"vietnamese" news and stories

Can you imaging living on tea alone for over twenty years? That's what life is like for a Vietnamese man, Phan Tuan Loc. At first he couldn't eat meat anymore, and then he stopped eating food entirely about twenty years ago. Now he lives on three cups of tea with sugar per day.

His family tried to keep this a secret and he tried to stop going to social events, but eventually people noticed that Phan Tuan Loc just didn't eat, and it freaked them out (I know I would be). Even stints at hospitals couldn't figure things out. Now Mr Loc just drinks his tea and gets a protein solution transmission from a health station when he feels really weak.

I love to eat. It's one of my favorite things to do, and I certainly can not see myself living without food, especially for twenty years. Apparently there are other cases like this (at least according to the article), and I just feel sorry for them. I don't even want to think of such a possibility. I'm sure there are worse fates, but this one is still right up there.

I have a thing for gorgeous, fresh salads (as you'll see later when I post my own dinner salad from last night). Looking through the Slashfood Flickr pool, this one nearly jumped off the screen at me and I knew I had found today's featured image. Especially since Spring is coming. Spring! Fresh, young vegetables! The promise of summer fruit! (I'm more than just a little bit excited about the coming change of season).

This image comes to us from Flickr user Eunnycjang and features a Vietnamese bun-style salad with "romaine, carrots, cabbage, cucumber, rice noodles, tons of mint, basil, cilantro, and Mark Bittman's shortcut caramel pork." It is dressed with nuoc mam.

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My friend Wendy is an terrific cook. She is the one who made the gorgeous and tasty cheesy pita chips I mentioned awhile back. Despite the fact that she isn't actually a food blogger, she stopped by my place last Friday for the potluck and brought with her a couple very excellent dishes. One was a Vietnamese tofu and rice dish. I got to keep the leftovers and ate them the following morning for breakfast. The thing she brought was a batch of quick homemade pickles. These pickles were delicious. They held onto a fresh crispness while still absorbing all that puckery vinegar goodness.

At the end of the night there were but three lonely spears floating in a dish full of pickling liquid. With Wendy's permission, I poured those leftover spears and all the pickling juice into a jar. The next day I sliced up some of my own cucumbers and popped them into the jar, thus extending the life of her pickles for another week or so. Luckily today she sent me the recipe for the pickling liquid, so when this batch runs out, I'll be able to make my own. I recommend you do the same, as they bring such brightness, both in taste and in color, to fall and winter meals.

Fans of Vietnamese cooking will find a wealth of wonderful recipes to choose from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors. The book is written, with an obvious amount of enthusiasm and knowledge of the topic, by Andrea Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam and opens the book with a touching story of leaving Saigon with little but family, memories and recipes. Many of those recipes are included in the book or were the inspiration for dishes. Along with the recipes, Nguyen includes some background on Vietnamese culture, particularly as it pertains to food, eating and cooking.

There are more than 175 recipes in the book, as well as a number of tempting photographs of the dishes. All are easy to follow and, with the exception of a few long ingredient lists, they are not very intimidating anyway. The book is divided into chapters by categories, such as meats, vegetables, noodles, soups, sauces and sweets, along with several others. Pho and bánh mì recipes are included as some of the more familiar Vietnamese dishes, while others range from Garlicky oven-roasted chicken (which seems to know few cultural bounds) to the more exotic Chicken Dumpling and Chrysanthemum Leaf Soup, Beef Flank and Ginger Simmered in Caramel Sauce.

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Quick and easy cooking sometimes gets bad-mouthed by those who prefer their dinners to be slow-cooked and as authentic as possible. I won't rehash the quick aspect of the book, but in this case, the fact that the recipes are easy is a major selling point. Vietnamese food is not nearly as well known as other Asian cuisines are and rather than launching into what might be a complex and expensive task of producing completely authentic Vietnamese at home, it's a good idea to at least familiarize yourself with some of the flavors and dishes that are popular.

Quick & Easy Vietnamese: 75 Everyday Recipes presents this unique cuisine in a very accessible way, much as its counterpart does with Thai food. The recipes are easy to read and most are accompanied by tempting photos, all of which will make you realize who Vietnamese food is popular even before you taste it. Many of the more exotic ingredients called for, such as lemongrass in the Lemongrass Shrimp, will probably be available at your local grocery or specialty market, but the book also has a list of mail-order resources in the back that should help you find anything that your grocer doesn't carry.

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