Vietnamese

These spring rolls are so fresh tasting that they’re addictive. The beet turns the noodles a pretty pink—way cool. Wear gloves when you cut up the beet so your hands don’t turn purple—not a festive look.

Lan Pham was 2 years old when she immigrated to the United States from Vietnam with her family. Her father became a State Department official assigned to various posts in Asia and Africa and she lived in the Philippines during an earthquake and during a political uprising that closed her school. During civil unrest in Ethiopia, U.S. Marines escorted her to class. Yearly monsoons punctuated the relative calm of her high school years in Thailand. When she serves these herb-roasted allium, she tells her guests: "to taste, just one taste, and they are surprised by the sweet flavor and rich aroma. I tell them everybody knows that slow-cooked onions don't give bad breath."

Frazzled? Feast on fish! Tuna is high in vitamin B12, which stimulates the brain's production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps you relax.

This Vietnamese-style dish infuses fresh mussels with intense flavors of garlic, pepper, and fish sauce. A cast-iron pot, the ideal cooking vessel, gets very hot, cooking the mussels quickly and heightening the flavors of the seasonings. You can also use a wok or Dutch oven.

Although the base of this fairly standard Vietnamese dish is a caramel sauce, the garlic, shallots, and black pepper cut through the sweetness like a knife, providing terrific contrast. Since the last 45 minutes of the cooking time are unattended, this is a good dish for a night on which you want to entertain.

In Vietnam, yogurt is known by a couple of different names: sua chua (sour milk) and da ua, pronounced "ya-orh," which is actually a transliteration of yaourt, reflecting the dish's origins during French colonization. Semantics aside, this just may be the silkiest yogurt you’ll ever taste, with a delightful balance of sweetness—which comes from condensed milk, a staple of the Vietnamese pantry—and tanginess. At Street, Feniger and Alger make and culture their own yogurt, but this recipe produces similar results and is much quicker.

Vietnamese-style rolls are a great addition to your summer repertoire: They require very little cooking and can be assembled at the kitchen table or out on the patio. Thanks to bean thread noodles and baked tofu, they make a substantial meal, but pickled vegetables and a trio of herbs keep each sauce-dipped bite light and cool.

Dau Hu Rang Muoi Luke Nguyen: I enjoy the simplicity and texture of this dish—it's like a vegetarian's version of salt and pepper squid.

Nuoc Cham Chay Luke Nguyen: This is the vegetarian equivalent of dipping fish sauce. This sauce is quick and easy to make, and if you want to liven it up, add some pickled vegetables and chile.

Since emigrating from Vietnam in the 1970s, Kia Dickinson has been generously sharing her incredible recipes with everyone she meets, including food editor Ian Knauer. This colorful mix of moist poached chicken, cabbage, carrots, and fresh herbs tossed with a wild, tongue-searing dressing is the quintessential summer salad—cool, colorful, and very fresh. When preparing this recipe, Dickinson uses the leftover poaching liquid to make rice.

This soup from Tien Dinh at Pho, in Las Vegas, delivers vitamin A.

Despite the exotic name of this sandwich, you can get all the ingredients right at the supermarket. Liverwurst stands in for the traditional pork-pâté filling—the meatiness works beautifully with the sharp-flavored vegetables and fresh cilantro.

These crisp golden crêpes, filled with shrimp, pork, and vegetables, are both delicious and fun to eat. Simply wrap each crêpe in a lettuce leaf, tuck in fresh herbs like mint and basil, and dip it in the sweet-and-sour sauce.

This truly fabulous Vietnamese-inspired salad is the epitome of flavor synergy, combining sweet pineapple and fiery serrano with cooling cucumber and mint.

Cha gio are considered culinary treasures, delighting everyone who's tried them. Light and crispy, spring rolls are traditionally wrapped with rice paper. At Lemon Grass, however, we use a more durable type of spring roll wrapper made from wheat flour. Also used for Filipino-style lumpias, they are marketed under the Menlo brand and stocked in the frozen food department of Asian grocery stores. These 8 X 8-inch wrappers seal the filling so well that no oil can seep through during frying; this is not the case with rice paper.

