Magnolia Ice Cream? Yes! Plus Candied Acorns and Spruce Bark Cookies
Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Radio - Milk Street Radio
In this episode of Milk Street Radio, host Christopher Kimball explores the rich culinary traditions of Vietnam with chef Anais Keao Van Manen, discussing regional differences, unique techniques like
Key takeaways
- Vietnamese cuisine is deeply influenced by climate and seasonality, with distinct northern and southern cooking styles.
- Traditional Vietnamese techniques like blanching chicken before roasting improve texture and reduce impurities.
Main topics
- Vietnamese regional cuisine
- Traditional food preservation and foraging
Notable quotes
"Use your senses. Use your olfactory. When you're buying basil, put it to your nose." – Lydia Bastianich
Conclusion
This episode celebrates global culinary traditions through stories of foraging, regional
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) Thanks for downloading this week's podcast. If you'd like to hear an ad-free version of this episode and every episode, please visit our show page in your Apple Podcast app. Again, you can listen to our show ad-free and support the work we do here at Milk Street. Go visit the Milk Street Radio page in your Apple Podcast app and start your seven-day free trial. And thanks. This is Milk Street Radio from PRX, and I'm your host, Christopher Kimball. Today, we're wandering into the woods in search of dessert. Justin Davies has made a name for himself as a forager who can turn cedar into ice cream and oak into cookies. Plus, later in the show, Lydia Bastianich makes her return to the phone lines. She's ready to answer all of your Italian cooking questions. She'll even share her philosophical take on pesto. Speaker 3 (0:53) You know, use your senses. Use your olfactory. When you're buying basil, Put it to your nose. You know, you have a great machine there that will tell you. Speaker 1 (1:02) But first, we're getting a taste of Vietnam. Chef Anais Keao Van Manen joins me now. For her upcoming cookbook, she traveled across the country to experience the full range of Vietnamese cooking. Anais, welcome to Mo Street. Speaker 4 (1:18) Thank you for having me. Speaker 1 (1:20) I've been to Vietnam briefly years ago, Speaker 7 (1:23) fell Speaker 1 (1:24) in love Speaker 7 (1:24) with everything. about it, especially the Speaker 1 (1:27) food. Speaker 7 (1:28) The Speaker 1 (1:29) difference is you talk a Speaker 7 (1:30) lot about the North versus the South. Speaker 1 (1:33) So let's start with the North. What's distinctive about the Speaker 7 (1:37) cooking of the North? Speaker 4 (1:38) Well, I think, you know, it starts with the climate. The North has clearly four seasons. So obviously your ingredients will be different. And it's also the way I see it's the cradle of Vietnamese culture. While the South has gone through a lot more transformation and it only has two seasons, monsoon are really hot and dry. So I think a lot of food starts with the ingredients and the weather where they come from. Speaker 7 (2:09) So let's talk about some of Speaker 1 (2:10) the Speaker 7 (2:10) recipes. Like, I love recipes where the techniques are different because, you know, we're all bound by the rigid techniques we learned growing up. And mine were probably mostly French. There was one, you cook a chicken leg and you start by taking a knife and cutting slits in the skin. And then you let it sit in hot boiling water for five minutes, right? So you want to just take us through that recipe a little bit? Speaker 4 (2:39) So I think you're talking about gà rôti. So gà rôti is actually a play on roasted chicken in French. Rôti means roasted. But, you know, for a very long time, still now, Vietnamese people, we don't really have ovens in our kitchen. We don't use ovens. We use live fire and gas. You know, now air fryer is the newest equipment. People would... rather have an air fryer than oven. So this is their way of roasting a chicken. In Vietnam, we always blanch the meat first because that will remove the impurities. By either poaching quickly in hot water or pouring boiling water on top of the chicken, you remove the scum. So then whenever you're cooking it, you will have less scum. So you'll make, for example, a clearer stock. And then when you slit, The chicken is so that it could absorb more the marinade. And then you want to have the shallot and the