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I got the idea for this recipe from a Greek restaurant I worked at. The horseradish sauce is my favorite thing about them because I love that rush of spiciness that clears the sinuses.

Quin-what?! Okay, so maybe you haven’t ever heard of quinoa (pronounced “KEEN-wa”), but this “wonder grain” (actually a seed) is deliciously nutty and chewy and exceptionally nutritious. This salad makes a great meal, and you can take any leftovers for lunch. What I like the best is that it’s a nice alternative to the standard pasta salad.

If you like curry and crispy fried foods, you’ll love these Indian-style turnovers. The filling can be prepared in advance and kept in the fridge until you’re ready to eat. We use wonton wrappers for the dough, so all you have to do is fill them and fry them when you’re ready.

This recipe was inspired by an amazing salad I had at an organic restaurant near my house. I love all of the fun stuff in it. The sweetness of the pineapple and the crunch of the chow mein noodles and almonds are a fabulous combination. And the dressing is light, so it doesn’t weigh down the salad. It’s a perfect hot weather dish. You can get dried pineapple in the bulk food section of a supermarket, or you can usually find them by the other dried fruits.

This tasty recipe is like pizza, but easier. It takes about 2 minutes to prepare, looks impressive, and tastes great. Puff pastry isn’t used much in the United States, but Europeans can’t do without it. It’s really easy to work with, and the results are always perfect. To thaw frozen puff pastry, put it in the refrigerator the night before you want to use it.

Here is the Vietnamese version of the familiar Chinese egg drop soup. At its heart is a base of onion and tomato, which is cooked down to concentrate flavors and impart a lovely color. The pork adds richness, and so do the eggs, which also contribute a creamy finish to round out the tangy notes. This soup was a weekly standard at our family dinner table, and my mom would sometimes substitute tofu cubes for the pork to vary the flavor. When I have extra time, I mince the pork by hand for an authentic touch. For instructions on how to do it, see page 69.

In my mom’s saigon kitchen, the food processor, a modern luxury appliance, was reserved for making giò, while the old-fashioned hand-crank meat grinder was used for delicious liver pâtés like this one. We regularly enjoyed it, tucked into bánh mì or simply smeared on a baguette slice. In the traditional Viet interpretation of French paté, pork or beef liver, pork meat, and fatback are seasoned with lots of garlic and sometimes Cognac and Chinese five-spice powder (a substitute for French quatre épices). Some cooks add tapioca starch or flour as a binder, and, when available, they line the mold with caul fat for encasing the meat mixture. The paté is then steamed, steamed and baked, or baked in a water bath, the method usually depending on whether or not the cook has an oven. When my mother came to the States and switched from pork to chicken for making giò, she began saving the left over livers for this light, elegant pâté. She also started making the pâté in a food processor. If you want a more intense liver flavor, use half pork and half chicken liver, or make an all-pork version, cutting the liver into 1-inch cubes before processing. Don’t skimp on fat, or the results will be dry and tough. Meat today tends to be lean, and this recipe needs the fat to achieve the right taste and texture. You will end up with a large pâté—the better to impress others with your efforts.

Smooth, well-seasoned meat and seafood pastes have many uses in the Vietnamese kitchen. Here, a pinkish orange salmon paste is shaped into small cakes before undergoing a two-step cooking process: an initial steaming to cook the cakes, followed by broiling, grilling, or frying to crisp the outside. The cakes are sliced and served as an appetizer or dunked into Simple Dipping Sauce (page 309) and eaten with rice for dinner. If you have enjoyed Thai fried fish cakes (tod mun), these will remind you of them. When my mother came to the States, she substituted salmon for the rich-tasting tuna she had used in Vietnam. I have since prepared the cakes with the ahi tuna available here, but the results were too firm and dry. The fattier salmon is superior. If you can’t find skinless salmon fillet, buy 2 1/3 pounds of skin-on fillet and remove the skin before you cut the fish into chunks. The cakes can be frozen after they are steamed and then thawed and crisped for a good last-minute meal or snack. The recipe is also easily halved, but I advise you to make the whole batch and tuck away the extras for when you need a quick dish.

