Vietnamese menu sleuthing (beef)

[tatamagouche]

So, a local Viet place has 7 salads. 6 of them are listed by their Viet name, then the Eng translation, e.g., Goi Muc, squid salad. But 1 of them just says "Lemon Beef Salad."

Why is that? Checking my ever-handy Oxford Companion to Food, the entry on Vietnam doesn't mention beef (plenty of other animals like water buffalo, but not cattle). Is reliance of beef an immigrant thing and is the lemon-beef salad more likely an Americanized dish? Or is this a common dish in Vietnam as well and the lack of translation's just an oversight?

Thanks!

[paul balbin]

Yesterday for lunch I had the good luck to enjoy a "Bun bo Hue" at the Pho Dui next door to the
Pacific Ocean Market on 120th. in Denver. I chose the rare beef meat option as my appreciation
for tendon still needs some work. It was from heaven.
The beef was sliced paper thin and must have been dropped in the broth at the last minute as
the parts above the broth were still red. I am trying to think up a excuse to go back tomorrow.
P

[Steve]

Same as in pho, the meat is added to the bowl raw, and it cooks in the bowl.

[luckyfatima]

Bun bo hue isn't traditionally served with raw beef. I wonder if the resto is doing that because the traditional simmered sliced beef parts and pig knuckles and hunk of congealed pigs blood is too exotic for some non-Vietnamese customers. Some places cheat and serve bun bo hue with seasoned pho broth because it is too much trouble to make a separate bun bo hue broth...others only serve bun bo hue on the weekends because of the broth issue. So maybe this is another adaptation.

[paul balbin]

I am sure you are correct. The server offered it as an option after I balked at tendon and
pigs blood. Would you be so kind as to explain how to make bun bo hue broth. I make
pho broth using the receipt from "From the Vietnamese kitchen" and I must say that I have
been delighted with it.
Once upon a time I asked a Vietnamese customer of mine where I could find the best bun
bo hue in town. He said 'my mother is from Hue".
Good Luck
Pablito el gordito

[Steve]

In the DC area, all the Vietnamese places serve with lime, not lemon. Underdone beef with lime is common.

[tatamagouche]

Interesting. Definitely lemon here in Denver.

[ipsedixit]

Lemon is odd.

Lime is definitely more typical.

Lemongrass, yes. Lemon? No.

[Steve]

In all the SE Asian places in the DC area: Thai, Burmese, Vietnamese, Malay, Indonesian, I see very little or no lemon. Always lime.

You can even order lemonade, they call it lemonade, but you are served lime (or salty lime if you want that). Also, in the canned and bottled juices in a Vietnamese deli, I see only lime drinks.

[Pata_Negra]

lime has tropical Southeast Asian origins. i guess they use lemon because it's more common and cheaper in Denver? in any case, they don't taste the same.

[tatamagouche]

I should ask whether it's really lime and just a translation error--but the translation issues are precisely what make it hard to ask. :) any advice for doing so (eg anyone know how to pronounce lemon and line in Viet)?

[luckyfatima]

There is no lemon, only lime in Vietnamese cooking because that is what is in Vietnam. Many countries only have lemons or only have limes and this is reflected in the language but the word gets translated either way in English. In tiếng Việt lime is chanh.

[luckyfatima]

(Goi) Bo tai chanh or raw beef seasoned with lime (salad) is a real dish. There is beef in Vietnam, but I read/heard that it is tougher than US beef. Fine slicing and serving raw but tenderized in lime juice would remedy tough beef. My best friend is Vietnamese American and I recall at her family parties her mother would also serve a raw beef platter in which the carpaccio style slices were simply garnished with sesame seeds and this was meant to be eaten with a dipping sauce. I have never seen this dish in a resto, though. I think in Mai Pham's book or website it says that bo luc lac (shaking beef) is more popular in the US than in VN because the beef is so much more tender in the US. Another popular VN beef dish is Bo Bay Mon (beef 7 ways) which contains some combo of a platter of ground beef, beef stuffed in grape leaves or another special VN leaf, grilled beef, etc., all cooking methods good for tough beef. You can eat it with banh trang papers and bun, or banh hoi (ultra fine rice vermicelli). There is also bun bo hue, which contains pork as well as beef. And of course pho is traditionally beef and I believe that all of these seafood and veggie pho creations are to suit some special preferences in the US market. And there is bo kho, or beef stew. Long simmering beef parts also tenderize. So anyway there seem to be a lot of well known beef dishes. Menu lingo can be very incongruous sometimes.

[tatamagouche]

The raw beef dish sounds wonderful!

Yes, and I now feel slightly silly, because of course the fact that so many phos contain beef parts that Americans generally *don't* eat should have confirmed for me that it's native to the cuisine (in other words, it's not just the Viet version of spaghetti and meatballs, where Southern Italian immigrants suddenly had so much more meat than before at their disposal).

I also feel slightly silly by my second post b/c I'm confused by the Viet/Cambodian crossover. Is hu tieu Cambodian or Thai (or both)?

[luckyfatima]

All noodle dishes in South East Asia have their origins in China. Same is true in VN, whether it is mi, bun, pho, mien, hu tieu, etc,. Hu Tieu Nam Vang is Phnom Pen style Hu Tieu, which I am guessing why you are suggesting Hu Tieu is from Cambodia. Cambodians and Thais have dishes made with the same types of noodles because of the common Chinese connection (pad thai is made with what Vietnamese call banh pho, for example). China ruled Vietnam for 1000 years, but in addition to that, Chinese immigrants settled in large communities all over South East Asia, bringing their noodles. Hu tieu has always confused me, too because in some restos a hu tieu noodle dish (in a soup or stir fried) comes with banh pho noodles, and sometimes other noodles. Fellow chowhound chuynh addresses hu tieu here:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/519887?tag=search_results;results_list

and in this post on his fantastic blog Loving Pho:

http://www.lovingpho.com/pho-opinion-...

So it seems there is some flexibility in terms of what is served as hu tieu.

[tatamagouche]

Thanks! It's true (obviously): if it's not the cuisine you grew up with, the twists and turns seem so complicated. Just as I'm sure all the variations on Mexican in & out of the US must confuse non-North Americans.

[tatamagouche]

I just noticed you mentioned grape leaves—I remember starting a thread about grape leaves in Viet cuisine a while back b/c I was so surprised to see them on a menu here. If there are leaves, there must be grapes: do they enter into the cuisine at all? (I know the Far East is the next great hope for winemaking, but I can't imagine Vietnam's climate would allow for much.)

[luckyfatima]

I remember that thread:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/6944...

I don't know more now about that topic than I did when I answered the thread. I think limster suggested grape leaves may be a stand in for betel leaf (la lot) in North America. I know betel leaves are stuffed and grilled, too, so that could be what is going on. Or it could be a French influence dish.

[Pata_Negra]

beef is common. there's a really nice beef salad with lots of lemon juice. the beef is seared. is it this one?

[tatamagouche]

It definitely seemed weird to me, given all the beef noodle soups, that they'd all be immigrant inventions, so I assumed beef wasn't foreign to them, but I just wanted to double-check my assumption—thanks.

But I just don't get why they don't translate that one's name. Do you know it offhand? Goi bo?

As long as I'm at it—there's very little pho on this particular menu—a lot more hu tieu. Does that imply a regional focus (Phnom Penh)?

[Pata_Negra]

from my books [which i never use to cook] it's beef salad. there may also be more versions of beef salad? then i dunno.

sorry i don't know the answer to the last question but yes i've eaten beef in Cambodia so they do have cows there. however i've also seen Khmer cows in the field. they look horrifically skinny.