Viet World Kitchen

College Student Cooks Cast Caution to the Wind

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As a food writer I’m always trying to get all the nuanced instructions down in my recipes. I don’t want to go overboard but I do want cooks to succeed. Today, I was on the verge of overdoing it with fussy instructions but stopped myself. It’s because of an afternoon of cooking with a bunch of college students.

You may recall that I went to Yale last April. (They didn’t let me in as a student, but as an invited guest.) My niece Paulina made the arrangements for an Asian American food writers panel and I was among the speakers, along with Monica Bhide and Sunee Kim. We ended up cooking together, along her buddies from the Asian American Students Alliance. 

The students had committed to baking sweets for the reception before the panel discussion. I arrived around 11am and the panel was at 3:30pm. At 12:30pm, Paulina led me to the AASA student club house, which had a shared kitchen. None of the sweets had been made. I panicked but she was cool as a cucumber. “Don’t worry auntie, my friends are coming,” Paulina assured me.

Why Do We Cook?

Eating out has become both a necessity (you have to feed your family) and sport (you have to keep up with Jones) in America, but so has cooking at home. There are weekend warrior cooks like Seattle-based Quynh Nguyen of  Nha22.com, who told me that she's been working her way through Thomas Keller's amazing Ad Hoc cookbook and hosting weekly dinner parties. I head to my kitchen for many reasons, some of them visceral and others practical. Last year, food writer, cookbook author and acclaimed blogger Amy Sherman popped this question: Why do you cook, Andrea?

For months, I went about mulling over my responses, jotting down notes in a small spiral notebook. Over the weekend, I gathered them all up and sent them to Amy, who published my 13 reasons here:

Why do YOU cook, Andrea Nguyen? (on CookingwithAmy)

Take a read and share your reasons on why you cook. If you don't cook, tell us about why you don't! There's no shame in not cooking. Being a good eater is mighty fine too.

Amy has invited a number of food people to contribute to that series on her blog. Also check out what Michael Ruhlman and Judy Witts Francini has to say about why they cook. 

Worthy Causes: Charities Cook up Change in Vietnam

Spending Christmas or New Year’s in Vietnam is rather surreal. If you’re in Saigon, it’s hot but there are holiday decorations and Christmas music. I particularly love the fanfare on December 31 because Saigon locals come out for fun; Tet (Lunar New Year) is typically a quiet time for family. Vietnamese people love public celebrations like the one on New Year’s Eve, and the park in front of the Reunification Palace is a giant party and public performance area. Young families ride up on their motorbikes, 3 to 4 people on each, and they hang out, snacking and visiting with friends. It’s loud, colorful, and fun. Multiple stages are set up and you can choose from classical music performance, torch singers, and dance performances by cute young girls dressed up in frilly outfits with stage moms in tow. That night, the scene in the park reminds me of the crazy Asian variety shows that my parents watch on Vietnamese-American television channels.

Indeed, much has changed for the better in Vietnam in the past decade and people, especially young people, are full of optimism. But there is still much to be done to provide greater opportunity to more people. Lots of people visit Vietnam during this season and part of the experience is to understand the needs and potential of the country. We can help out with tourist dollars but you don't have to visit to contribute to change.

Here are three non-profits that are doing interesting work to help improve the lives of Vietnamese people, particularly in the kitchen:

At Greenbrier Food Writers Symposium + Vietnam Photos from Penny de Los Santos

I had a grand scheme to blog about cellophane noodles (the 2nd installment of  noodles 101) while at the Greenbrier Food Writers Symposium this week. But there's little time and energy left at the end of the day. This is one of the premier food writers symposium in the nation and a small group gets together to learn and exchange information and know-how. Given the current economic situation (it's stalled), discussions have focused upon: How does a writer make a living in this economy? What opportunities are out there with new media?