Cha gio, which originated in Saigon are among Vietnam’s national dishes. They are often misleadingly translated as spring rolls, because they seem like a riff on the Chinese spring roll, or as imperial rolls, a translation of pâté imperial, their French moniker. But these rolls are not reserved for royalty, nor are they exclusively eaten during the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). And their filling, wrapper, and accompaniments are uniquely Vietnamese. Out of culinary pride, I encourage people to call these rolls cha gio, their southern Viet name. The rolls are made in varying sizes. Cooks with great manual dexterity create thumb-sized rolls. Lacking such skill and patience, I make stubby cigar-sized ones and cut them up before serving. Larger ones also involve less labor when frying up enough for a special lunch or dinner. Some Vietnamese American cooks use Filipino lumpia or Chinese spring roll wrappers, which are made of wheat flour and fry up crisp, but an authentic flavor is lost. For the best results, use rice paper made of all rice flour or of rice and tapioca flours.

In Vietnam, the delicate anchovies (ca com) used for making fish sauce are also fried and enjoyed as a snack like a Spanish tapa or as part of a meal along with a simple soup, boiled or stir-fried vegetable, and rice. Even though these small fish are sold frozen at Viet markets, I like to use smelts, which are the perfect North American substitute. Delicate and sweet, they have soft, edible bones that allow you to “eat them like French fries,” as a fishmonger once told me. And the batter remains crispy long after the last fish is fried. Use the freshest smelts you can find or substitute other small fish available in your area, such as fresh anchovies.

This Vietnamese version of Chinese salt-and-pepper shrimp is bursting with bold flavors, and the high-heat searing seals in the juices. Use shrimp in their shells for the extra crunch and smokiness they develop during searing. Ideally their heads will be intact, too, as the juices trapped in the heads add to the richness of the finished dish. Purchase white shrimp with edible thin shells for this recipe; they are usually available at Asian and Latin markets.

Every late July, I look up the solar calendar dates of Tet Trung Thu (Autumn Moon Festival), which is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month and usually falls mid-to late September. An ancient Chinese harvest festival akin to Thanksgiving, it is a time for family and togetherness. The culinary focus of the celebration is the moon cake, a small baked pastry shaped in a hand-carved wooden mold. Thin, pliable dough encases a dense, sweet filling, at the center of which sits a salted egg yolk, symbolizing the moon. In between nibbling thin wedges of cake and sipping fragrant tea, you gaze at the largest and brightest moon of the year and reflect on your good fortune. Making moon cakes requires lots of ingredients and time, so most people buy them from bakeries and markets. But the culinary process is remarkable, requiring both precision and artistry, and the results are splendidly beautiful and delicious, making store-bought cakes pale imitations of homemade. Moon cakes are often filled with a paste of red beans or lotus seeds, but my family prefers an aromatic mixture of nuts and sweetmeats. My mother used this recipe in Vietnam, where she and her friend Mrs. Ly mastered the techniques. Some minor changes were made over time. For example, Mom substituted canned cooked chicken to mimic the luxurious texture of shark fin, and I added corn syrup to prevent the filling from drying and hardening. For decades, I watched and assisted my mother with the annual ritual. A few years ago, she handed me the molds, asking me to carry on the tradition. You must plan well in advance to make these cakes. The eggs need to stand in brine for four weeks, which is why I check the dates in July and work backward. While the eggs are curing, you can roast and freeze the pork at any point, and you can prepare the sugar syrup up to a few days in advance. The night before making the cakes, chop all the filling ingredients. The next day, forming and baking the cakes will be a pleasure. Moon cakes keep well in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks and will keep in the freezer for months, which means that you may make them way ahead of the celebration date or even enjoy them on other special occasions. Before embarking on this recipe, read it carefully from beginning to end, including the Note, which provides information on where to find the molds and any unusual ingredients. Also, make sure you have all the special equipment you will need: one or two wooden molds, a scale, toothpicks (preferably flat ones), and a water spray bottle.

Golden orange and crispy, this Hanoi specialty blends the fragrance and crunch of sweet potatoes with the brininess of shrimp. The fritters, which look like roughly formed nests on which whole shrimp rest, are cut into bite-sized pieces and bundled in lettuce with fresh herbs and cucumber. My mother taught me to soak the potatoes with a bit of slaked lime (calcium hydroxide), which Southeast Asian and Indian cooks use to crisp ingredients for frying and pickling. It is basically moistened food-grade slaked lime powder, the same compound used to treat corn for making Mexican masa. The Vietnamese call it voi and it is sold in small, round plastic containers in Chinese, Thai, and Viet markets, usually stocked in the flour aisle. Two varieties are available, red and white. I prefer the white one, though the red one, which has been colored by the heartwood of the cutch tree and is traditionally chewed with betel leaf, may also be used. A small container of slaked lime lasts for a long time because only a little is needed.

