Copyright © 2009 by Nguyên Khôi Nguyễn & Thư Anh Nguyễn All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the authors. Cover design by Nguyên Khôi Nguyễn Book design by Nguyên Khôi Nguyễn www.nguyenknguyen.com Printed in the United States of America First Edition: April 2009
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For Mom
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Contents Introduction....................p 6
Ăn Xoài Eating Mango.............p19
Canh Khổ Qua Stuffed Bitter Squash...p11
Sườn Nướng Ribs.................................p23
Cá Chiên Pan Fried Fish..................p15
Bánh Xèo Vietnamese Crépes...p27
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Introduction
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his book encapsulates the delicious food made by our mom, Phạm Thị Dung. We grew up eating the meals, or món ăn, described in the following pages. Our initial impetus was to preserve Mom’s recipes. There are so many stories and memories we have of each specific dish, so we’ve included those too. At the heart of this book is Mom—her words, her recipes, her love. Although she wants to teach us her recipes, she is very shy about being photographed, and she doesn’t always appreciate us interrupting her to snap photos while she is cooking. But for her food and for everything she means to us, our mom deserves a trophy, a monument, a moment. So Mom, here is your cookbook.
The Setting We think living in Cape Coral, FL has a lot to do with why Mom’s food is so delicious. There are two seasons in Florida, both extreme: hot and rainy. Those happen to be also the two seasons in south6
ern Vietnam. Just imagine our parents’ first days in Florida, and their relief at how familiar their new surroundings were —they knew they could recreate a little part of Vietnam on the Gulf Coast.
From Our Own Backyard As soon as Mom and Dad could afford it, they built the pink house of their dreams and started growing Vietnamese fruits, vegetables, and herbs in our backyard. Other kids may have had soccer nets or playgrounds in their yard, but we had papaya and mango trees, lemongrass, and bitter squash vines that grew so thickly on our screen porch that they swallowed the sunlight. We spent each weekend either at the flea market purchasing rare tropical fruit plants or tending our garden by weeding, mulching, and constantly watering. Many of the trees that bore the most delicious fruits were those that Mom grew from seed. We would buy sweet lychees or fiber-less mangoes, and after enjoying them, Mom would just take those seeds, plop them in the ground, and a few months later, there would be a tiny tree. It was a lot of hard work, but the results were miraculous. Our Bà Ngoại would go to the backyard, chop down a sugarcane stalk, and
Cape Coral, FL. Endless blue sky, flat earth, and construction.
Eco Park. Cape Coral, FL. A short walk from Mom & Dad’s new House.
333 SW 31st Terrace. Cape Coral, FL. The pink house we grew up in with a tangerine and mango tree.
SW 31st Terrace. Cape Coral , FL. The walk home from the bus stop.
1703 SE 20th Lane. Cape Coral, FL. Mom & Dad’s new house with a papaya tree.
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cut bite-size pieces for us so that we would have something sweet to nibble on after school. When we needed a little kick in our dipping sauce, we picked peppers from our chilli pepper tree. Tired and thirsty after our long walks home from the bus stop, we could just stop by the tangelo tree in our front yard, pluck off a fruit, effortlessly peel the skin off with our bare hands, and feast on the pulpy goodness. We ate seasonally before it became cool to do so and growing our own food meant that we were nourished in the best way.
The Cooking Routine
Every meal came from home, so we always ate at home. Mom worked all day, and the three of us were home and hungry before she was, so she had to find a way to make sure that there was always food ready for us. Luckily, our parents were early risers. Dad typically got up somewhere between 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. to eat breakfast, which was usually whatever was leftover from dinner the previous night. Mom got up around 5:00 a.m. to cook the day’s meals. Mom typically made at least two dishes, one with meat, and another vegetable or soup dish, which we could mix and match for lunch Like everything she does, Mom strives for perfecand dinner. No matter what we were eating, there tion with her cooking. Food from her kitchen is was always a pot of jasmine rice either cooking always vibrant with flavor and seasoned just right. or warming to accompany the meal. Sometimes But she has no use for measuring cups, timers, or she would start a huge pot of stock and let it cook cookbooks. Instead, Mom relies on experience, intu- down for the few hours before she had to get to ition, and taste to guide her. Of course, she makes work. Each morning, we would wake up to the everything from scratch: including the pickled veg- smell of a mixture of incense and garlic and fish etables we eat with her ribs and even the fish sauce sauce. Mom had curlers in her hair, and would siwe dip her spring rolls in. multaneously be sweeping the house and tending to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She made life easy for us. She made everything delicious.
