Why Hello there and welcome back to the Cooking Blog that’s…sometimes a slog. I’m your Gate-troll puslling the Chains, Jon O’Guin. On Monday, I made an adaptation of a Vietnamese dish, and Vietnam has been a country we’ve danced around on the blog for some time. We made Chicken Salad, we talked about Sriracha, we heard from Vietnamese chefs, and Vietnamese American Fishermen! But, critically, this was the first REAL Vietnamese dish we made for the site. As such , I think there’s no better time to do a quick dive into what defines the food of Vietnam.

Wu Wu, All Aboard

The first and most fundamental thing you must understand about Vietnamese cuisine is that it is rooted in wuxing. Which is not an offshoot of the Wu-Tang, nor, tragically connected with the wuxia film/novel genre.

My love of which are well-recorded.

WuXing is instead the Chinese system of elements. Kind of.  You might have already heard this before, but while the Greeks believed in 4 Elements (well, ACTUALLY 5, but the fifth one was added later, and  no one cares about it, it was just a “And Stars don’t look like they’re made of any of the 4, so they must be something else.” Fucking Aristotle.) people like to say that the Chinese have 5 elements: Earth, METAL, Water, Wood, Fire. And that’s kind of right. But also wrong: See, the Greeks, as I just pointed out, argued that everything was MADE OF the elements. That they were the fundamental materials. That’s NOT what the Wuxing are. Xing, in Wuxing, actually doesn’t translate into English. It has been translated as, and I assure you I didn’t put anything in here that isn’t real:

-Metamorpheses of Being
-Permutations
-Movement
-Changing States

And is typically summarized/condensed to “Phases”, “steps”, “Ways”, “AGENTS”, etc.

Sometimes the Agents of this system are terrifying Kangaroo-Men.

Basically, Chinese philosophy asserts that there is a pattern to things (well, actually TWO patterns, one of Generation, and one of “Overcoming”.) that move through these five stages, and that therefore, the greatest balance is found in discovering the 5 primary elements of a system, and their progression.

And now that you vaguely understand that Chinese philosophical foundation, I can explain how it is ALSO the root of Vietnamese cuisine.

Five-Finger Licking

Vietnam holds that, in accordance with Wuxing, there are five flavors: Sour, Bitter, Sweet, Spicy, and Salty. That these also corresponded to internal organs, senses, COLORS, and basic “nutrients”, Carbs (“Powder”, for flour), Fat, Protein, Minerals, and Water. No points for figuring out which phase Water was the nutrient for. Though SOME points for guessing that while Red was the color of Fire, BITTER was the flavor for it, which Spicy being Metal’s flavor.

Which makes more sense in America, what with the music.

And if a process that unites 5 ideas through 5 mediums sounds familiar, it’s because we ALREADY covered a pretty damn similar system in Japan’s conception of Washoku. Hell, the two even use the same colors! Yellow, Green, Red, Black, and White…of which, in retrospect, the only color MISSING from Monday’s recipe is Yellow. Maybe the lime juice is the Yellow there? Or the Sugar? Yellow is the “sweet” color…I’m distracting myself.

The biggest differences are that Washoku doesn’t really “align” the ideas the same way, That Vietnam throws out umami and says “all of our meals should be at least a little spicy”, which is a fun announcement, and that a couple categories are switched up. (Vietnam holds that the 5 flavors align with 5 internal organs of the digestive tract, and thus there’s some folk medicine with feeding one or balancing another, whereas Japan focused on 5 methods of cooking, for instance.) Oh, and that parenthetical actually alludes to one last difference. Vietnam views the practice fractally in a way that Japan doesn’t.

Fractal foods are another of my pastimes.

What I mean by that is that Japan believes a MEAL should contain all 5 methods of cooking, all 5 flavors, all 5 colors, etc. Vietnam believes that every DISH should, AND that the MEAL should try and balance the elements on TOP of the balance in the dishes.  Oh, man, and if we’re talking about MEAL rules…

Making a Mealy Mouthed Excuse

Oh man, if you thought the five flavors/colors/organs thing was complicated, we have ONLY BEGUN. ON TOP of that, there’s a “Yin/Yang” dichotomy, where “hot” foods should be paired with “cold” elements. Duck, for instance, is considered a “cold” meat, and therefore should be served with Ginger sauce, a “hot” ingredient.

Food is only one of the many instances of where Ginger can be Hot.

This is partly why there’s so many herbs in Vietnamese cooking, to balance out the overall dish in terms of “hot” or “cold”. It’s also why some foods are finished with citrus juice: to “cool” down a spicy dish.

This is taken even farther, with certain foods supposed to be EATEN at certain times: The aforementioned “cold” duck is a SUMMER food, while Chicken, a “warm” meat, is for the fall, and Pork, a “hot” meat, is for the winter.

On Top of THAT, there’s a sort of standardized preparation to Vietnamese meals that is functionally similar to another topic from washoku, the ichiju-sansai or “One broth, three sides” paradigm. Where Japan structured a meal around Rice, a Soup, and 3 “sides”, Vietnam’s structure is a sort of weird mix between that idea and like, Korean Banchan. A “Typical Vietnamese meal” consists of

A communal bowl of rice, from which you scoop into a personal bowl.

A soup, often canh (a sort of thin-brothed soup of veggies, herbs and maybe some meat. Like, canh is the literal word for ‘clear-broth soup’)

A Stir-fried dish

A main entrée of protein.

A lightly cooked, or raw, vegetable dish.

And then a series of sauces, relishes, and salt to modify the flavors of the rest of the meal. With maybe some sweets for dessert.  

