Vietnamese Food

True Culinary Artistry

Highlighting colours and textures as much as flavours, Vietnamese food can be compared to an artist's canvas as one of the world's most beautiful cuisines, as pleasing to the eye as to the palate. Fresh herbs, colourful, crunchy vegetables shredded or carved into flowers and other shapes, lemon grass, chillies and fish sauce are prominent compliments to seafood, pork, chicken and vegetarian dishes served with rice or vermicelli.

You can actually count the colours and textures that contrast and combine in a particular Vietnamese dish: my Spaghetti Squash Salad has yellow (squash), orange (carrots), three shades of green (chilies, celery, green onion, cilantro), white (bean sprouts), red (chillies), pink (shrimp), grey-pink (roast pork), and each of these lend their own unique textures, not to mention flavours, to this really amazing dish.

Although I have yet to travel Vietnam, I have been enjoying adventures in Vietnamese food and cooking for over twenty years. In the early 80's, Toronto had a few small pockets of Vietnamese neighbourhoods with a fledgling restaurant culture that catered mainly to the Vietnamese residents. My initiation involved a huge bowl of vermicelli with lemon grass chicken and spring rolls, with that incredible springroll dipping sauce that I later found out was based on fish sauce, all accompanied with fresh mint, herbs and shredded vegetables...yes, I actually remember it with mouth-watering clarity!

Soon after, I enrolled in a continuing education class for Vietnamese cooking so that I could learn how to create and share these flavours and dishes with friends and family, and I'm happy to share some of my recipes in the Vietnamese Recipes section of the Recipe for Travel.

About Vietnamese Fish Sauce

In Vietnam, fish sauce is called Nuoc Cham or Nuoc Mam. In Thai food, fish sauce is called nam pla and in Cambodia and Laos it is also known as nuoc mam. Almost any meal in these countries, but especially Vietnam, would be incomplete without it, or a condiment or dipping sauce similar to my Vietnamese Spring Roll Sauce recipe with fish sauce as the main ingredient.

Fish sauce, basically, is fish juices extracted through a long, special fermentation process in which raw fish is layered and marinated in salt. You may be surprised, even alarmed, at the pungency of fish sauce as a raw ingredient when you first use it, but you'll be surprisingly delighted with the fragrance and flavours it brings to your Vietnamese, Thai and other Asian cooking adventures.

There are variations in quality (and potency) in the store brands you will find. I stick to any Asian brand that is inexpensive and lists anchovies extract as the first of just three ingredients (the others being water and salt), and am rarely disappointed. You can buy fish sauce in Asian markets or grocery stores, and in many major supermarkets.