Deciding on the Dishes for a Vietnamese Dinner
Well...I'm up to my usual tricks, improvising and ad libbing instead of just following a set recipe. But looking over all these Vietnamese recipes, it's pretty clear that most dishes are made from the same basic group of a couple dozen ingredients, which are combined and prepared in various ways. So, here's what I'm thinking for my Scent of Green Papaya Dinner:

Appetizer: Vietnamese Rice Paper Spring Rolls with Shrimp

Soup: Lemongrass Broth with Seafood Dumplings

Salad: Watercress and Green Papaya Salad with Cellophane Noodles and Hanoi Fried Yellow Fish Nuggets

Main Course: Clay Pot Pork Loin with Papaya, Mint & Green Chili Relish, Stir-Fried Spring Vegetables and Garlic-Ginger Rice

Dessert: Papaya-Ginger and Mint Tea Sorbet with Ripe Papaya Slices and Fresh Mint Garnish

02:04 AM PDT Permalink |

Designing the Menu
Whenever I go to the effort of making a gourmet meal, I want everything to be perfect. I spend days planning the menu, shopping for ingredients, designing a table setting and assembling my utensils. I always like to make several smaller courses for a good representation of flavors and textures rather than one heavy main course. The only problem is that sometimes my guests and I are almost full when the main course arrives, so I have to keep the courses light and make sure we pace ourselves throughout the meal.

For my Scent of Green Papaya dinner, I’m thinking five courses: an appetizer or two, a clear soup, a noodle salad, a fish entrée accompanied by seasoned rice and fresh vegetables, and a light fruit dessert, probably something made with fresh ripe papaya. Plus nibbles & snacks, as well as a traditional beverage or two.
12:08 AM PDT Permalink |

Getting Acquainted with Vietnamese Cuisine
Okay, so I'm looking at all these Vietnamese recipes in my two cookbooks, plus a little extracurricular research on epicurious.com, and one thing is obvious. I'm definitely gonna need something called nuoc mam. Now although I may have originally given the impression that I'm a total neophyte when it comes to Vietnamese cuisine, that's not entirely true. I know what nuoc mam is.

Back in my hometown of Mobile, Alabama, I helped an ex-boyfriend open a gourmet restaurant called The Casbah, and although the menu was strictly 'continental', his #1 employee was a darling Vietnamese woman named Mai Nguyen. My ex was a Vietnam War veteran, and because he was so familiar with her culture, the two of them got along famously. Mai's story was heartbreaking (her family, one with a long and aristocratic heritage, had to flee the country in a homemade skiff with what few possessions they could carry on their backs), nevertheless, she had an amazingly buoyant spirit and an indomitable work ethic. Not only did Mai and her aged father Dan help restore the historic Mediterranean building for The Casbah restaurant, once it opened, Mai did most if not all of the daily prep and cooking for both the lunch and dinner shifts.

But when she prepared meals for herself and her family in the restaurant kitchen, she made Vietnamese food, and for that, she always kept a bottle of nuoc mam on the pantry shelf. Mai's nuoc mam was the subject of much curiosity and even a little good-natured kidding from the other staff members, who wanted no part of that strange brew.

Thanks to Mai's culinery expertise, the Casbah enjoyed a few good years in the Mobile restaurant scene, but when it finally closed, Mai had saved up enough money to open her own restaurant, The Ivory Chopstick, located in a turn-of-the-century home in the city's scenic garden district. Shortly after it opened, just a few months before I moved to California, I had the pleasure of enjoying one of the finest meals I have ever eaten: a delicate spring roll appetizer, followed by a heavenly lemongrass broth with seafood dumplings, and for the main course, pan-sauteed sole with a soy-ginger beurre blanc accompanied by a medley of perfectly steamed vegetables...Each dish lovingly and expertly prepared by the hands of Mai Nguyen.

12:06 AM PDT Permalink |

Zero-ing in on My Recipes
This evening, I sat down with Essentials of Asian Cuisine by Corinne Trang and pored through it in search of all the Vietnamese dishes it contains. The book features sections on all the various cultures, cuisines and ingredients, and the recipes are categorized by course rather than by country, so I had to read through each section to locate all the Vietnamese recipes, which aren't always specifically listed as Vietnamese in the index. (Not that I mind, however, since I got lots of ideas for next month's ThingsAsian Dinner & a Movie in the process.) So... I flagged each Vietnamese recipe with a Post-it Note, and tomorrow, when I sit down to focus on my Dinner & a Movie project again, I can easily locate all the Vietnamese recipes and get an idea of which ones sound the most appetizing, and practical, given the potential scarcity of certain ingredients in my grocery-shopping vicinity.
12:15 AM PDT Permalink |

Searching for Recipes
As a jumping off place, I have chosen two books from my kitchen cookbook shelf to help me select my Vietnamese recipes and to design a menu to complement The Scent of Green Papaya. Those two books are: Essentials of Asian Cuisine by Corinne Trang, and The Asian Grocery Demystified, by Linda Bladholm. Of course, in the process, I will probably end up doing extra research on the Internet. There are so many millions of recipes on the Internet that it's a wonder anyone even bothers to publish a cookbook anymore.

