Monthly Archives: April 2010

vietnamese chicken salad (ga xe phay)

vietnamese chicken salad (ga xe phay)

This was one of our family’s favorite dishes to make for parties, and the addition of shrimp chips made it even better. I’m not throwing a party this week, but I did put my husband on a diet. Actually, Becca did too. And leave it to her to put our husbands in competition with each other to see who can lose the most weight. We’ll see how that goes! Luckily, Vietnamese cuisine is pretty healthy …

Continue reading →

the story of fish sauce

the story of fish sauce

Back in January, I had the opportunity to go to Phu Quoc island, off the southwest coast of Vietnam. I probably wouldn’t have ventured there had it not been for one thing: this is where they claim to make the best fish sauce in the world. What exactly makes it the best? That’s what I wondered too, and I’m happy to say that my quest was not in vain. My story on Phu Quoc fish …

Continue reading →

lotus root soup

lotus root soup

Growing up, we were accustomed to having soup with all of our family dinners.  Sometimes, this consisted of simple greens in a light chicken broth prepared only minutes before we sat down to eat.  Other times, the soup was slow-simmered for hours, even overnight, to create a full-bodied, full-flavored broth.  The Chinese have a term for these types of slow-simmered soups – lo foh tong.  The term lo foh literally  means “old fire,” and tong …

Continue reading →

easy salt-baked chicken

easy salt-baked chicken

Unlike my dad, who would make dinner from scratch every single day when we were growing up (we were lucky girls), I only cook a few times a week. When I’m ambitious, I’ll make most of my meals on the weekend and eat some variation of them throughout the work week. About every other week, I’ll make my mom’s yeem gok gai, salt-baked chicken, which feeds us for a good number of days. (It’s one …

Continue reading →