The Wonderful Elements of Vietnamese Cuisine That Make You’re Proud Of

The beauty of balance

This open age allows the Vietnamese to approach different culinary cultures in the world. Especially in big cities, foreign food services have been dramatically growing up in all amount, scale, and diversity. There are Cambodia markets, China town, Japanese cuisine “Little Japan”, and plenty of 5 star western restaurants. Despite the massive invasion of foreign food, local Vietnamese cuisine has strongly maintained. We Vietnamese simply have to have rice and traditional food for daily meals, such as fish in hot pot or sour soup. In the huge wave of globalization and fusion, the stable and firm position of Vietnamese cuisine lays on such simple keys: harmony and tastiness.

When being weighed with other culinary cuisine, we that have realized the value of the harmony and enough in Vietnamese food.

Chinese cuisine, considered as the biggest culture that has been influenced Vietnamese cuisine, actually always brings an oily feeling. Chinese love to use oil and lard in cooking, not only for frying but also in grilling. Moreover, the feudalism with lavish lifestyle had created the habit of using too many rare and nutritious ingredients in the dish, not only causing boredom for diners but sometimes also counteracting and having bad effects.

Vietnamese neither abuse oil nor rare ingredients like shark fin, abalones, or newborn voles. In the other hand, Vietnamese cuisine has conquered diverse diners by its harmony and enough in both flavors and nutrition contains from various ingredients.

In such cooking process, the cooks pay much attention in marinating and seasoning in order to balance out all the flavors: sourness, heat, saltiness, and sweetness. There is no such dominant flavor in a dish. For examples, typical sweet and sour soup has spicy chili, sweet pineapple, and sour tamarind or fermented rice; all just create a great balance and harmonic dish.

When making a comparison with western countries, where have been known as the big father with a long history of classic etiquettes in culinary world, Vietnamese cuisine still has its own strength. Whereas French cuisine is famous by its principal that to preserve the whole freshness of ingredients and to base on almost 3 basic spices: salt, pepper, and sugar, Vietnamese spices are much more abundant and diverse. A French beefsteak might be tasty because of its sweet and tender flesh but a Vietnamese BBQ grounded-beef in lard is definitely delicious.

The hidden co-ordinate philosophy

Vietnamese daily meals are not from rare, exotic, or classy ingredients but rather from local, seasonal, and common yet various ones. Multi-protein, fiber, and especially spices combine to launch accordantly tasty dishes.

In particular, we have plenty types of spices, from different herbal leaves (onion, mint, dill, tia-to, kinh-gioi) to fermented rice or homemade vinegar; from vegan spices as garlic, lemongrass, or galangal to fish-sauce and seasonings. Those such diverse and flexible combination of spices have created easy-going and enough dishes, which are not too sweet, too fat, or too hot.

The advantage of Vietnamese cuisine also comes from the balance of Yin and Yang. The Yin represents dark, softness, and passiveness while the Yang symbolizes for light, firmness, and activeness. The Yin and Yang philosophy believes that everything on Earth has Yin side and Yang side, which are blended into each other to create the nature of the world.

Dining is not an exception. A Vietnamese dish or meal hides a deep philosophic value of Yin-Yang and Wu-Xing (the 5 elements), 2 rules of cooking in order to reach harmony.

In particular, a dish must deliver both Yin and Yang aspects. Main ingredients - which have cooling effect (Yin) as balut (fertilized duck eggs) or duck - must go with spicy herbs (Yang) as Ram (Persicaria odorata) or ginger – which have warming effects. In bigger pictures, the Yin-Yang rule is clearly shown, such as in daily meals, hot pot/fried/or grilled dishes with saltiness, thicken texture, and dried (Yang) need to be balanced out by soup with leaves and clear water (Yin).

Going a bit deeper to the improving and combining rules of ingredients and cooking process of the Vietnamese, we would be surprised with the strict Wu-Xing law. The Yin-Yang gave birth the Wu-Xing, which represents 5 changing states of the cosmos as Metal – Wood – Water – Fire – Earth. If two of those 5 elements pair up right, the result should be great because they can support each other, and otherwise. The Vietnamese really pay attention to how to pair ingredients to reach the best state of Wu-Xing and through the process, to bring the taste and nutritious level to the highest.

Vietnamese has put sourness, flour, and animal gall into Wood state; bitterness, fat, and intestine into Fire state; sweetness, protein, and stomach into Wood state; hot, minerals, and colon into Metal state; and finally saltiness, liquid, and kidneys belong to Water state. The Fire and the Wood quite matches each other so the naturally sweet ingredients as fresh water snakehead fish taste so good with bitter leaves.

Vietnamese cuisine, occasionally, is the harmony of those 5 elements, which delivers the whole diverse natural flavors and balance nutrition of body health at the same time. In a bowl of Pho – the most famous Vietnamese food – we’ve seen all 5 elements: beef flesh (Wood), lard (Fire), salty broth (Metal), spicy chili ginger (Water), and sour fresh lime squeeze (Wood).

Even though it does not carry flashy or luxury appearance, Vietnamese cuisine still wins the score because of the harmony of simple yet pure items. Hidden the whole Asian philosophy, Vietnamese food nowadays is always the best option for us – a nation that loves and respect the peace and harmony between the nature and human beings.

By Tsubaki / Mask Online