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Tam Coc Rice FieldsSoup is customarily served for breakfast in
Vietnam--big bowls of steaming noodle soup, with meat and any
number of ingredients added at the last minute, like bean
sprouts, cilantro, basil, chili peppers, lime slices, and green
onions. All, of course, spiced with with plenty of fish sauce (nuoc
mam), chili-garlic sauce, and/or hoisin sauce in nearby dipping
dishes. It's an unusual melange of cooked rice noodles, raw
vegetables and herbs, and shaved raw meat or seafood that cooks
in the broth just as it's brought to table.
Phó, as it's known, is now hugely popular in the United
States--and people line up at the doors of Phó restaurants night
and day to sit at trencher tables and feast on the soup til
sweat pours down the backs of their heads. The term phó
translates as "your own bowl," since it's one of the few meals
where the food is not passed around and shared.
"Small" soups, by contrast, are served as first courses--they
generally don't have noodles; they're served in small portions;
and they're called sup. The famous Sup Mang Tay, or Crab and
Asparagus Soup is in this category--so is Sup Nam Trang, a
fascinatingly complex soup of crab, shrimp, and dried white
fungus (mushroomlike).
Finally, the class of soups known as Canh are generally served
family style, out of one big bowl--often spooned into smaller
bowls at table with rice. And they are generally light--also
served as a first course to whet the appetite. These include
Canh Sa Lach Soan (Watercress-Shrimp Soup), Canh Chua Tom (Hot
and Sour Shrimp and Lemongrass Soup), and Canh Chua Ca (Hot and
Sour Tamarind Fish Soup).
Da Lat Elephant FallsBut what about soups for snacks? Foodwriter
Thy Tran from San Francisco at her website
www.wanderingspoon.com writes "the Vietnamese enjoy sweet bean
soups as snacks. The whole class is known as che, but they each
have a specific name that usually reveals the color of the bean:
che dau den (black bean), che dau trang ("white bean," or what
we know here as black-eyed peas), even che dau xanh ("green
beans," referring to the green covering on mung beans). Coconut
milk, lotus seeds, taro root, tapioca, even crunchy seaweed are
common additions. Western Vietnamese restaurants sometimes offer
them as dessert, but they're really meant for snacking, which
South East Asians love to do. You can serve che warm or
chilled."
Thy adds, "Interestingly, the idea of using beans in savory
dishes (other than sprouts) is not as natural for most
Vietnamese people. Just like when I told my family, while
sipping artichoke tea in Saigon, that in the States we serve the
whole vegetable as a delicacy, they were horrified."
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