HomeSmall AppliancesToaster Ovens / ToastersQuick & Easy Vietnamese: Home Cooking for Everyone (Quick & Easy Cookbooks Series) |
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56 of 58 found the following review helpful:
 Practical & Easy Feb 01, 2005
By Punchy
Update May, 2006:
Watch out for the salt content on some of the recipes for chicken that also has a cooking sauce, such as Chicken with Mushrooms and Lemon Grass Chicken. I reccommend 1/2 teaspoon salt for 10 oz of meat or 1 teaspoon per pound of meat; you can always add more but you can't remove them once they're in.
Original review:
This is a nice cookbook with no personal or cultural anecdotes, just simple recipes with practical ingredients and very good results. The recipes are laid out one per page, with photographs of the dish, the ingredients and preparation. With so much photos, the instructions are necessarily streamlined, which works for many of the recipes except for a few, like beef pho. Telling one to combine all the ingredients in boiling stock and cook over low heat just won't do for pho. It assumes you know a thing or two about preparing this soup, like how long to simmer it. I reccommend at least an hour or more.
There is a wonderful recipe for chicken simmered in coconut juice and flavored with Maggie sauce, which is essentially Ga Roti in my book. It tastes just like my mom's and no other vietnamese cookbook I've come across have it. In fact, the ingredients the author uses are exactly my mom's, except she would measure in pinches and tads and touches of this and that. Ditto for the caramelized pork and eggs (thit kho & trung).
There is also an ingredients list containing color photographs that is handy for shopping.
Overall, a good selection of easy, homey, delicious recipes like bun rieu, bun suong (another hard to find recipe), and vietnamese sandwiches. Also, if you like cookbooks that contain more photos of how to prepare the food and optimal (minimal) use of words, this is a good choice.
26 of 26 found the following review helpful:
 The best Vietnamese cook book yet. Apr 09, 2007
By Kim Knudsen
"ishagok"
I have gone through many expensive Vietnamese cook books and have not used a single recipe out of them because they're difficult or "it's not the way my mom made it." This book show pictures of the ingredients so you know what to look for in an Asian store and pictures of the end product. If I don't know the name of a dish I can look at the picture and recognize it. I tried learning from my mom but as everyone knows most women from Vietnam don't measure, it's a little of this and some of that. So some of the time my recipes are just right and other times they weren't. My mom would try to explain what a certain ingredient was but would not know the English name for it. This book explains it all. Very easy to follow recipes and they turn out just like "the way my mom made it."
26 of 28 found the following review helpful:
just like mom use to cook Mar 20, 2006
By gabrielle
I am Vietnamese and moved to France with my parents in 1946. My mother was an exquisite cook. I unfortunately did not benefit from her gift. However, when I turned 30 I began to ask for recipes from my cousins. I have bought 5-6 copies pf this book for my children and friends. It is the most concise Vietnamese cookbook. The illustrations are very helpful.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
Great Book! Feb 08, 2007
By Z. S. Vue
I've tried about half of the receipes in this book and it taste great! I love the simple instructions and pictures of all the items you need to make the entree. Wish all cookbooks were like this! Although I have to say they used the wrong wrap for making the eggrolls. The one they pictured isn't ideal for deep frying.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
FOUR STARS rating. Quick & simple. Aug 31, 2007
By Miss Chef
I wanted to give this book only a FOUR STARS rating, but I couldn't edit that part; so it shows a five stars rating instead.
This book is good for beginners who want to cook Vietnamese food on a superficial level but do not want to delve too deeply into Vietnamese cuisine. The author, Andre Nguyen, is a Vietnamese chef who owns a Vietnamese restaurant, so he knows how to cook very well. The recipes have only a few ingredients that are easy to find in a Vietnamese or Chinese supermarkets, and they taste good. If you want 100% authentic Vietnamese recipes which will take quite some time to prepare, then this book is not for you. But if you want good Vietnamese recipes that have been simplified by substituting ingredients that are easier to find and make, then this book is definitely for you. This book also has great color photos of every recipe, so they're very helpful. This book is not meant to be comprehensive or detailed, rather it is meant for people who want to put Vietnamese food on the table fast! If you're really serious about learning how to cook Vietnamese food, then I would recommend Andrea Nguyen's "Into The Vietnamese Kitchen" and Mai Pham's "Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table".
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