Celebrating Andrea Nguyen

Take a pause from turkey to discover an awesome author — whose new(ish!) book makes a fabulous holiday gift 🎁 OK, plus a T-day tip or two 🦃

Andrea Nguyen, author of ‘Ever-Green Vietnamese’ / photo by Aubrie Pick

Happy Friday, ardent cook!

Every holiday season, between the rich turkey, all the buttery carbs, so many sweets and whatever festive treats show up on New Years Eve, I find myself longing for something light, tangy and enticing. Don’t you?

That’s why I’m thrilled, at the moment, to be testing recipes for a review of Andrea Nguyen’s Ever-Green Vietnamese. The book was published six months ago, so I’m not exactly breaking news here — but I do take the time to seriously cook through the books I review before recommending them.

I’m a longtime fan of Andrea’s. Here’s my story about her last cookbook, Vietnamese Food Any Day (which I also highly recommend).

And here’s the video of a live interview event we did with Andrea through Cooks Without Borders in 2021.

If you love Vietnamese cooking, and don’t know about Andrea, you’re in for many treats; all her books are wonderful. She also has an outstanding newsletter, Pass the Fish Sauce.

If you’re trying to eat more veg and less meat, her latest book is a great place to dive into her marvelous cooking. Ever-Green Vietnamese is not strictly vegan or vegetarian — fish sauce is an important ingredient in Vietnamese cooking, for starters. But Andrea does offer a vegan approximation (made with kombu, wakame, pineapple juice, salt, Marmite and MSG or mushroom seasoning). When she does call for meat, fish or poultry, it is most often a supporting player to vegetables.

Shiitake-Cauliflower Steamed Rice Rolls, prepared from a recipe in Andrea Nguyen’s ‘Ever-Green Vietnamese’

Last night, I tested her recipe for Banh Cuon Chay — Shiitake-Cauliflower Steamed Rice Rolls — which she has you serve with a quick cucumber salad and nuoc cham dipping sauce. The rolls were pretty spectacular, very light and fun to make. And because nuoc cham gets drizzled on them before you eat them, they brilliantly satisfy that craving for Southeast Asian tangy, umamiful zing that inevitably grabs me this time of year.