Tu David Phu | The Memory of Taste

29:19And because this is a highly prioritized thing, and we love the taste of this in Vietnam, for us, this defines not just our palate, but defines the region because we have access to this amazing ingredient. You go to China at soy sauce, I'll show you, right? You go to the Netherlands, it ferments like cabbage and sauerkraut. You go to South America's chilies and what they do with sauce. Those things identify the cuisine, identifies the palate on how people eat. And those things are basically the scripture of societies and how they feed themselves. Absolutely. One of the things that I wanted to talk a little bit about is like certain fish sauces belong in the kitchen and then there's other fish sauces that may not have its place.

30:12Is there, you describe in the book that there's like a champagne of fish sauce and some other quality variations in fish sauce. So tell us a little bit about what we should have on our shelves and, you know, what we shouldn't. Fish sauce should be treated as, we should reference the fish sauces and we reference all of them. combination of olive oil and wine. There's different prefectures of fish sauce productions the same way there's different prefectures for wine. Why? Because fish migrate, right? The reason why Tokyo in Japan has the best tuna is because that is the perfect maturation age of their migration.

30:50I think they start off from South America, go up through the Atlantic, past the East Coast, past Italy and Spain over the Arctic, and then they land over to Japan, right, in Hokkaido, into those icy cold waters. And by the time they get to that side, through their migration, they have eaten a very diverse diet, and the fat ratio in comparison to their maturation is the perfect tuna, right? Same thing with black anchovies, right? We get a huge run of them going past our island. And historically, that's always been the case. And because we have this abundance of anchovies, at that maturation with whatever they ate, plankton or whatnot, it's the perfect anchovy to make this delicious, beautiful fish sauce.

31:42And the different grades of them. I know, I know, I know. There's three crab. What's another one? Squid. Let me give you guys a hack, and you can do it at any grocery store. I would love to promote Sun, good friend of mine. he makes fish sauce in my island prefecture in the style that my family and I are used to. To me, this is what fish sauce is supposed to taste like. It's the perfect balance. It's nostalgic to me. There's also Red Boat. Red Boat is also made on Phu Quoc Island, where my parents are from. But their style of fish sauce is more westernized. They prioritize protein and amino acids, so it's super umami.

32:18But if you gave Red Boat to a Vietnamese person in Vietnam, they're like this isn't fish sauce to me red boat's not bad red boat is exactly what chefs want they want the concentrated deep dark flavor which isn't a bad thing so there's different purposes for everything it's like the comparison of you know driving a alexis versus a bmw or toyota versus a honda right it just serves different purposes for different for different types of people and how they like to cook and then there's squid and three crab squid and three crab if you look at the back label. Fish sauce should be only made with two ingredients and that's anchovy and sea salt.

32:57You should never have sugar. You should never have flour. You should never have yeast. All those things are fillers because there's a lack of flavor. It should never be made with anchovy extract. Would you buy an ice cream bar that's made out of lemon extract or fresh lemons? Am I alone on this? Fresh lemons or lemon extract? Fresh lemons. So why would you buy fish sauce with anchovy extract? You know what anchovy extract is? It's a byproduct. It's when people catch anchovies and no one wants to buy it. They further process it. This not fresh catch anchovy, they process it to sell it into the industry so people would use it for other things.

33:41right the way fish sauce is made is they catch a huge net of anchovies right and they filter out anything that isn't anchovies if anybody says i have crustacean allergies and i don't do fish sauce because there might be crab in it that's number one that's prejudice because you're suggesting that asian peoples are or have a lower standard in cooking food, but all fish sauce companies, right? Because they're making fish sauce, they're going to take anything out that isn't anchovy. It's going to ruin the fermentation process, right? So they take that out and it's always anchovy, right? And if they're going to do crab fish sauce, which they do, they do with crab.

