Viet World Kitchen

Vietnamese Food Any Day Cookbook Preview!

November 8, 2018 By Andrea Nguyen 23 Comments

Get ready for Vietnamese Food Any Day! It releases on Tet/Chinese/Lunar New Year – February 5, 2019. I can’t wait for you to get your hands on the cookbook and start cooking, getting it messy, and adding your personal tweaks. I’ve been wanting to write this book for years because one of my not-so-secret life missions is this: Help people make great Vietnamese food part of their regular rotation. The book title isn’t telling you to make Viet food everyday. Heck, I don’t eat Vietnamese food daily. ...

Hu Tieu Noodle Soup Deep Dive Bonus and a Recipe

September 4, 2019 By Andrea Nguyen Leave a Comment

Who knew about hu tieu noodle soup? I knew some things about the southern Viet favorite, but not enough. To slay my ignorance, I went to a bunch of hu tieu spots in Southern California to report on a story for the Los Angeles Times. I also interviewed experts for the article that was published today in the paper. Note that at the end of the story, there are helpful sidebars on how to find hu tieu restaurants and how to order! As part of my research, I snapped a bunch of photos so I'm ...

How to Store Fish Sauce

August 27, 2019 By Andrea Nguyen 5 Comments

People who are new to fish sauce tend to have these question: How long does a bottle last? How to store fish sauce? The answer isn’t set because it depends on what kind of fish sauce you have and how often you use it. Once opened, a bottle of fish sauce can last a long time -- 2 to 3 years (maybe even longer). Hopefully you’ll go through a bottle of nuoc mam faster than those estimates. Keeping things real here, my kitchen isn’t tidy, but I’m going to let you peek inside my fridge, condiment ...

Burmese Green Tomato Salad Recipe

August 19, 2019 By Andrea Nguyen Leave a Comment

Burmese food is more than tea leaf salad, which is deliciously complex and requires sourcing the fermented tea leaf. Last week, after eating at Kyain Kyain, a Burmese restaurant in Fremont, California, I was in the mood to explore the cuisine further. I opened the Burma Superstar cookbook, written by Desmond Tan and Kate Leahy. Burma Surperstar is a popular Bay Area restaurant but I wasn’t looking to recreate its dishes. I was looking to find easy recipes that may be made at home without having ...

Three-Ingredient Coconut Fudge (Topra Pak)

August 11, 2019 By Andrea Nguyen Leave a Comment

“Have you used all the condensed milk?” my dad asked. Uh no, my husband sheepishly admitted. “That was a lot,” Bo Gia (Old Daddy in Vietnamese) responded. A few months ago, a sweet supermarket deal led Bo Gia to gifted us 10 cans of caramel flavored sweetened condensed milk. I used up one can working through a recipe for amazing Thai pork satay but a lot still sit in the garage. There's only so much Vietnamese coffee a girl can drink. Given that, I’ve been on the hunt for more recipes that ...

Thai Spicy Tofu and Basil Stir-Fry (Pad Ka-Prao) Recipe

July 31, 2019 By Andrea Nguyen Leave a Comment

Salty, spicy, pungent and slightly sweet chicken stir-fried with tons of basil is one of the first dishes I ate on my initial visit to Bangkok in 1991. I’ve loved it ever since. The best rendition of pad ka-prao (aka phat kaphrao) that I’ve made is based on a recipe from Andy Ricker’s Pok Pok cookbook. Ground chicken is used and all the nubbins of protein absorb the fish sauce and soy sauce seasonings super well Last week, after playing around with vegan fish sauce, I experimented with ...