By David Hagedorn
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
We had the best of intentions. For this month's Chef on Call lesson, we first solicited the help of a longtime area cooking teacher. But a family crisis translated into a last-minute cancellation, which is how it came to be that our student learned the fundamentals of Vietnamese cooking from a Canadian guy who fled the restaurant scene of New York in 2008 instead of from a Vietnamese woman who fled the fall of Saigon in 1975.
As it turns out, student Ophira Bansal got more than she bargained for.
Bansal, 32, had asked for help with Vietnamese food because it is the one cuisine beyond Indian about which she and her husband, a vegetarian, can agree. But when she tries to re-create restaurant dishes, the tastes just aren't the same. "It is the sauces that make or, in my case, break the dish," she wrote in an e-mail.
When our initial teacher had to back out, we turned to Spike Mendelsohn, best known for his turn on Bravo's "Top Chef," where last season he made it to the top five. But Bansal got another chef, too. Mendelsohn, 27, brought along Mike Colletti, 25, his best friend and business partner at Good Stuff Eatery, a burger joint they opened on Capitol Hill in July. Think of them as a culinary Abbott and Costello: One is a tall, slight smooth talker in a fedora, the other a shorter, more robust Jersey guy with a baseball cap and some bling around the neck.
For them it's burgers these days, but they also have Vietnamese cooking chops. Before opening Good Stuff, Mendelsohn and Colletti worked together at Drew Nieporent's Mai House, and both have gone on long pilgrimages to Vietnam. Mendelsohn was first, taking four months to sojourn through the country top to bottom after he graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., in 2005.
"I fell in love with the ingredients, the culture, the food," he said. After Mendelsohn turned Colletti on to the joys of the cuisine (it was a bite of a banh mi sandwich that did it), Colletti went on two month-long trips of his own.
Mendelsohn considers the banh mi a perfect example of the flavor profile of Vietnamese cooking: herbaceous, spicy, fatty, sweet, sour. "The Vietnamese took in all the Asian and French influences, kept what was good and got rid of the bad," he said.
Within hours of receiving the frantic, last-minute Chef on Call request, and as if it were a "Top Chef" elimination challenge, Mendelsohn submitted menu suggestions such as rockfish with parsnip puree and green curry.
But Bansal, wanting dishes to appeal to not just her husband but also her toddler, found those too exotic and steered him toward more basic fare.
"Who doesn't like spring rolls?" she wondered. "I'm intrigued by clay pot cooking, and I'd like to make a caramelized anything and a lemon grass something." She wanted to learn how to use various ingredients to prepare dishes in which she could substitute vegetables for meat. Her husband, Rajeev, 42, isn't the only vegetarian; so is Rohan, 2 1/2 .
She got the menu she wanted: green papaya salad with lime dressing, vegetarian summer rolls, a caramelized lemon grass chicken stir-fry and clay pot prawns.
The lesson took place on an oppressively humid late-summer day in the family's small apartment kitchen in a Massachusetts Avenue mega-building near American University. But Bansal, who is expecting another child in the spring, still found cooking a welcome respite from potty training a toddler. Mendelsohn did most of the talking and cooking with Bansal by his side, while Colletti acted as sous-chef, washing, peeling, chopping, slicing, dicing, shredding, blanching and cubing next to them.
What was clear as the two chefs marched through the menu's dishes was that lightness reigns supreme; there is no heavy reliance on oil as in, say, Chinese cooking. Balance of texture (crunchy, chewy, soft) and flavor (sweet, salty, sour, spicy) is critical.
Though a meal may include protein, it is not the central focus, as Bansal discovered while putting together the summer rolls. "They are really just salad and noodles rolled up in rice paper, aren't they?" she observed.
In the green papaya salad, a fruit took center stage, but in savory form.
"Most of the rest of the world doesn't use unripe papaya," Colletti said. "But the Vietnamese use what is available at the time, so one thing winds up being used for a sweet palate and a savory palate." The sweetness in that dish came from pineapple; a finishing crunch came from chopped peanuts and crisp fried onions, often used as a crowning garnish.
Herbs such as cilantro, rau ram (referred to as Vietnamese coriander or Vietnamese mint), rice paddy herb (citrusy and mildly cinnamony), Thai basil, mint and reedy, fragrant lemon grass abound in Vietnamese dishes.
So do powerful little green or red Thai bird chili peppers, which Mendelsohn said are spicy but not overwhelming. "They are really good for you," he said. "They clean your system out."
Considering that the country borders the sea for a 1,000-mile stretch, it makes sense that the main flavoring of Vietnamese cooking is nuoc mam, fish sauce obtained by fermenting salted anchovies. The sauce provides body and subtle saltiness rather than cloying fishiness, especially when it's the high-quality stuff. (Many food lovers recommend the Three Crabs brand.)
Accompanying most dishes is nuoc cham, a dipping sauce made from nuoc mam, lime juice, garlic, chili peppers, chili sauce, sugar and usually shredded pickled carrot and radish. That was great for Bansal. "My son loves two things: dipping and noodles," she declared.
So the lemon grass chicken dish, a flavor-rich stir-fry in which sweet soy sauce caramelizes from the high heat of wok cookery, was perfect. Mendelsohn added cooked egg noodles at the end and showed Bansal how to jerk the pan the way professionals do so the noodles wind up on the bottom.
"What if I don't want to use any meat?" she inquired.
"No meat," answered her teacher. "Saigon noodles!" He topped the dish with bean sprouts and crisped shallots and moved on to the clay pot prawns. (The dish's name refers to the vessel traditionally used in Vietnam, but a wok or skillet suffices.)
Here, sweet and salty went head to head. After the prawns were sauteed, Mendelsohn caramelized sugar with lemon grass, ginger, red onion and chili peppers, then balanced it with fish sauce and coconut juice. He returned the shrimp to the pan, coating them with the sauce and finishing them in only minutes.
"It's a Mekong dish," he said. "Real rustic, down-to-earth and homey."
Bansal asked if she could substitute vegetables, such as broccoli or beans, for the shrimp, because her husband eats fish and seafood only if he absolutely has to.
"Sure!" Mendelsohn replied. "Or use smoked tofu. It's really good." How would Rajeev feel about all the fish sauce, though?
"If he doesn't know, he'll eat it," Bansal insisted.
With that, the day was done. Bansal's mentors had touched on everything she wanted to discover except how to make pho, the traditional Vietnamese soup-and-noodle dish. Mendelsohn resisted for two reasons: The traditional base of the dish, beef stock, is obviously non-vegetarian, and it takes hours to make the broth properly.
As the cooks packed up, it was clear that the confines of the Bansals' apartment could not possibly contain the aromatic indications of what had just happened there; when they opened the door to leave, a palpable profusion charged through the hallway, undoubtedly knocking on every door.
It's a wonder the neighbors didn't show up for dinner.
David Hagedorn, chef and former restaurateur, can be reached at food@washpost.com. His Chef on Call column appears monthly.
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