Nuoc Cham Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Mai Pham's book Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table. Pham also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. This recipe originally accompanied Crispy Spring Rolls. Nuoc cham is a must at every Vietnamese table, no matter what is served. You can use this condiment for dipping meat, seafood and vegetables, and for drizzling on rice. When serving it with steamed meats (such as steamed chicken), I often reduce the water by half so the sauce is more concentrated. You can often determine a family's roots just by looking at and tasting their nuoc cham. If it's clear and dotted with chopped chilies, the cook is probably from the central or northern regions, where a simple and straightforward version is preferred. But if it's diluted with water and lime juice and sweetened with sugar, one can surmise that the cook is from the verdant south. Although it will keep up to two weeks in the refrigerator, nuoc cham is best when freshly made. I prefer the intense flavor of the tiny Thai bird chilies, but any hot chilies will do.

Rau Song Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Mai Pham's book Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table. Pham also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. This recipe originally accompanied Crispy Spring Rolls. In Vietnam, a table salad is used in two main ways — as an accompaniment to meals in which little pieces of meat and seafood are wrapped in the lettuce and eaten out of hand and as an all-purpose salad. When eaten as a salad, diners tear off a piece of lettuce with some herbs and add to their bowls of rice or noodles, or fold the leaves and herbs into little packets to dip into a sauce. A nice table salad can include any combination of rau ram, Asian basil, red and green perilla and slices of starfruit or green bananas.

Banh chung Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table by Mai Pham and are part of our story on Lunar New Year. Almost synonymous to Tet, the lunar new year, banh chung is a highly regarded food in Vietnam. It's said to have originated centuries ago when King Hung Vuong VI challenged his many sons that whoever came up with the best recipe for Tet would inherit his throne. The eldest one, eager to impress his father, traveled far and wide to procure the most exotic recipes. But the youngest son, the shy and quiet one, stayed close to home and cooked a dish based on a dream. A genie had told him to take sticky rice (which symbolized earth), wrap it around a ball of mung bean paste (which represented the sun), then boil it for one day and one night. Upon tasting the dish and hearing the story, the king was so impressed he proclaimed his youngest son the heir to his throne and ordered the recipe to be shared with all commoners. Since that day, banh chung has enjoyed a central place in Vietnamese culture — at the family table and on the ancestor worship altar. Since it's considered taboo to work or cook during the first three days of Tet, these cakes are usually made before the festivities begin. Serve this dish at room temperature with a side of salt and pepper or reheat slightly in the microwave and serve as part of a meal.

Ca ri ga Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table by Mai Pham and are part of our story on Lunar New Year. True to the Vietnamese style of curry-making, this recipe is milder and lighter than Indian or Thai curries. You can make this with chicken stock, but the coconut milk adds body and enhances the overall flavor. Depending on my mood and the time of year, I sometimes serve this with a warmed baguette (a French influence) instead of steamed rice. Other times, I just make the curry with more broth and serve it with rice noodles. Like other curries, it's delicious the next day.

Dau hu xa ot Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table by Mai Pham and are part of our story on Lunar New Year. While traveling on a train one time to the coastal town of Nha Trang, I sat next to an elderly nun. Over the course of our bumpy eight-hour ride, she shared stories of life at the temple and the difficult years after the end of the war when the Communist government cracked down on religious factions. Toward the end of our chat, she pulled out a bag of food she'd prepared for the trip. It was tofu that had been cooked in chilies, lemongrass and la lot, an aromatic leaf also known as pepper leaf. When she gave me a taste, I knew immediately that I had to learn how to make it. This is my rendition of that fabulous dish. Make sure to pat the tofu dry before marinating it and use very fresh lemongrass. I always love serving this to friends who think tofu dishes are bland.