34:24They do it for squid fish sauce, do it with squid, right? So they take those things out. They catch the fish. They salt it immediately, right? To retain the freshness. all those precious oils it needs it needs to be contained and then they put it underneath the ship where it's ice and cold right and then from there they immediately make fish sauce into it what that means is they put it into these huge barrels with these specific type of woods don't ask me the name of the wood because i can't pronounce the name of the tree right um and then they age it for one month along this journey of 12 barrels or 15 barrels each barrel lasts for about a month and they siphon it as a form of purification from one barrel to another.

35:07Right. And this happens in a closed warehouse. And because of the humidity and the temperature of that room, it's the perfect fermentation process beyond the salt breaking down the anchovy. And in addition to that, there's an evaporation process that happens where water evaporates over the course of 15 months. This sunfish sauce is aged exactly for one year. So this is 12 months. right and for me in my household um the way we use fish sauce is we look at fish sauce first we look at the ingredients and this is like a staple everyday use pantry fish sauce this is aged for 15 years i mean 12 months right and stuff like red belt that's like a finisher right because it's high in protein it's probably age the concentration is more high and what you see on their uh on their fish sauce bottles uh sunfish sauce has those models as well too is that you'll see a number on there with an N and a degree.

35:59It's not in this bottle today, but it's, I would say, like 32 degrees N, 42, 45, all the way up to 50 and 60. And what that suggests is that it's a super concentrated, oftentimes aged fish sauce. And that number is a reflection of how much protein is in that bottle. And remember I mentioned amino acids? So Vietnamese food scientists in Vietnam found out that because there's a lot of amino acids floating around this bottle, they emit nitrogen. If you measure that nitrogen that is emitted from a fish sauce bottle, you'll get a number in the form of a degree. The higher the number, the higher the umami in amino acids.

36:42So the higher umami, it's great, but just like olive oil, right? EVO, like Rachel Ray, right? EVO, extra virgin olive oil. The purest of olive oils, extra virgin means it's the first press. So you're getting all the delicious first press fats from olive oil, from olives for the olive oil. So traditionally, chefs would use that as a finishing olive oil. Because you don't want to, you want to taste all that freshness. You want to taste all those oils in its virgin pure form. So that's why they use it as a finisher on dishes. And they use it as a salad dressing. You could taste it. The moment you apply heat to it, nothing will ruin it, but be a waste.

37:24So they use a second press, which is just regular olive oil. So same thing with fish sauce. You want to use the ones that have a lot of umami. You want to be able to taste it on its own. Opinion, right? Well, opinion, right? I would suggest that you want to taste it on its own. So use that as a finisher. So anywhere you would have sushi, like aged high nitrogen degree, like 32, 45 degrees nitrogen fish sauce with sushi is amazing. Japanese sushi chefs do it all the time in Japan. You want to season your rice, use the super aged high quality stuff. But everyday cooking, you need to put something into a stir fry.

38:03Use this in place to show you. Right? And taste to show you in comparison to this. Even though they may contribute the same amount and level of umami, they contribute different types of flavors into it. And I think I think the best way for you to test at home is do it with fried rice. Doing pan fried rice, super simple. Egg fried rice, try it with shoyu, try it with fish sauce. I have a preference of using fish sauce. But I change it sometimes, because it's like, I don't feel like being so Vietnamese today, right? I'm gonna show you. But yes. Amazing. I know, like long-winded, very passionate about fish sauce.

38:40Very, very passionate. And it shows that your generation's deep into making fish sauce. And for those who, you know, I think like for the first time anybody's ever tried fish sauce, it's always like, oof, that's really intense. It can almost scare people away from fish sauce. So I love... All it is is just unfamiliar. Yeah. Right. Once you get past and you understand how to use fish sauce, you can get more comfortable with it. It's just like eating blue cheese. We were just talking about blue cheese earlier. Right. Once you can get past the nasal part of it, there's ways to enjoy it. You put honey on it.

39:14You have it with toast. But would you grab a big chunk of blue cheese and bite into it? No. Right? So it's about context as well, too. Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes. It's the same thing with fish sauce, right? It's about context. Yeah, absolutely. No, no. That's all context and all good information. So, like, going back into the book, you have numerous variations of these fish sauce dips and everything for different dishes and stuff. So we wanted to kind of cover a little gambit of fish sauces today and a demonstration just to kind of show showcase the different kind of styles and flavors that you can get out of making a fish sauce dip based off of this fish sauce.