We also talk at length about the craft of writing: it's like exercise and you have to regular practice  to stay in shape and excel. This is my first time here and I was invited as a speaker, along with esteemed people such as Michael Ruhlman, Martha Holmberg, Russ Parsons, Andrew Schloss, Amelia Saltsman, Ann Pittman, and David Joachim.

The resort is absolutely lovely with decor that I can only describe as tasteful American baroque. Let's say the living room walls in my cottage are painted a delicate shade of pink. So aside from the symposium sessions, I find myself fascinated by The Greenbrier (pronounced green-bry-are) magnificent carpets, furnishings, wall paper and U.S. presidential memorabilia.

We've been eating well (you never starve at professional food events) but I've missed eating Vienamese, nevertheless. Last week, I popped over to peruse photojournalist Penny De Los Santos's remarkable photos from her trip to Vietnam and tonight I did it again. Sometimes you can't actually eat the food but you can savor the flavors with your eyes. Check Penny's photography out here:

Penny De Los Santos: Vietnam Photographers Notebook

Site Updates and New Site!

Drum roll please . . . I caved in and there's now a Viet World Kitchen Facebook fan page. You can get updates on Facebook, if that's more convenient for you. I enjoy the conversations that we have here but realize that you can't stand in the face of progress. Don't ask me to Twitter. I have a very very basic cell phone that I barely know how to use. [5/16 Update: Robyn and Jaden -- you and others prodded and now I tweet at http://twitter.com/aqnguyen.]

On another high-tech note, I've started to put audio files up to help people pronounce key Vietnamese words. Right now the files are Word Media Files but I'll be converting them to MP3 in the not-so-distant future. When I wrote Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, I had planned on including phonetics but they just looked awful in the book's layout so we pulled them. Vietnamese is a tough language to master so I hope to help move things along with downloadable audio files.

And, to support my new book on Asian dumplings, I built a new website to provide supplemental information to readers and also to fuel my oddly endless fascination with dumplings and Asia. When you've got a chance, mozy on over to: Asiandumplingtips.com. You'll find recipes, audio, and video. No, not 'dumplings gone wild' but pretty fun nevertheless!

Thanks for your support!

Is "Southeast Asian Cuisine" Possible?

Joel Hung, born in Hong Kong and now residing in New Zealand, has been contributing his thoughtful insights to this site for a long time. He has helped me make a number of connections between Chinese and Vietnamese cooking -- for example, pointing me to the wealth of Vietnamese cookbooks available in Hong Kong! Joel recently sent a message asking how to define Southeast Asian Cuisine, a new moniker being used by a number of Asian restaurants.  Joel wrote:

There is a constant question that is bugging out of my head with regards to the label "Southeast Asian cuisine".  In Northeast Asia (HK, mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea) and the West the term is a blanket application of food in every ASEAN member countries.  Restaurants said to be specializing in SE Asian food often may have a pan-ASEAN menu: pho next to pad thai, followed chicken green curry, and beef rendang and morcon, which may finish with layered kuih or banana in coconut milk as desserts.

Inside the Asian Dumplings Cookbook Photo Shoot

This September, Ten Speed Press will publish my new cookbook on Asian dumplings. Though we’ve not finalized the title, I will tell you that it’s a pan-Asian collection of recipes that will give you lots of “Ah hah!” and “Wow!” moments in the kitchen. I’m working with my editor, Clancy Drake, to polish the manuscript (no, a submitted draft doesn’t go straight to print!), and in the midst of that process, we do the photos. 

Cookbooks of the past didn’t have photos but nowadays, photos help to set the visual tone for a cookbook. They’re an integral part of the publication. In fact, people often ask me, “Does your cookbook have pictures?”

Site Updates

For a good year, Viet World Kitchen has existed as both a website (its original format that began in 2002) and a blog. A few weeks ago, I decided to collapse the website into the blog. Over the course of the next few months, content from the website will migrate to this blog format, which allows me to better manage content.

Please excuse broken links as I've got to clean up stuff. If there's content that you'd like to see or make sure that I don't forget, just shoot me an email.