Made of a simple rice flour batter, these dainty and rich rice pancakes are akin to blini. Bánh bèo are eaten all over Vietnam and boast a number of regional variations. They come in sweet (ngot) and savory (man) varieties, and in sizes ranging from 1 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter. They may be served directly from the small ceramic dish in which they are steamed or transferred to a serving platter. This recipe for savory bánh bèo features a classic topping of fragrant bits of briny shrimp, rich scallion oil, and mildly sweet chile sauce. I use small, inexpensive dipping sauce dishes for the molds. Look for them at Asian housewares and restaurant-supply stores and at some Asian markets.

Shaped like half-moons, the plain buns are used like rolls: they are split open, a morsel of roast pork, duck, or char siu (barbecued pork) is tucked inside, and if there is a sauce, a little is drizzled over the meat. The resulting tiny sandwich is a great hors d’oeuvre or starter course. Steamed buns made from scratch take time. It is worth the effort to make your own dough for filled buns, but when you want the buns only as a small side dish, a shortcut may be in order.

Vietnamese cooking, like Chinese cooking, takes texture seriously. In fact, ingredients such as dried white tree fungus, a highly prized relative of the wood ear, lack flavor but offer interesting texture. Crunchy, resilient, and gelatinous, white tree fungus is expensive when compared with regular mushrooms and most other fungi and is thus saved for special occasions. It looks like crinkly, golden sponges and is sold in boxes or plastic bags at Chinese and Viet markets. It is important to use a good chicken stock in this recipe. Both the mild-flavored fungus and the vegetables need the contrast of a rich backdrop. The resulting soup will remind you of an underwater scene, the florets of white tree fungus suspended like silvery blades of seaweed among the orange carrot slices and bright green snow peas. For extra flair, add hand-shredded poached chicken breast along with the carrot.

Loaded with asparagus and crab, this soup is elegant looking and delicately flavored. Vietnamese consider it special-occasion fare because it features asparagus, a pricey ingredient introduced by the French as an imported canned good. In Vietnamese, asparagus is mang tay, literally “French bamboo,” an apt name as both asparagus and bamboo shoots grow quickly. Resourceful Viet cooks often maximize the asparagus flavor by adding the spears and their canning liquid to the soup. But the taste is nonetheless rather flat, and canned asparagus is mushy. To achieve a strong asparagus flavor, I use fresh asparagus to prepare the soup. Asparagus declines in sweetness as soon as it is harvested, so choose only the freshest. Spring is asparagus season, and at farmers’ markets the spears are sold within twenty-four hours of being cut. To keep them fresh, stand them in a tall container filled with about an inch of water. (If the ends look dry, trim them first.) Refrigerate the container; there is no need to cover it with plastic.

When preparing this Chinese classic, Vietnamese cooks, like their northern neighbors, often rely on canned creamed corn, once considered an exotic foreign import in Asia. The velvety sweet-savory result fuses East and West. Here in the States, fresh corn is plentiful, and making this soup with kernels cut from the cob yields bright flavors that aren’t cloying. Neither cornstarch nor egg is needed to create a creamy texture. The natural starch in the corn provides it. Some cooks add a variety of embellishments to the soup, but I prefer to keep it simple, using only sliced shiitake mushrooms for their flavor, texture, and visual appeal. Make sure you use the sweetest corn possible, whether from your local market or farm stand, fresh or frozen.

An elegant preparation of northern Vietnam, this soup is special-occasion fare. Rather than simmering the rice until it disintegrates into a silky creaminess, the grains are cooked until their ends “bloom” into flowerlike petals, an effect achieved by parboiling the rice and then simmering it for a shorter time than for standard cháo. Tapioca pearls thicken the soup and lend an interesting shimmer, and the halved shrimp turn into pink corkscrews as they cook, adding a final flourish to the presentation.

Here is a soup that my father taught me. In a ceviche-like approach, raw fish is marinated with onion, ginger, and cilantro. The semicooked mixture is then placed in the bottom of soup bowls, and the final cooking is done by the hot rice soup. When brought to the table, the seemingly plain white soup conceals a pleasant surprise of fish. Pair it with one of the salads in Chapter 1 for a Vietnamese soup-and-salad meal.