Her Style
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Mom’s outdoor kitchen: a double gas burner located in the patio. She cooks outside so the smells don’t linger in the house.
Mom & Dad with a case of the giggles.
Mom & Thư cooking.
Mom working the charcoal grill. Our cousin Phú observing.
Mom & Nguyên peeling green beans.
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hen Bà Ngoại (grandma on my mom’s side) came to America in 1990, she brought along with her bitter squash seeds. Mom planted these seeds in our backyard and soon after, the vines began to crawl up our screen porch. Yellow flowers bloomed on the vines and then bumpy, jade green squash formed. That’s when Mom started making Canh Khổ Qua, stuffed bitter squash soup. Thư and Dad like this dish but not as much as me—I’m addicted. Canh Khổ Qua is one of the comfort foods that I crave the most when I’m away from home. Whenever I visit, Mom knows that atleast one of my meal requests will be Canh Khổ Qua. It’s less work for her, because I can eat the leftovers for days.
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I think bitter as a flavor is underrated. You don’t come across it very much in American cuisine, do you? Khổ Qua makes bitter delicious. The secret is Mom double boils the bitter squash: the first time with the squash alone and then the second time with the squash stuffed. Once this process is complete, the squash is tender and its sweetness is brought out. From the pot, I scoop one or two stuffed melons along with the broth and drown my bowl of white rice with the contents. When only broth remains, I raise the bowl to my mouth and slurp it dry! Then I go back to the pot for a seond helping. When I was living in Saigon in 2005, I would often buy this soup from vendors that lined my street, but it was never quite as good as Mom’s. -N.N.
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• Boil squash for 15 minutes • Drain and let cool off • Dice noodles, mushrooms scallions, and garlic • Mix ground pork with all ingredents except for squash • Make 1 continuous cut down the length of each squash • Stuff your mixture into each squash • Pour Chicken broth into large pot • On medium heat • When boiling put in stuffed squash • Do not use lid • Let cook on low for one hour
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Pan Fried Fish Cá Chiên
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ow does she make it so crispy?! She doesn’t coat the fish with flour. She doesn’t deep fry it. Actually, she does very little to it, and that’s probably why when you bite into Mom’s Cá Chiên, you can hear the skin crackle and crunch. I’ve been known to ask for the tail-piece because that’s the crunchiest bit. One of the best things about living in Florida is always having fresh fish available. When we were growing up, on the weekends we would drive a half hour out to Pine Island where Mom knew all of the local fish shops and fishmongers, and visit each one to pick up their best catches. We love grouper and snapper, and always buy stone crab in the winter. There is still no better way to get fish than fresh from the docks in Florida.
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Once Mom takes the fish home, she cleans and guts it outside with a cutting board, knife, and the garden hose. After that, whatever we aren’t eating right away, she freezes. To prepare the fish for eating, she brines it for a few hours, and sometimes adds lemongrass and chili peppers to flavor the skin. While we set the table, she heats up the oil, sticks the fish in it for a surprisingly short amount of time, and then it’s ready. She doesn’t even stand over the pan to watch it—she has this innate sense that tells her when it’s perfectly done. With the fish, we usually eat rice and a simply prepared vegetable such as boiled cabbage or watercress. Some of us dip the dish in nước mắm (fish sauce), and some of us are content to eat it crispy without a sauce. -T.N.
