You don’t need to be a pro to create authentic Viet dishes. James Beard Award-winning cookbook author and instructor Andrea Nguyen Nguyen isn’t. She’s been demystifying Viet cuisine with clarity, cheer and fabulous recipes since her 2006 cookbook Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. She does a deep dive into Vietnamese classics with books like Asian Tofu, Asian Dumplings, The Banh Mi Handbook, and her 2018 Beard-winning The Pho Cookbook. Yet for all her culinary drive and talent, she’s entirely self-taught. She’ll teach you, too, with her new book Vietnamese Food Any Day.
Nguyen fled Vietnam with her family in 1975 and settled in California. The products in the local food stores “were all new to us. They were intriguing and we were curious. Strawberry Nestle Quick was so artificial tasting but Ovaltine was all right!” she recalls. Back then, fish sauce was unknown here and the only soy sauce was La Choy. Nguyen credits her mother with finding ways to utilize available ingredients to create the flavor and spirit of home. The author accomplishes the same thing with Vietnamese Food Any Day. That’s “the Vietnamese American experience,” she says. Nguyen insists none of the recipes in Vietnamese Food Any Day require a trip to an Asian market. Everything can be found in most supermarkets, and besides, “the aroma of a pot of rice cooking is the same whether you’re in Saigon or Santa Cruz.”
Nguyen and I live on opposite coasts but we both have the good fortune and good climate to grow lemongrass, one of Vietnamese cuisine’s bright, salient flavors, in our back yards. Mine grows like a haystack. Nguyen’s book offers the best advice for dealing with lemongrass I’ve come across, including prepping, freezing and mincing. “You can’t chew what you can’t chop.”
Exploring the Viet dishes she loves with readers is as natural and joyful as sharing a meal with family and friends. “I’m used to eating family-style and sharing food,” says Nguyen. “I once took a friend to a Chinese restaurant and she said, ‘I want my own dish, I don’t want to share.’ Our friendship slowly unravelled.” Nguyen smiles. “I tend to cultivate relationships with people who like to cook, eat, and talk.”
In addition to being a guiding light for Viet cuisine, the author endeared herself to me forever by editing the book about my culinary lodestar, Paula Wolfert “Good food is memory,” Paula has said. So are good recipes. Nguyen demands a lot of hers. Not only must they be doable and delicious, they should “serve a purpose, to teach, to tell a story or to take the reader and cook on a journey.”
With Nguyen as your guide, creating the authentic flavors of Vietnam is less about having ingredients direct from Hanoi and more about “thoughtfulness and intention, about having a foundation for cooking something the way that you do. It’s captured in the Viet term kheo.” Kheo translates as smart or skilled, and for Nguyen, it means kitchen smarts, too. “Cooking with care and consideration.”
“Reprinted with permission from Vietnamese Food Any Day: Simple Recipes for True, Fresh Flavors by Andrea Nguyen, copyright © 2019. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House.” Photography credit: Aubrie Pick © 2019
When my husband saw this on the counter, he mistook it for the caramelized porky crumbles on page 132. Yes, they look alike, but these crumbles are vegan, with a citrusy and spicy edge. Tempeh isn’t a Viet ingredient, but I’ve used it in banh mi, pho, and here to mimic meat. When crumbled into small pieces in this recipe, tempeh absorbs the seasonings well and fries up nicely. Whether made from meat or tempeh, these sorts of crumbles are used the same way—to mix into and season rice, kind of like a condiment. Add a side of radish and carrot pickle for refreshing crunch and tang. The crumbles will keep, covered, in the refrigerator, for up to 3 days (though they never last long in my house) and are good scooped up with tortilla chips.
Ingredients
- ½ cup coarsely chopped lemongrass (from 2 large stalks)
- 1½ tablespoons coarsely chopped garlic
- ¼ cup coarsely chopped shallot
- Rounded 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon sriracha, plus more for serving
- 2 tablespoons Bragg Liquid Aminos, Maggi Seasoning sauce, or soy sauce
- ¼ cup water
- Brimming 3 tablespoons canola or other neutral oil
- 8 ounces tempeh, broken into thumbnail-size chunks
- 1 teaspoon raw or toasted sesame seeds (optional)
- 2 green onions, green part only, cut into rings
- Fine sea salt
- 1 small English or 2 Persian cucumbers, thinly sliced (optional)
Instructions
- In a small food processor, whirl the lemongrass to finely chop. Add the garlic and shallot and process until everything is minced, pausing to scrape down the sides as needed; set aside. (If you don’t have a small food processor, grate the lemongrass stalks and mince the garlic and shallot.) In a small bowl, mix together the sugar, sriracha, Bragg Liquid Aminos, and water. Set the seasoning liquid aside.
- In a large skillet over medium heat, warm the canola oil. Add the lemongrass mixture and cook, stirring, for about 1 minute, until fragrant and no longer raw smelling. Add the tempeh and seasoning liquid, turn the heat to medium-high, and let the mixture bubble and fry for about 10 minutes. At first, press on the tempeh to break it into smaller pieces (ideally, separate into individual soybeans) to maximize flavor and crisping. When satisfied, leave the tempeh to sizzle, giving it an occasional stir and then spreading it out to cover the bottom of the pan so it cooks evenly.
- Toward the end of the 10 minutes, when some of the tempeh is golden brown, add the sesame seeds (if using) and cook, stirring frequently, for about 2 minutes longer to brown the tempeh further. The mixture will feel lighter under the weight of your spatula. When most of the tempeh is golden brown, remove from the heat,
- stir in the green onions, and let rest for 5 minutes to deepen in flavor. Taste and, if needed, add salt, a pinch at a time.
- Serve the tempeh warm or at room temperature, with the cucumber, if desired. If diners want more heat, pass additional sriracha.
Notes
For the best flavor, use old-school all-soybean tempeh, such as Westsoy and Lifelight brands, available at many health food markets; tempeh made with grains lack the umami depth of the traditional kind. When fresh lemongrass is unavailable, substitute 3 to 4 tablespoons lemongrass paste.
LEMONGRASS PREP TIPS AND SHORTCUTS
When dealing with lemongrass, remember this: You can’t chew what you can’t chop. To trim a stalk, chop off the green, woody top section and the tough base. Remove loose or dry outer layers. The usable section will be 4 to 8 inches long, depending on the stalk size.
To chop a trimmed stalk, cut it into 4-inch sections, halve each lengthwise, cut crosswise into half circles, then chop to the desired texture. If you like, whack the stalk with a meat mallet or heavy saucepan to break up the fibers before cutting.
Reduce knife work by grating the stalk with a rasp grater such as a Microplane; chop pieces that eventually splay open. Use 1½ tablespoons grated lemongrass for every 2 tablespoons chopped lemongrass. Feel free to apply this 3:4 ratio when subbing frozen minced lemongrass (see below) or store-bought lemongrass paste for freshly chopped lemongrass.
For advance prep, freeze trimmed stalks in a zipper-top bag for up to 3 months. Or, chop the stalks into ¼-inch pieces and then blitz in a processor, 1 cup at a time, to a fine mincelike texture. Add 1 tablespoon neutral oil and pulse to combine. Freeze in a storage container for up to 3 months.
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