garlic to flavor your oil while you fry the chicken. But then you want to remove them because you don't want them to burn. Speaker 7 (3:45) And Speaker 4 (3:45) then for me, one of my favorite ingredients in Vietnamese cuisine is coconut water. We have so much coconut water here. And so we use it in everything. So yeah, so then you use that sweetness, the natural sugar from your coconut. and your soy to reduce and glaze your chicken so that by the time your chicken is done, it melts in your mouth and it has that sweet and salty texture, gooey caramelization on top of it. It's really good with rice, plain rice. It Speaker 7 (4:18) really caught my attention. The other one I really loved, the sticky rice with fresh corn and coconut milk. Speaker 4 (4:25) Simple, but so good, right? Speaker 7 (4:29) Rice paper Speaker 1 (4:29) salad. I've never heard of this. So you want to explain this to me? Speaker 4 (4:34) So one of the ingredients I think that makes really Vietnamese food Vietnamese is banh chiang, rice paper. We use it to wrap. We grill it so it becomes crispy and then we use it to dip. And so for this particular dish, I think you're talking about banh chiang tron. So this is like a classic snack. It's very simple. So rice paper, dry, it's pretty dry, right? But then if you mix it with a nice sauce, which is in the book, and a bunch of different things like mango for acidity, hot mint, rau ram, or Vietnamese coriander for like that punch of freshness, peanuts, and all this thing, the rice paper absorbs the sauce and suddenly becomes a little bit more chewy. And then you go into this texture play. Speaker 4 (5:51) So Speaker 7 (5:53) you've lived. In lots of places, Paris, London, Bogota, Brussels, etc. So what did you learn about cooking? outside of Vietnam you think was actually pretty valuable even when cooking back in Vietnam? Speaker 4 (6:10) I think the best part of food is that it's always evolving, right? When I came back here, I brought what I learned from French cooking, but then I applied it to Vietnamese flavor. For example, I would do like a boeuf bourguignon, but then I would infuse it with flavors that remind me of Vietnamese bocca. And then I would serve, instead of serving this boeuf bourguignon on its own like this, I would then serve it with a really fresh herb salad on top of it. And with rice that's been flavored with like basil butter and not just plain butter. So I think as we travel more and as we learn more about different cultures, we realize that, yes, there are boundaries, but the fun part of food is to be able to combine things. and to be playful, but as well as respectful of other people's culture. Speaker 7 (7:05) So you visited the north of Vietnam and, among other things, tasted some fried tree worms, which you actually liked. Could you just describe that? Speaker 4 (7:17) Yeah. So while I was in the north, I learned from the villagers that back in the days, you know, if you're raising pig or... a buffalo, you want to keep it for special occasion because you didn't really have a place to store it. So the main protein where smaller animals like chicken are during autumn, it would be bamboo tree worms. So you would knock onto the bamboo tree to figure out if it would be hollow and then cut down the tree, take those worm out and then just fry it in oil and lime leaves. Speaker 7 (7:53) You knock on it to see if it's hollow. Yeah. Cut the stalk down, and then it has worms in it. Speaker 4 (8:02) It has to be hollow. That's the thing. Right. Because if it's hollow, that means that the worm went inside and ate it. And you know you make a sound. It's like, you know, if you have like a wall with nothing behind, it makes a different sound. Right. And actually, it's really delicious because it's crispy, and it's a really good protein replacement, you know? Speaker 7 (8:21) Well, you know. My experience is you can fry anything. Yeah, Speaker 4 (8:25) I agree. It tastes good. If you don't know what to do with it, just fry it. Speaker 7 (8:30) There's a folk song which I'd like you to translate for me. I mean, it's in English, but the chicken squawks in the lemon leaves, the pig grunts, buy me some green onions. The dog cries sitting and standing. Grandma, go to the market and buy me some galangal. What is that folk song? Speaker 4 (8:48) So my middle name is Caillou. And Caillou in Vietnamese means folk song. Speaker 4 (8:58) These folk songs were