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• • • • • • •
Turn stove on medium heat Grease pan with olive oil Put in your fish Put a lid on Turn over once Done when crisp Serve with sautéed watercress or other vegetable • Dip fish in soy or fish sauce and chili pepper
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n late May, an elegant and honeyed frangrance suffuses the house. It’s the smell of ripe mangos, or xoài, and these aren’t like the ones you find in the grocery store. Our xoài are big and sweet, bright orange, and incredibly aromatic. We must have had at least 10 mango trees in our yard at the pink house. I guess the tropical weather in Cape Coral is perfect for growing them. Right outside the window of my old bedroom still stands our largest cây xoài. Now my aunt and her family live in the pink house but all the mango trees are still there and bigger than ever. The first thing Mom & Dad did when they moved to their new house was plant more mango trees! It’s only been a few years, but now these trees are producing fruit. Every year, Mom & Dad inevitably end up with more mangoes than they can eat, so Mom sends Thư & me shipments. To ensure we receive the treasure unspoiled, Mom carefully wraps each mango in newspaper and fills the box with packing peanuts. 20
Here is the typical life of a mango at the Nguyêns. By mid-May our cây xoài are heavy with fruit. Mom picks the ripe mangoes and places the nicest looking ones on the family altar. She waits a few days and then chooses one to eat. Mom is an expert peeler. Her style is to cut in the opposite direction of her body. She doesn’t let any of the fruit go to waste, so she peels very thinly. The xoài is cut into little nugget-like pieces onto a dish and then put in the fridge to chill. The coveted piece is the one with the seed. This piece is bigger than the rest and fun to chomp on. We usually eat mango after dinner or as a snack. However, it can be the main course. Bà Nội (grandma on my dad’s side) used to eat xoài with plain jasmine rice. -N.N. 21
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o matter what the dish—whether ribs or steak or caramel chicken— Mom says that the basic ingredients are the same: soy sauce, a little bit of sugar and salt, a dash of pepper, crushed garlic, and scallions. Of course, she never measures the amounts of any of the ingredients. A tablespoon to her is whatever spoon she has handy. Her idea of quality control is to stick the tip of her finger in the sauce and taste it—that taste tells her when it’s just right. When I tried to learn how to make her famous ribs, or Sườn Nướng, I followed Mom around and wrote down exactly what she did, even trying to convert her informal measurements to more standard ones. Hansel and I have made ribs probably a few dozen times now, and each time they taste different. They are delicious, and everyone who has tasted them love them, but they are never quite like they were the time before, and they have never tasted exactly like Mom’s. Friends have asked for the recipe, 24
and now they make ribs as well. Everyone loves to make them because they require so few ingredients. Still, it’s not the ingredients that make the recipe. Mom’s ribs, with their perfect salty-sweet stickiness, are so distinctively delicious because of the indefinable Mom magic that makes a recipe hers and hers alone. Mom originally included minced lemongrass in the marinade and used short ribs, but lately she’s nixed the lemongrass and converted to longer ribs. Sườn Nướng taste best from a charcoal grill but in a pinch, we’ve even made them in a toaster oven. With the ribs, we eat rice and Mom’s pickled vegetables or a salad. Our ideal drink to accompany this meal is a glass of ice water with just the slightest infusion of jasmine tea. -T.N.
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• For marinade, pound garlic, scallions, sugar into paste in a large bowl. • Add ribs. • Add black pepper, soy sauce, and fish sauce. • Refrigerate 1 hour to over night • Best to use charcoal grill • For cooking in toaster oven: 375 degrees. One hour flip. 425 degrees for last 5 minutes.
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y favorite foods are the ones that I can eat with my hands. There is something so sensual about actually touching the food before it enters my mouth. I can feel every ingredient, and pick and choose which ones I want to taste and when. When I eat bánh xèo, I love to take a huge leaf of mustard green, hold it like a boat in my palm, and then layer the ingredients inside of it. The herbs grown in our garden go in first. Then I rip off a piece of the crépe with my free hand to put on top. I careflully roll the contents together with both hands and dip it in Mom’s fish sauce. Each bite of bánh xèo has to have a little bit of everything in it: shrimp, pork, bean sprouts, and mung bean.
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In one sitting I can probably only eat two crÊpes, but Mom stands and pours the batter out for at least ten or fifteen. She has to use two pans-one to cook the meat and shrimp, and then another to cook the batter. As with many Vietnamese dishes, this is a time intensive one requiring a lot of chopping, numerous ingredients, and constant attention. I have been too intimidated by all the expertise required to make it myself. Luckily for me, Mom makes bånh xèo almost every time I go home. She proves to me time and time again that the best things are the ones that are worth working and waiting for. -T.N.
