject, not sexy on the first look to many Americans but rather challenging. As my friend Michael Ruhlman noted, it's an uphill battle with tofu, good luck. 

I told my dad that over the weekend. His response was, "Well, you never know." My father is a religious man who also loves his daughter for her persistence. Not too long ago, my mother described my work as being "noble." It's nice to be respected but great to pay the bills too!