passed on from my great-grandmother to my mom to teach her the way to cook and as well for the way you pair food. So in this proverb, the chicken goes with lime leaves. We always pair chicken with lime leaves. And you have kaya for everything, for the way you behave and as well for the way to live life. Speaker 1 (9:26) Anais, thank you. It's been a real pleasure. Love the Speaker 7 (9:29) book and I can't wait to get cooking. Thank you. Speaker 4 (9:32) Thank you for having me and I hope we get to meet and cook together one day. Hopefully. Speaker 7 (9:37) Thank Speaker 1 (9:37) you so much. Speaker 4 (9:38) It's been great. Speaker 1 (9:43) That was Anais Kayau Van Manen. Her upcoming book is Vietnam, The Cookbook. Speaker 1 (9:52) This is Most Year Radio. I'm your host, Christopher Kimball. Right now, Lydia Bastianich is back. She's returned as our guest co-host to take more of your Italian cooking calls. Lydia, by the way, is a restaurateur, cookbook author, also host of Lydia's Kitchen on public television. Speaker 1 (10:10) Hello, Lydia. Thanks so much for being with us again here on Milk Street. Oh, my Speaker 3 (10:15) pleasure being here. Speaker 1 (10:16) Before we get to the calls, I do have a question. Now, I was in Rome a while back, and I was in a restaurant, and we made rabbit cacciatore. Now, white wine, lots of vinegar. I mean, a whole bunch of it. Rosemary, garlic, it was great. Now, a lot of cookbooks, when you look up chicken cacciatore, it's, you know, hunter's chicken with tomato, et cetera. But I don't think it was originally tomato based, right? Speaker 3 (10:40) I love rabbits, so I'm glad you're asking me this. No, it doesn't have to be tomatoes. You know, tomatoes only came to Italy after the discovery of America. So what did those Romans eat? They ate coniglio in bianco, in white. Vinegar they used, wine they used, absolutely. But rabbit, my grandmother, when I was a young child, after World War II, she had all the foods around the courtyard. We had chickens, we had ducks, we had two pigs. we had rabbits. And I would go out and forage for clover for the rabbits because they love clover. Then Sunday came and one would end up in the pot. And it was usually lots of rosemary, garlic, onions too, and vinegar. Absolutely. It was in a kind of white sauce that turned out a little bit brownish. Although now the addition of tomato paste is common. in my area, in the north area. Not so much a lot of tomato. But you know, cacciatore. Cacciatore means a hunter. So it just means any animal that the hunter caught made in his style, whatever the style, whatever they had around the house, whatever herbs they have, rosemary, bay leaves, or whatever. I think that that's what really cacciatore means. Speaker 7 (12:00) Yeah, I just thought the vinegar, rosemary, garlic, white wine version was so much better. And it goes really well with game, right? Because you want something that's a little acidic to go with a darker meat. And much better than, Speaker 1 (12:15) like at restaurants sometimes, it's kind of almost a sweet sauce with sweet peppers and tomatoes. And I just don't think it's as good. But anyway, that was just my opinion. Speaker 3 (12:23) Right, right. I like it in its natural sauces with vinegar. You know, now, rabbit meat is lean meat. Yes, it is. Yeah, it's lean meat, and it absorbs in the acidity of the vinegar and whatever, so it gives it a lot of flavor. So we have to get rabbit on the menu more. Speaker 7 (12:40) Yeah, I rabbit hunt every winter, and we have a big game dinner. I absolutely agree. Speaker 1 (12:47) So let's take a few calls. Speaker 3 (12:49) Welcome to Milk Street. Who's calling? Hi, my name's Sam. Hi, Sam. Where are you, Sam? I'm calling from Speaker 5 (12:57) Spain, although I am a British-Australian-American mongrel. Speaker 3 (13:03) Ah, I hear a little accident. I was wondering. Well, welcome, welcome. What is your question? Speaker 5 (13:09) I've been making a lot of fresh pasta recently, and anytime you make fresh pasta, you end up using a lot of extra egg yolk. So I have all of this extra egg white left over because I'm using the egg yolk. I've tried a few dessert recipes and things here and there, and I'd love to know a few more recipes and good uses for this egg white. I know I can freeze it, but I guess I'm wondering if there's anything that maybe I haven't thought of outside the typical kind of meringue and, you know,