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Vietnamese Cuisine is a mixture of Chinese , French and a little Thai influence. It is probably one of the best cuisine in Asia . The basic ingredients of Vietnamese cuisine are rice and the famous fish-sauce "nouc mam".
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Dining Out: Taking the ‘street’ out of ‘street food’
Quan An Ngon serves up a sampling of the best street food in Viet Nam in a user-friendly, plastic stool-free zone. Johnny Shaw forgoes his normal neighborhood eats and tries it out.
For anyone aware of the delights of Vietnamese street food but weary of traipsing around frenetically busy alleys dodging motorbikes and hawkers to forage for something recognisable to eat, Quan An Ngon provides a welcome respite by taking the ‘street’ out of ‘street food’ and offering a sampling of superb Vietnamese food in an elegant, relaxed setting.
Quan An Ngon got started in HCM City five years ago, and judging by the lunch and evening crowds, its new Ha Noi branch seems to be as popular as its southern predecessor. The concept was to assemble the ‘best of street food’ in a setting more conducive to enjoying smart lunches and sultry evening meals. Experienced food-vendors were transplanted from Ha Noi streetsides into a gentrified version of a bustling food market, dressed up in tunics, and stationed at rustic stalls around the perimeter of a large courtyard. Guests dine in the lush courtyard among potted trees under a large canvas marquis, or in one of the large dining rooms or on the balcony in the spacious adjoining villa.
After being seated by Quan An Ngon’s cheerful servers, guests walk around and peruse the stalls, but ordering is done at the table from a broad (English and Vietnamese) menu reflecting some of Viet Nam’s best-known regional specialities, and a few surprises. A veritable army of staff scuttle around assembling orders from the little stalls, and somehow the system seems to be extremely efficient.
On my most recent visit, I took a friend hoping to fill in the gaps on some dishes we hadn’t yet tried. However, the evening unfolded with decidedly one-sided confessions, at my expense: "You mean to say you’ve been in Ha Noi for four months and you still haven’t eaten such and such?!" My first admission concerned Da Lat wine, so a bottle of red was ordered on my behalf, and I felt the immediate satisfaction of accomplishing something important as I took a swig.
Traditional Miscellany
Nuoc mam defines Vietnamese culinary tradition
by Huu Ngoc
I ate dinner more than once with Tran Dang Khoa, the poet in restaurants during the course of our travels. Before tasting the regional specialities, he always began by serving himself a small bowl of hot rice sprayed with a little nuoc mam (fish sauce).
Nuoc mam has such a strong smell that airlines forbid its transport on their aircraft. There were some young Vietnamese going to study abroad who had transgressed that prohibition. In the 1980s, a Vietnamese student who came from Ha Noi had caused a regrettable scandal at the East Berlin airport: he slipped on the waxed floor and had fallen flat on his back, breaking a bottle of nuocmam hidden in a nylon bag. Getting rid of the smell took hours.
Why does nuoc mam have such a strong power of gastronomic seduction? Nuoc means water or liquid. Mam means the brine of fish or crustaceans often conserved as a thick liquid, of which the people of Southeast Asia are very fond. Nuoc mam is a salted solution that comes from the fermentation of the flesh of small fish. It is a Vietnamese speciality. (There is also another type of fish sauce in Thailand.) To make it, one adds alternating layers of fish and salt in a huge wooden barrel. After a certain time, one removes the liquid accumulated at the bottom and pours it back on top. This is done repeatedly. The first extracted solution (nuoc cot, nuoc nhat) is very rich in protein, often drunk in winter by fishermen and divers to preserve body heat. The nuoc mam nhi (or ri) extracted directly from the bottom of the barrel is of the best quality. Nuoc mam contains sodium chloride, amino acids, histamines, organic phosphate and minerals.
I visited centres of production of the best nuoc mam in Viet Nam: the islands of Phu Quoc, Phan Thiet, and Cat Hai. I was very impressed by the importance of their production, particularly for Vietnamese living abroad. During the era of French colonisation, the Lien Thanh Company of Phan Thiet distributed nuoc mam in the country and abroad, having presented the sauce to the l’Exposition Internationale (International Exposition) in Marseilles in 1922. Phan Thiet became a famous commercial brand. Unilever, a major European food company, created a business on the island along with 18 local partners. The joint venture company Quoc Duong produced and bottled ultra-hygienic nuoc mam (20 million litres per year), a proportion of which was exported to overseas Vietnamese in France, Germany and in the United States. The company preserved the traditional way of production of nuoc mam. I have met the Phu Hiep family, who specialised in nuoc mam for three generations.
