Vietnamese Fruits We Miss So Much Native to V

A Canadian may not think it but Vietnam is actually a tropical country with a mix of what Torontonians would label as ‘exotic fruit’. Travelers who come to Vietnam have the luxury of expanding their palate and partaking in these adventurous, colorful fruits. Here in Toronto, unfortunately, we don’t always have access. As a top Toronto Vietnamese restaurant, we try to mix in fruit whenever we can for our patrons. Here’s a few of the Vietnamese fruits we know and miss from our homeland.

Lychee

Lychee is very, very popular in Vietnam, particularly at the beginning of summer. Lychee’s skin is dark red and it’s probably the easiest fruit you could ever peel. The juice white center’s suited up with vitamin C and sweetness. Lychee can be served raw or made into a beverage, adding additional sugars and fruits like mango or dragon fruit along with it.

Mangosteen

Mangosteen is widely considered to be one of the most delicious fruits in the world. Considered superfruit-esque, there are a numerous health benefits associated to its mix of nutrients and antioxidants. The soft, sweet center is balanced with an outer purple skin, absolutely gorgeous.

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Toronto Foodies Flocking to Vietnamese Cookin

Toronto foodies are coming in droves to try one of the world’s trendiest cuisines and one that’s heating up in the restaurant scene here in the city. We are talking about Vietnamese cuisine of course.

As families from Vietnam spread across the globe in the post-war period, they brought with them homegrown recipes that are on their way to becoming stone cold classics. Vietnamese cuisine creations are packed with flavors and taste unique to this part of the world, delivered in an Instagram-friendly presentation. Pleasing to the eye and the palate both, the cuisine is one every foodie should try.

What’s so attractive about a Vietnamese dish is that they’re made to be balanced. When a sugar is added, a salt is as well. When a dish involves a little bit of spice, something anti-acidic is added in to establish a clear balance. In this era of very healthy eating, this has also given rise to vegetarian Vietnamese eating. These dishes bring together protein source, carbs of some kind, herbs and spices, and careful consideration on what else to include. There are all sorts of contemporary modifications made on classic Vietnamese eats such as pho to bring them to vegetarian or vegan standards. For foodies, they’re well worth a taste!

Like a few other ethnic cuisines, Vietnamese is having a bit of a moment right now. It’s a very diverse and seductive cuisine, perhaps one of the most diverse in the world. Vietnamese brings together regal French influence with age-old Asian flavors and techniques. There’s a deep cultural history to a lot of the cooking in this cuisine, in addition to Vietnamese being called one of the healthiest cuisines in the world. The heath of Vietnamese has everything to do with the balance of nutrients managed throughout. Again, we come to a philosophy of balance. Unlike Chinese, Japanese, Thai, or other cuisines, you won’t ever find a dish prepared Vietnamese-style to be so much of any one thing.

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How Does ‘Authentic’ Work in Vietnamese Cuisi

It’s a Thursday night and at TorontoPHO, the restaurant is packed with families, couples, and Torontonians from across the city. At one table, young and social media savvy foodies are snapping pictures of some of Toronto’s most excellent Vietnamese cooking. At another, a senior Asian couple are slurping up pho prepared authentically to the highest degree. We consider all of our food ‘authentic’ but what exactly makes a dish authentic? It isn’t just a buzz word or an adjective we like to throw down on our marketing.

Authentic, in our view, means truly Vietnamese. The recipes we share in our restaurant have been passed down from grandparents to parents to their children and to their children's children. They are pure Vietnamese Canadian dishes, a little mix of decades-old ways of making stir fry and pho with a little of what we've learned here. But does this change the nature of what’s authentic and what isn’t in this classic Vietnamese Toronto restaurant – not in this context.

Though we have mixed recipes, we also have pure Vietnamese recipes that are clear-cut family tradition. We source ingredients direct from Vietnam to pull together some of our broths such as the ones we utilize in pho and the spices we drop across any of our stir fry. The cooking methods we use are also very similar, if not identical, to what’s used in cuisine and restaurants in Vietnam. Our head chefs are accredited specifically in this style of cooking. They are highly experienced and expert-level Vietnamese chefs.

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What is Vietnamese Sausage – see it here!

