Today I got another book sent to me from a friend. “Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors” by Andrea Nguyen. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. So I was more than pleased to receive it. I’m actually surprised it’s taken Vietnamese food so long to catch on with Americans, considering that it’s French influenced (due to France’s colonization of the country from 1858 until 1954), based on fresh ingredients, generally healthy and visually appealing. This book is HUGE. It breaks down Vietnamese cooking and dishes so they are simple and not intimadating. In the beginning is a brief history lesson and in the back is a descriptive glossary for the exotic ingredients.

I haven’t met anyone who didn’t like pho or a banh mi. But there’s so much more to Vietnamese cuisine than those two.

I really miss my mom’s banh xeo - savory crepes made from rice flour, coconut and tumeric and stuffed with deliciousness like shrimp, chicken, mung beans, bean sprouts and julienned veggies and eaten with lettuce, mint, cucumbers and nuoc cham (seasoned fish sauce and rice vinegar dipping sauce). It was so very good that even though I haven’t had it in over seven years, I can still visualize it, photographically remember the base recipe and practically taste it - hot and cold and crispy and crunchy and soft and little sweet and a little spicy and a little salty all in one bite. It was quality. It’s hard to find banh xeo the way my mom made it in restaurants in NYC due to either regional variations or half-assed cooking. Some place will serve it soggy and floppy. Some are too oily. Some aren’t yellow enough. Most of them are stingy with the stuffing. I won’t randomly order it in restaurants without a referral because I’m scared of being disappointed. And being let down by food really bums me out.

Something I love about Vietnamese food is that’s it is unpretentious: There are no rules to eating it*. You don’t want hoisin sauce in your pho? No problem! You wanna eat with your hands? Go ahead! Slurp your broth? Of course! Whenever my mom would have her white friends over, they were polite and respectful of etiquette (like not eating until everyone is seated and until the host takes the first bite), but my mom would yell at them to dig in while she was still cooking. Eat all you want and get as messy as you want. How can you not get into that?

*The only thing my mom was strict about was how I held my chopsticks: Paupers, she said, held theirs lower down, closer to the food and royalty could manage them from the very top of the sticks.