What to Eat: Vietnamese Buffet
Skip dialing for delivery this weekend and recreate the takeout experience in the comfort of your own home.
Simpler Summer Rollsby Jerry Traunfeld
A James Beard Award-winner shares the perfect (and easier) way to do one of the most popular Asian appetizers on the menu.
An expertly made summer roll is like a work of high art—a perfect balance of color, flavor, and texture—herbs, vegetables, cellophane noodles, and shrimp or pork—rolled tightly in a translucent rice wrapper. But like all beautiful kitchen masterpieces, making them at home takes practice and patience, and often results in a mess of torn wrappers and lopsided rolls. This recipe is the folk art equivalent of summer rolls: fewer rules, more freedom for personal expression. Rolled up like open-ended crepes, they're rustic in their charm.
Click here for the recipe.
Vietnamese Beef, Green Papaya, and Noodle Saladby Victoria Blashford-Snell and Brigitte Hafner
Expand your horizons and your produce repertoire with this dish, brought to you by two international culinary superstars.
For most fruits and vegetables, we wait patiently until they're ripe before we bite into them. And that patience pays off, in depth of flavor and aroma. A green banana? Tastes like cardboard. An underripe apple? Prohibitively sour. But green papaya? Now there’s an exception to the rule. Crisp, fresh, and tart, green papaya is one of the most refreshing ingredients in Southeast Asian cuisine, and in this salad it acts as the perfect balance for simply broiled steak (a little heavy), peanuts (a little crunchy), and rice noodles (a little soft).
Click here for the recipe.
Shrimp Fried Riceby Zak Pelaccio
Fatty Crab executive chef Zak Pelaccio incorporates the cooking experience he gained in Malaysia and Thailand into this recipe.
Throughout Asia, fried rice is a standard dish, and the Vietnamese version is a delicious, endlessly variable ticket to quick and easy (and impressive) feasts. The best part? It’s the perfect vehicle for refrigerator cleanout. Add chicken, ham, pineapple, cashews, and frozen peas to make this recipe your own.
Click here for the recipe.
Lemongrass Beef, Grilled or Sautéedby Nancie McDermott
A stint in Thailand with the Peace Corps taught this chef firsthand how to master a beef dish that will have you coming back for seconds.
Lemongrass is one of the unique flavors of the world. Citrusy, sweet-and-sour, gingery, and aromatic, it is a native plant to Southeast Asia that was once only available in Asian specialty food shops and is now widely obtainable. Lemongrass tea is also known to calm an upset stomach, lift depression, and cure fevers. And recently, an Israel research team found that lemongrass helped cure malignant cancer by causing cancerous cells to self-destruct. So then what could be better than bo nuong xa, or lemongrass beef? It is equally delicious grilled or sautéed, and the combination of lemongrass’ delicate flavor and health benefits make this dish hard to resist.
Click here for the recipe.
Sweet and Tart Pineapple Frittersby Sharon Crayton
Fortune cookies will never suffice as dessert again once you’ve tried this indulgent recipe that will be the perfect ending to any do-it-yourself dinner.
Fritters are like the day the pancakes went to the fair. The pancakes got there, realized they were underdressed, jumped into a vat of hot oil...and came out as funnel cake. And given the choice of pancakes or funnel cake, the child in us (the one who looooves the fair) will always choose funnel cake. Too bad it’s so damn unhealthy. These pineapple fritters, crisp and tart and fruity, are like a healthier, grown-up version of fair food. Served piping hot, sprinkled with sugar, toasted sesame seeds, and a dash of rum or rice wine, they’re mostly pineapple, which makes it easier for us grownups to indulge.
Click here for the recipe.
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