There’s a lot of synthesis of ideas here, with Chinese philosophical roots, Japanese-esque presentation, with elements of Korean. Which is kind of fascinating, since, geographically, Korea and Japan are fairly distant from Vietnam (over 1,500 miles away), but I suspect the robust fishing and later sea-based trade of the region accounts for a lot of that cultural overlap.

So what does Vietnam have that’s its own?

The Tastes and Techniques of Vietnam

As the most Northern of the Southeast Asian nations, Vietnam is where we really take a turn in terms of ingredients. Lime Juice and other citrus start showing up here much more than in the cuisine of China or Japan, as well as ingredients like Coconut milk.

Vietnam also has a robust focus on Seafood, as something like 76% of the country is within 100 miles of a coast on the South China Sea. At its thinnest, the country is 30 miles across, at its widest, 300. In fact, geographically, it shares a great deal with California, just thinner and longer.

I didn’t have a good transition, so here’s a picture of Vietnamese women taken in California.

Since it does have a broad array of territories, there are regional distinctions between portions of Vietnam. I noted earlier that we see more citrus and coconut milk in Vietnamese cooking, and that distinction can be seen IN Vietnam, with Southern Vietnam having the majority of coconut dishes, and more sugar than North Vietnam.  

But what can be generally said of the food of Vietnam?

Sweet and Sour

More than any other Asian cuisine I can think of, Vietnam cooking involves a lot of fruit, particularly sour fruits such as Limes and Tamarind. As noted earlier, Sour is a considered a vital component of Vietnamese food, so it makes sense that it comes to the foreground.

Beyond the sour fresh fruit, as noted, you also find a lot of pickled vegetables in Vietnamese cooking, which are sometimes called do chua, which literally means “Sour Things”.

You also mix-in sweetness in a way some other Asian cuisines don’t do as directly, relying on white sugar, or more authentically, Rock Sugar, a kind of less-refined sugar.  

Salty Funk

One of the things I underplayed in the post so far is how ubiquitous Fish Sauce is in Vietnamese food, partly because we’ve talked about Fish sauce extensively in the past. But, in my earlier list of elements of a ‘typical Vietnamese meal’, It’s worth noting that the original lists split Fish Sauce off as a distinct category from other sauces. Like, they’ll have various sauces, but they will ALWAYS have fish sauce.

Often served in First Bowls.

And that’s not even the only fermented fish product they use! They also have fermented Shrimp Paste, and Oyster sauce. (which, according to some sources, I should have used in my Shaking Beef. Which sounds perfectly fine, and maybe I’ll try it later.)

Crisp and Clean

Vietnamese cooking values fresh vegetables, often serving them raw or barely cooked. And such fresh elements are often incorporated into dishes that ARE well cooked. Pho, the famed soup, is LONG cooking, often simmering for hours to create the fundamental broth. But it’s finished with bean sprouts and bundles of herb.

There weren’t a lot of pictures of pho toppings, weirdly.

Mint, Cilantro, Lemongrass, Basil, Green onion, all of them are common toppers for the region.  And beyond herbal flavors, crisp vegetable textures are valued in the cuisine. A great way to think about this is comparing a Vietnamese spring roll with a Chinese one: A Chinese spring roll tends to be lightly fried, containing a mixture of cooked vegetables and meat. By contrast, a Vietnamese spring roll has a soft rice-noodle wrapper, wrapped around uncooked vegetables like cucumbers and lettuce, as well as fresh herbs like mint, and lightly cooked meat. They kind of invert the textures: A Chinese Spring Roll is crisp outside, soft inside, while the Vietnamese is soft outside, crisp inside.

Spice is Nice

Vietnam also uses a relatively specific set of spices (in addition to treating spice differently, which we’ll get to in a second). Vietnam is the home of Saigon Cinnamon, since, you know, they’re the home of SAIGON, so you’ll find more cinnamon in their cooking than say, Chinese or Thai foods. You’ll also get Coriander and Black Pepper a lot. Vietnamese people LOVE black pepper as a seasoning.

I decided to double back and use a picture of cinnamon. It’s more photogenic.

You also interestingly see some back up from the other “warming spices” of Clove and Star Anise. (This is also notable since “Star Anise, Pepper, Cinnamon, and cloves” are basically the main ingredients in Chinese Five-Spice powder, another connection between Chinese cuisine and Vietnam. Though it’s interesting that Vietnam tends to use the WHOLE ingredients, or the ingredients in specific areas, rather than together as a powder.)

And even more than just “warming”, there’s the actual HEAT of Vietnam cooking. Sriracha is born from Vietname chili pastes. Sambal Oelek is the spicier cooking version of the same ingredient, and fresh sliced birdseye chilis are another common topping ingredient, (This is why you’ll likely get slice jalapeño with a bowl of pho: because it’s easier to get jalapeños in America than fresh Birdseye)often among the “relishes and sauces” served on the side for people to flavor their foods.

So if you had to summarize Vietnamese cuisine, or needed a short-hand, I’d tell you to think of Lime Juice, Mint, Chilis, and Shellfish. These are some foundational flavors in Vietnamese cooking, and I hope this brief tour of the myriad complexities of this culture’s cuisines gave you insight, and made you interested to check out something they make. Personally, I love Pho, Spring Rolls, and really dug Monday’s Shaking Beef.  It’s a cuisine worth trying.

MONDAY: THINGS GOT JUMBLED IN MY SCHEDULE, SO THERE’S FOUR OPTIONS, BUT THE ONE THING THAT IS ALMOST CERTAIN IS THAT THERE WILL BE SOME SPICE, OR SOME CRUNCH.

THURSDAY: MAN, IS IT NOT YET CLEAR THAT THIS FALL I AM NOT IN THE “ABLE TO PLAN A WEEK OUT” WINDOW?