A handicap for the exportation of nuoc mam to Europe and America is its odour, although it is not stronger than Roquefort or Gibier faisande. Once the repugnance of the smell is conquered, the amber liquid finally pleases the palate. Cook Cam Van presented it to a culinary festival organised by the Culinary Institute of America in the United States, and French chef Didier Corlou of the Sofitel Metropole Hanoi organised a symposium about nuoc mam. To neutralise the odour, Ms Mai Pham counselled people to serve it diluted with a special sauce, and to never add it to a plate being prepared without a hot saucepan ("The Best of Vietnamese and Thai Cooking," Prima Publishing, 1996).
Traditional Vietnamese meals are served with all dishes displayed on a round brass tray, with a bowl of nuoc mam in the middle. Diners soak pieces of food in nuoc mam. Nuoc mam is also served to raise the tastes of all dishes. It is a sauce served plain, or mixed with other ingredients: red chilli seasoning, ginger, oil, vinegar, sugar and lime. Nuoc mam served with hard-boiled duck eggs is a Ha Noi speciality. Nuoc mam condensed by heat is a dietary element and is considered good for sick people and mothers of newborns. Nuoc mam paste was served to conserve the fighters along the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the war. — VNS
No one knows exactly when nem (spring rolls) became a popular dish in Vietnam. In different localities, nem is prepared in different ways, forming different schools: Hanoi nem, Hue nem, Saigon nem, etc. As for nem cua (spring rolls filled with crab-meat) though, most Vietnamese immediately think of Hai Phong - the southern port city where many such seafood specialties have become a pride of Vietnamese gastronomy.
Spring Rolls filled with crabmeat
Many people wonder why Vietnam has a coastal line of over 3,000 km and an abundance of valuable marine products, and yet crab spring rolls remain famous only in Hai Phong. This question is reasonably explained by a caterer of crab spring rolls on Bui thi Xuan Street, Ha Noi, one of the capital's tastiest restaurants for the genuine and affordable Vietnamese cuisine. The first recognizable characteristic of Hai Phong Nem cua is that they are square in shape, while those in other localities a rectangular. The square nem cua require special rice sheets which are tough, crispy and fragrant. People in Hai Phong have a good technique in making rice sheets and red rice noodles, which are distinctive and famous.
In Hai phong, an indispensable component of nem is the crabmeat. Though crabs in Hai Phong are smaller than in other sea areas in Vietnam, they have firm and sweet meat. To make good spring rolls, the cook always selects fat crabs (about 0.7-0.8 kg each). Other indispensable ingredients may include fragrant mushrooms, vermicelli, bean sprouts, green onion, pork, chicken eggs, pepper spices, and shrimp. So, it is not an exaggeration to call nem cua a delicacy of mountain fragrances and sea tastes because it is prepared from both marine and forestry products.
To make delicious nem cua, the cook must have good skills. Crabmeat is prepared 15 minutes before the meal because it easily loses its color and fragrance. Thus the quality of ready-made spring rolls is thus ensured. When frying, spring rolls must be dipped and frequently turned over in boiling fat. The fire is adjusted properly so that they turn yellow and brittle. When cut into small pieces, ivory white crabmeat reveals itself in juicy fragments, mixed in with an array of other finely chopped ingredients.
A very simple but decisive factor in a good nem dish is the sauce, which also helps to create different styles among cooks and restaurants. The main ingredient of the sauce is high-quality fish sauce, diluted with cool water, vinegar, garlic, lemon juice and sugar (pepper or chili is also often added). The sauce can be prepared in different ways but it must be a good mixture of all tastes (sour, hot, salty, and sweet) to serve with nem. The large spring rolls are then chopped and arranged on a plate, decorated perhaps with slices of tomato and mint.
Nem cua is in fact an inexpensive dish which can be realistically prepared at home. At a restaurant, it costs around 30,000 - 40,000 VND/portion (equivalent to $2-3 USD). However, be ready to wait a few minutes, because nem cua is made only after you enter the restaurant.
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