Turning Vietnamese

If you are craving for light dishes with contrasting flavors, varied textures and exotic ingredients, it is a good time to think about Vietnamese food for a change. Hearty soups with fresh herbs, its famous spring rolls, and the interesting mix of greens and seafood make Vietnamese food among the healthiest on the planet.

Fact is, Vietnamese cuisine is a unique fusion of Asian and French cooking. The Asian aspect lies in the use of a lot of vegetables and noodles for most dishes, and in the use of chopsticks. The French influence is seen in the base of most Vietnamese soups or the consommé. However, Vietnamese cuisine differs in one aspect from French cuisine: It uses hardly any oil but instead uses stir-frying in preparing food.

To showcase the fine features of Vietnamese food, Mandarin Oriental Manila, together with Daewoo Hotel in Hanoi, is currently holding its "Vietnamese Cuisine Pleasures" at the Captain’s Bar. Guest chefs Pham Cong Minh and Le Thanh Tung reveal Vietnam’s cooking traditions with specialty dishes to please Filipino taste buds.

Pham Cong Minh, a graduate of Hanoi Cooking Technical College, is the sous chef of Daewoo Hotel’s Café Promenade. He has done several Vietnamese promotions in Japan and Korea. Le Thanh Tung is the sous chef of Daewoo Hotel’s Silk Road Vietnamese restaurant. Together with Minh, they arranged food for hotel events, such as Francophone 1998, the ASEAN Summit, and ASEM 5, which included heads of state and ministers.

Since Vietnam is near the coastline, seafood is central to the diet.

"There is an abundance of shrimp as seen in most of our dishes. Among meats, we prefer beef over pork, because pork is often too fatty. Vegetables are mostly left raw to contrast with the cooked meat," explains Minh.

Some of the distinct and often spicy flavors of Vietnam come from mint leaves, coriander, lemon grass, shrimp, fish sauces (nuoc nam and nuoc cham), star anise, ginger, black pepper, garlic, basil, rice vinegar, sugar, and green onions. The combination of these flavorings is often used on marinades for meat or fish.

For this two-week promotion, Chef Minh brought ingredients like rice paper, rice powder, and herbs from Vietnam. He says, "Spring rolls have an international appeal. They are adopted from Chinese cooking. Usually, the Chinese fry their spring rolls. The Vietnamese spring roll variant is prepared largely without fat and prepared with rice paper." The Vietnamese cold spring roll with prawn and pork meat is a winner. Yum!

The specialties for this two-week promotion include beef salad with roasted rice powder, glass noodle with cuttlefish salad, pork skin and shrimp soup, beef roll with ginger sauce, grilled chicken with lemon leaves and chili, Saigon fried mini-spring roll with minced pork and crab meat, deep-fried fish with five-color sauce, grilled prawn with lemongrass and chili, as well as sautéed swimming crab with tamarind sauce.

The desserts are designed to freshen one’s palate after the meal. Try the lotus seed in syrup, young stick rice cake, sweet coconut milk with taro, dried fruits, and black bean with coconut. "The black bean with coconut, also called Vietnamese chocolate, is our version of halo-halo," concludes Minh.

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Mandarin Oriental’s Vietnamese buffet lunch is available until July 15 at the Captain’s Bar. For inquiries and reservations, call 750-8888 extensions 2417 and 2418.