During the 19th century, the French controlled two large port cities – Saigon of Vietnam and Pondicherry in India. Raw spice ingredients flowing across these ports introduced Vietnam to a world of spices they its people never seen in its cooking before.
Vietnamese perilla is often used raw for salads, soups, or garnish for stir-fried and noodle dishes. Traditionally, perilla leave is used for our traditional medicine due to its antioxidant, antiallergic, anti-inflammatory, and tumor-preventing properties. Sounds like it pairs well with alcohol!
This traditional Vietnamese dish is popularly enjoyed during the lunar new year. When I was small, my grandma stewed this dish in a large clay pot for the whole family to eat over the course of three days.
During the early 19th century, many Chinese people from Canton immigrated to Vietnam and set up large Chinese communities around the Vietnamese’s fishing ports. Because of this, Vietnamese refereed to Chinese immigrants as Nguoi Tau, meaning “boat people”.
With the fresh makrut leaves, we shopped the necessary ingredients from the street market in Hanoi Old Quarter, and made our own Vietnamese mule at the hotel. If you want to try this interesting drink, this is the recipe.
Bo Kho, or Braised Beef Stew, evolved from the French soup ‘pot au feu’ or French beef stew, which the French brought to Vietnam when they came to rule the country in the late 19th century. Pot au feu is a quintessential French family dish, just as Bo Kho transformed for Vietnamese people.