What is a Vietnamese sausage? What is the meat actually made of? When someone says ‘Vietnamese sausage’, a person could be referring to any number of a half-dozen sausages. Usually, what is meant by a Vietnamese sausage is cha lua, or sometimes called gio lua. This is Vietnam’s most common sausage, made from a pork predominantly and usually wrapped in banana leaves. Sliced Vietnamese sausage can be served in several different ways, provided on its’ own, given over banh cuon, and/or can be garnished with fried shallots.

The meat in Vietnamese sausage is a recipe of lean pork, potato starch, garlic, ground black pepper, and sauce. Although the sausage has recently found its way into Thai cuisine, it’s Vietnamese all the way from the use of fish sauce to the way the pork is prepared. The pork is usually pounded until it becomes a paste. When assembling this type of sausage, the pork is not chopped or grounded in any way. Doing so would make the meat fibrous, dry, and crumbly. Pounding it down, this keeps it wet, moistened, and ready to be purposed in a sausage.

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Tripe in Vietnamese Pho, Most Don’t Know What

In certain varieties of pho, you will find something called tripe. Many Torontonians may not necessarily know what tripe is. Tripe has been used in a variety of cultural cuisines for centuries. Tripe is the stomach lining of various farm animals. It is edible when prepared correctly, usually coming from cattle and sheep among other animals.

There are also subsets of different types of tripe. For example, beef tripe is prepared from the muscle wall of a cow’s stomach. There’s also tripe coming from the stomachs of sheep, deer, antelopes, giraffes, and other animals. Depending on the part of the world, you can make tripe from almost any animal. In Spanish cuisine, there’s a particular culture around several tripe dishes.

In English culture, you will have washed tripe a lot of the time. This is where the stomach’s been cleaned, the fat’s been trimmed, and it is then boiled and bleached which gives it a white color. Dressed tripe was a very popular dish among the UK working classes for decades. Although people eating tripe regularly has gone down significantly, tripe is still eaten by some including holding down heavy popularity in France and Italy among other parts of the world.

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In Vietnam Cooking, What is Pad Thai Made Fro

Pad thai is a stir fry rice noodle dish that’s been served as a street food for decades in Vietnam and all across Asia. It is such an integral part of cuisine in this part of the world that you’d find it tough trying to find a restaurant that doesn’t serve it.

When we use pad thai in Vietnam cooking, we use it a little differently than in other cultures sometimes incorporating elements of Vietnamese cuisine such as fish sauce and dried shrimp. Normally, pad thai is made from rehydrating dried rice noodles. These are then stir fried with a variety of ingredients including eggs to start with.

After a pad thai has its eggs and rice noodles all prepped, from there, this is where creativity comes into play. Chopped firm tofu is usually added in, although a chef can use other protein sources. Flavor-wise, there’s at least a dozen ingredients you can use to spice it up. Fish sauce, tamarind pulp, dried shrimp, garlic, red chili peppers, and palm sugar are some favourites to get the pad thai done right. In some cases, pad thai is served with chopped roasted peanuts and served with wedges of lime.

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Why Egg Noodles in Vietnamese Cuisine? See th

Egg noodles are extremely common in Vietnamese cuisine and used most commonly in stir fry meals. Though many Westerners may be unfamiliar with egg noodles, they’re used in various cuisines across Asian and in some cultures more than any pasta is.

As pasta’s most common to Canadians, we thought it would be interesting to look at the differences between egg noodles and pasta. Like pasta, egg noodles are carb-heavy and the nutrition is similar when comparing the two. Pasta is usually made from a dough derived from wheat, eggs, and water. Alternatively, egg noodles work from a similar base however employ more egg. Thereby, the texture of egg noodles differs and allows them to hold heavy creamy sauces or butter-based sauces.

Nutritious-wise, egg noodles and pasta are virtually identical. 100 grams of dry pasta contain 75 grams of carbs while the same amount of egg noodles contains 71 grams of carbs. Egg noodles are however a little lighter in weight. 100 grams of each contain roughly 3 grams of fiber. The difficulty with egg noodles is that, like pasta, they add carbs. When you eat, you need to be careful of this as too many carbs can lead to chronic health problems which is not what we want. For this reason, as you’ll notice, egg noodles in Vietnamese cooking are used sparingly.

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