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• Combine and mix flour, coconut crème, and diced scallions into bowl • Turn stove on medium heat • Grease pan with olive oil • Add meat,shrimp,& yellow onion • With a ladle, pour batter evenly into pan • Place chives and beans sprout on one side • Cover with lid for 10 minutes • When yellow and crisp, fold crépe in half with spatula • Serve with lettuce or Asian leafy greens 30
Bรกnh Trรกng Rice Paper Rolls
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ice paper rolls are the perfect summer treat, which is why in many Asian restaurants you’ll see them on the menu as Summer Rolls, the cousin to the more ubiquitous Spring Rolls. Although any recipe using the rolls requires quite a few ingredients, the actual preparation and cooking is simple enough and very fun. I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t like eating goi cuon, and it’s a great thing to teach people how to make at a party. I have even pre-cooked the rice noodles, meat and shrimp, and brought the rest of the ingredients into work in order to cater for my colleagues. Everyone has their own rolling technique—I’ve seen some plump and short rolls and some long and skinny ones—but the key to a proportionate looking roll is to not overdo it on the noodles. To make it even prettier, add long pieces of chive in the middle of the rolling process, so that some of the chive sticks out of both ends of the roll. I also love to put peanuts both inside my roll and in the dipping sauce. The great thing about all rice paper rolls is that you can really make them to suit your own tastes. I even have a friend who tries to cut down on her fat intake by cutting off the bits of fat and skin on the pork belly, but I would never dream of doing such a thing because of how delicious and creamy those bits are. Once you
understand the basics, you can switch out ingredients, which is how we do it at home; if there’s fresh fish on hand, we’ll use that as filling, and likewise with other ingredients such as shrimp and squid. No matter which type of roll you make, because you made it yourself, you’ll feel more than satisfied enjoying the scrumptious fruits of your labor.
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Phở Beef Noodle Soup 35
In Vietnam, even though we didn’t have much money, mom and dad would get us pho to eat every week. In America, we’d have pho every Sunday, when there was time to slow cook it you have to have all the right herbs to eat with it, and can choose how much lime, hot chili, and hoisin sauce you want to add to the broth possible meats to put in pho: tai, nam, bo vien, tendon, chin (sp?) the spices in the broth are part of what make it so fragrant (cloves and star anise)
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f you’re going to make Bánh Cuớn, make sure you invite friends and family to come over to feast with you. Like banh xeo, this breakfast or brunch dish is a lot of work and makes tons of food. No matter how many people we invite, inevitably there are leftovers that last us through dinner too. The only downside to making this dish is that it requires the cook to man a lot of things at once, and to work as others are able to sit down for their meal. Of course, you can make people wait to eat until you’re done cooking, but Bánh Cuớn tastes better hot. I always made a special small dish of it for Mom to snack on while she cooked. [I need the recipe to say more about the cooking technique] The tricky part at the end is folding the crepe over, sort of omelet-like, so that you have pork-filled rolls in the end. Each person then eats about two to three rolls topped with diced cucumbers, slices of pork sausage, blanched bean sprouts, crispy golden garlic pieces, and nước mắm for sauce.
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On my final day visiting Nguyen in Vietnam, I got sick. I started to feel feverish, and my nose was running. Nguyen knew immediately that in order to feel better, I needed some canh suon. It’s our version of the cure-all chicken noodle soup. Part of the beauty of this soup is its simplicity. The broth tastes fresh and clean, and the chunks of big vegetables, softened from boiling, melt in your mouth.
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This meal is yet more proof that pork belly is underrated. I also don’t know a better way to use cucumbers in a meal. The ingredients are so few, but it’s like they were meant for each other. The coolness of the cucumbers soothe against the salty spiciness of the mam. I use a few bites of rice in between eating the main course as a sort of palate cleanser. Just when things are starting to taste bland, I eat more mam and then my mouth is energized again. I also love to nibble on the herb giap ca while eating this dish; it has a slight bitterness that adds a whole new dimension. Mom told me once that this is more of a poor man’s meal because it doesn’t require very much meat at all, and rice and cucumbers are very inexpensive. Even if I had all the money in the world, I would still request this humble and mouth-watering (literally!) meal.
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