Vietnamese food isn't all about beef pho and meaty banh mi. It's about agriculture. Ever-Green Vietnamese, a jam-packed, stunning cookbook, explores traditions and presents my modern interpretations of traditional Vietnamese plant-based eating and cooking. Content highlights 125+ plant-filled recipes and flexitarian options for doable, global flavors and sustainable, wholesome living. Media Coverage (thus far!) Eater Best Cookbooks of Spring 2023Tasting Table Most Anticipated ...
Ever-Green Vietnamese Ingredient Tips and Zoom Playback
In early October 2023, I did a virtual Ever-Green Vietnamese book talk on Zoom. We had a blast and I talked fast. Below is the video playback for you to watch, in case you missed it, and for you to return to. It is chock full of ingredient pointers and questions from folks. It’s nearly an hour long so it’s posted at YouTube and then linked here. Zoom video quality is never great, despite my getting faster internet and and a new laptop. I goofed while marking up content highlights. ...
Chinese Pickled Ginger Recipe
Sweet and slightly hot pickled ginger isn't just used in Japanese cuisine, and neither is it for sushi only. It's made in East and Southeast Asia and eaten as a snack, added to salads, and even thrown into stir-fries. This is a Cantonese-style recipe that's based on one in Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's 1988 cookbook, New Cantonese Cooking. The only hard thing about making pickled ginger is finding the ginger. You need young ginger, which is a seasonal item at Chinese and Japanese markets in the early ...
Vietnamese Corn Milk Recipe (Sua Bap)
The name -- corn milk, may sound odd. Is it a typo? What is it? Corn milk -- often called sữa bắp in Vietnam, is a creamy, refreshing, and slightly sweet beverage. It is incredibly tasty for something that employs just a handful of readily available ingredients (mostly corn and water!). Sữa bắp is an enticing refresher that I’ve enjoyed in Vietnam and abroad. You may have spotted sữa bắp at casual joints, delis, and bakeries. I first noticed a sign for it at a tiny pho shop in Hanoi's ...
Green Cherry Tomato Lemongrass Pickle Recipe
The only tomato that I grow successfully are cherry tomatoes. Kids can grow them successfully so that gives me confidence. This year I grew Sungolds, which are very sweet. The plant is prolific but I don't mind. I have a use for even the unripe green ones. In Vietnamese, tomatoes are called ca chua (sour eggplant). Tomatoes and eggplants are both nightshade family members, and eggplant was first domesticated in Asia (its wild kin were growing in Africa). When tomatoes arrived from the new ...
What Kind of Lemongrass Should You Grow?
If lemongrass at your grocery store looks sad, you may want to grow it yourself. It's not difficult. It's a grass. It loves sun and during the cold season you can pull it indoors if you cultivate it in a pot. The trouble that people run into is finding edible lemongrass to grow. For example, at my local nursery -- a dependable spot, I recently saw these plants: They were labeled “lemon grass” and the plant description said they were botanically Cymbopogon citratus. The label also ...