Vietnamese Cuisine
Vietnam’s historical and geographical richness has imparted an impeccable flavor to its cuisine. Fresh ingredients, spices and a healthy style of cooking make traditional Vietnamese cuisine a treat for the senses as well as the body. Striking an appetizing balance between vegetarian and non-vegetarian food items, it’s not a surprise to see that traditional Vietnamese cuisine enjoys a large fan following around the world regardless of cultural and traditional boundaries.
Traditional Vietnamese Cuisine
Considering the geographical positioning and history of the country, traditional Vietnamese cuisine has been majorly influenced by French, Chinese and Indian cuisine. Stir fries and crab centric dishes have originated because of the colder climatic conditions of the Northern region with influences from China. A more decorated and spicy style of cuisine arises from Central and Southern Vietnam due to varying climatic conditions and presence of royalty. This cuisine requires the food items to be cooked very briefly which helps retain their original texture and flavor. Hence it becomes rather important for the ingredients to be fresh so as to be suitable for this style of cooking.
Breakfast & Lunch
In Vietnamese culture, breakfast and lunch are generally lighter meals than dinner. A typical breakfast meal would include sticky rice or xoi, phopho (pronounced as ‘fu’) and French bread. Phopho is a soup with vegetables and rice or wheat noodles. Also, the famous chilli sauce nouc chamis served with almost every meal. Furthermore, a typical Vietnamese breakfast is also served as/with fruits such as Mango and Dragon Fruit (local fruit of the cactus family).
Dinner
Dinner in Vietnamese culture is a heavy meal, with fish/seafood dishes served with a separate large bowl of steamed rice. The meat can be grilled, boiled, steamed, stewed or fried. The meal also consists of Canh, a clear broth with vegetables and meat or some other style of Vietnamese soup. If desired, one could also relish this stupendous meal with a glass of Vietnamese rice wine as well.
Dessert
Deserts are not part of traditional Vietnamese cuisine and generally, rather than sweets people serve fruits after a meal.
Snacks And Street Food
Malaysia has the world’s one of the best street food culture as Malaysians are big time snackers addicted to street food. Thousands of roadside stalls have their tempting dishes laid out every day. Special treats like Keropok Lekor(Fish sausage), Ayam Goreng (fried chicken) feature among popular snacks in Malaysia.
A never ending banquet of local Laksa specialities include Asam Laksa (fish based tamarind and noodle soup topped with pineapple cucumber and mint) and Laksa lemak (noodles in a rich coconut gravy), dim sums, bean curd wrapped around minced pork, Pulut lepa (glutinous rice and fish barbecued), Satay (Pieces of marinated chicken skewered and cooked over a charcoal fire) and Ketupat Sotong (A popular tea-time dish featuring squids stuffed with glutinous rice) makes Malaysia a foodie’s paradise.