Thúy - Secrets from My Vietnamese Kitchen

L Qu Pht, the father of my mothers

L Kim Guong, the mother of my mothers

With my mother and the rambutans

ALSO BY KIM THY

Ru

Mn

Vi

toi (with Pascal Janovjak)

Copyright 2017 ditions Libre Expression

Appetite by Random House edition published in 2019

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisheror, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agencyis an infringement of the copyright law.

Published by arrangement with Groupe Librex, Montral, Qubec, Canada

Appetite by Random House and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library and Archives of Canada Cataloguing in Publication is available upon request.

ISBN:9780525610229

Ebook ISBN9780525610236

Book design: adapted from a design by Marike Paradis

Cover and book photography: Sarah Scott, www.sarahscottphoto.ca

Photos of Kim Thys family and food photography: Sarah Scott

Photos of Vietnam: Gilles Dufour

Photos on : Andy Long Hoang

Photos on : Tr Nguyen

Photo on : Quc L

Published in Canada by Appetite by Random House, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

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I couldnt possibly count the number of meals I have cooked for my husband, Francis, and our sons, Justin and Valmond. My kitchen opens at 3 p.m., when Valmond comes home from school. As soon as hes in the doorway, I switch on the stove. Pasta or rice? As if I were running a restaurant, he chooses: Chicken? Fish? Pork?

Around five oclock, I start making my second meal. Justin has never eaten from the kids menu, whether at home or not. Weve always shared with him whatever we eat. He has no allergies, so he eats everything, unlike Valmond, who is autistic and has as many strictures about how food must be cooked as he has about spices and ingredients. Justin loves everything, from the gizzards in salade aux gsiers to shepherds pie or Thai curried tofu, mussels, carpaccioOnce, when he was around ten, Justin was offended by a waiter who expressed doubt when he ordered sweetbreads from the menu. So thats why I always prepare a different dish for Justin, so as not to impose Valmonds constraints on him.

My last service is for Francis, around seven-thirty or eight oclock. Even when were just having spaghetti, I cook a new batch because it wouldnt taste as good if it were heated up in the microwave or even on the stove. It goes without saying that a dish of sauted vegetables must be eaten right away, and its the same for a saddle of lamb. I light up the stove burner again, which rarely has had enough time to cool down.

From 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., Valmond has a thousand small requests: fresh corn sliced from the cob, cookies, bagel with cream cheese, buttered naan, freshly squeezed lime juice, and so on.

This means that theres nearly as much activity in my home kitchen as in the one in my former restaurant. My routine may seem demanding, but I must confess that I have two reasons for doing it. The first has to do with how I am unable to verbalize my love for my family or even display it with affectionate gestures. Like my parents and my large Vietnamese family, I depend on food to express as best I can my unconditional love for them all. The second reason: I firmly believe that to make a person happy or to know what it is that brings pleasure is a privilege to be cherished. Cooking allows me to use that privilege nearly every day, three times an evening, and in that way, to experience a daily type of bliss.

INTRODUCTION

The moment you step inside a Vietnamese house, you are bombarded with variations on a single greeting: Have you eaten? What would you like to eat? Come and eat. Just one little bite. The chicken I cooked is still hot. Here, try my cream puffs.

We are not in the habit of verbalizing our joys, or even less, our affection. We use food as a tool for expressing our emotions. My parents dont say, Weve missed you, but rather, Weve made some spring rolls, knowing that I love to eat them anytime, anywhere. Similarly, when Im traveling abroad on a book tour, they will report that my sons had three helpings of everything, as a way to reassure me. On our visits to my grandmother in New York, my mother would stuff the trunk with her own mothers favorite dishes. My father would laugh at her, but he still flies to Washington, D.C., and loads Vietnamese dishes into the trunk of the car that will take him to my uncles house in a remote part of Pennsylvania. That ninety-two-year-old uncle is my fathers older brother, who fed and housed him during my fathers time at university. My father considers him a father figure, and he tries to express his gratitude through the best sausage, the best lemongrass beef stew, the best steamed pancakes, the best sticky rice cake, and the best dried shrimp to be found in the Vietnamese markets.

In the refugee camps, my mother and Aunts 6 and 8 would do their best to transform the fish rations wed receive six days out of seven in an effort to bring a semblance of normality to mealtimes. One day my mother was able to make a thin dough for dumplings. I remember very clearly how she was sitting on the ground with the cover of the barrel that we used as a water tank. She rolled out her dough on that rusty metal plate, which here and there still bore spots of its original yellow paint. The meal that followed was almost beside the pointwe were just thrilled to see her cooking something other than rice and fish. It was a moment of togetherness, of celebration.

Recently someone asked me to describe my most memorable meal. Its impossible for me to make a list of all the culinary experiences Ive been lucky enough to enjoy. Some stood out just as much for the conviviality around the table as for the food produced by talented chefs. How to choose among them all? There was an evening when we laughed until we cried over a huge platter of oysters and a meal in which the master sushi chef ensured that it was a matter of mere seconds between when he placed the piece of fish on the ball of rice and when we tasted it. But then how could I not mention the perogies made by my Polish editors mother, or the irreplaceable meal of Vietnamese clams, or the slice of pear and pistachio pie eaten on the steps of a church? How not to mention the fresh pasta in a restaurant with a glass roof in the middle of a park in Palermo? And what about Franciss unsurpassable lobster sandwich? Add to all of these the grand receptions I have attended, such as the ones hosted by the king of Malaysia and Princess Caroline of Hanover, the prime ministers, government ministers and ambassadors