My all-time favorite cookbook is The Joy of Cooking, followed closely by The Silver Palate Cookbook and the Moosewood Cookbook. But I don't think any of those three are going to yield much in the way of classic Vietnamese dishes. So that's where the Internet may come in handy. I also have to mention that I rarely follow a recipe to the letter. I have found that there are hundreds of variations on most traditional dishes, so what I usually do is research several dozen recipes to find out which one best suits my tastes and the ingredients I have on hand, and then I usually end up improvising. Occasionally, the results are disastrous, but more often, the end result is a delicious dish that I have imbued with my own personal touch. The only problem is that I usually forget to write down exactly what I did, so I rarely make a dish the same way twice. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But I figure as long as it's tasty, attractive, and captures the essence of the cultural cuisine, then it's all good. I like to think of cooking as a perpetual adventure, and what better way than to try something new every time.
02:37 AM PDT Permalink |

My Culinery Experience
I have a confession to make. Although I cook Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and Arabic food on a regular basis, I don't know thing one about Vietnamese food, much less how to prepare a five course Vietnamese meal. So the learning curve is going to be really steep on this culinary project. However, after years of experience in the restaurant business, I'm a passable chef, not to mention that I have enjoyed hundreds of memorable meals in some of the world's best restaurants. And besides, I'm addicted to the Food Network and sometimes stay up watching cooking shows until nearly sunrise. So... I'm not about to be intimidated by one little Vietnamese dinner menu. The biggest challenge for me, I think, is going to be finding all the requisite ingredients in the town of Napa, California, where I live. Although we have a dozen major supermarkets here in town, we do not have even one Asian grocery (although we do have a Trader Joe's), so I may have to venture pretty far afield to find all the authentic components of a traditional Vietnamese meal. Fortunately, there are several multi-cultural towns nearby, and in a pinch, I can always drive to San Francisco or Oakland if need be.
02:51 AM PDT Permalink |

Welcome to Dinner & a Movie
The three things I love most in this life are Asian culture, gourmet cooking, and classic films. So when the webmaster of ThingsAsian offered me my own weblog, there was no need for deliberation over what the theme would be:

Welcome to ThingsAsian Dinner & a Movie. In this daily weblog, throughout the course of each month, I will be sharing with our ThingsAsian readers the process of choosing a classic Asian film, selecting recipes from the country in which the film takes place, designing a menu, shopping for ingredients, setting the table, preparing the meal, enjoying it while watching the film, and finally, writing a film review.

For my inaugural ThingsAsian Dinner & a Movie, I have chosen the 1993 French-Vietnamese classic, The Scent of Green Papaya, directed by Tran Anh Hung. The story of how I first came to see The Scent of Green Papaya is an interesting one that goes all the way back to my high school days. My best friend from high school is Betty Bullock, a Japanese-American woman who is an administrator in the staff development department at the University of South Alabama Medical Center. Although we live thousands of miles apart and rarely see each other, Betty and I have kept in touch over the years, and share a love of Asian film.

Each year, I receive press copies and write reviews of all the Asian entries in San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival for the ThingsAsian website, and in 2003, the best of the batch was a Japanese film called Firefly Dreams. I was so moved by the film that I sent it to Betty for her to enjoy, with the request that she return it so that I could circulate it among my other friends as well. A few weeks later, I got an e-mail from Betty's husband Jimmy, asking whether Firefly Dreams was available for purchase. Before I could reply to tell them to keep the tape, a package from Betty arrived in the mail. Enclosed was an extremely apologetic note, explaining how one of her children had accidentally rolled over on the remote control while the videotape was in the VCR and taped over the first few seconds of the film. What Betty didn't know was that the videotape of Firefly Dreams was just a promotional copy. As a peace offering, she had also enclosed a gift of two of her favorite Asian films, one of which was The Scent of Green Papaya.

All's well that ends well, and after years of catching my eye on the shelves of the foreign film section of my local video store, thanks to my friend Betty, I finally got to see The Scent of Green Papaya. And while I wouldn't categorize it as my very favorite Asian film of all time, it is so sensuous and appetizing and redolent of Vietnamese food and culture that it seemed the perfect choice for my first ThingsAsian Dinner & a Movie weblog. So without further ado, let's make a Vietnamese dinner and watch The Scent of Green Papaya.

06:03 PM PDT Permalink |