39:54So we're gonna go ahead and get started and get into the demo now and then we're gonna kind of talk about each of the ingredients and what they do for for the sauce as we put it together. So this is the everyday fish sauce ingredients here. So we're gonna kind of go over And when we say every day, it's multi-use, right? You can use it. I've used it on top of eggs. I've used it on poured over rice. I've substituted this for my salad dressing. Super great, right? I've done vegetable crudités for parties where I omitted the ranch and the crème fraiche dressing, and I used this. Amazing stuff. And to be mindful of everyone's heat levels, my wife is Korean from Hawaii, so our spice level is like, boom!

40:40right like we can handle habanero her funny story tangent story you know how spicy her family eats they buy ghost peppers in bulk so most households have like uh uh seasoning salt pepper maybe tabasco sauce like tabasco sauce huh her sister has liquid commercial capsaicin Right now, so my heat tolerance is, I've developed the heat tolerance for really high heat. So anything that we use here, feel free to substitute it. If you're not using Thai chilies, you can substitute it for serranos. Below that, you can do jalapenos. Below that, you probably even use a green bell pepper, right? It's there for flavor.

41:25I don't want you guys to hurt yourself forcing it. And also, any way we're using sriracha or sambal, I've used chalula. in place of it because that's all I had. I'm a chef. I'm Vietnamese. Blame me, right? Like you can absolutely, we welcome the substitutions because the point of cooking is being resourceful in what you have in your pantry, right? Yeah. Fish, everyday fish sauce, shall we? Yeah, let's do it. So let's start off with this. Fish sauce can be consumed straight up as a shot like this. It can be used straight up, but my mother taught me that there's nuances in fish sauce and there's different levels to kind of bring those flavors out and she taught me that fish sauce is a lot like a whiskey right any whiskey i'm not a whiskey drinker but any whiskey drinkers in the house or from people who are familiar we need sashimi what's up i see you right there yeah that's my homie right there so whiskey especially aged whiskey you can't drink it straight up what do you guys do you have to bloom it you have to add water to it, you put an ice cube to it, you swirl it.

42:38You swirl it so that way the concentration of that whiskey can soften up, right? And you could taste those flavors of what the whiskey is supposed to be. If you drink it straight up, it'll be like perfume. It'd be way too strong. That's what you're supposed to do with fish sauce as well too. So here I have water. I'm using water to bloom that fish And oftentimes, way too many times, I get my chef buddy saying, Hey, Chef Tu, I did this fish sauce, put all this stuff in, but it's too salty. Because it's too aggressive. Remember, it's being fermented. I mean, it was dressed and cured and fermented with salt.

43:20The anchovies came from the ocean and it had salt in it. It's very aggressive, right? And we need to add water to it to soften that up, to kind of break it away from the salt so we can appreciate the other nuances. So, I'm going to do a little bit of water. Alright. There's a recipe in the cookbook. Just follow the recipe. I cook like my mom, guys. Don't penalize me. I'm like, this much. This much. This much. We have a little bit of vinegar. This is probably about the water. It's probably about half a cup. This is probably about half a cup too, you would say? Quarter cup. Quarter cup. A third of a cup maybe.

43:49A third of a cup. Yeah. To be precise. To be precise. And then we put our, I'm sorry, spoons. Got some.

44:03And we just kind of throw everything together. And this, once again, is everyday fish sauce. It's just garlic, water, vinegar. This is green Thai chili. It's not Toronto. Okay? I like it spicy. I'm just going to put it all in there. Do it. And then there's always this misconception about Vietnamese food and their use of sugar. Of course, there were sugar plantations all over Southeast Asia, all the way to the Philippines, to Hawaii. So because there were sugar plantations, it was an accessible ingredient for those communities to use. The way I was taught in our province from my mother how we use sugar, we don't use sugar to make things sweet.

44:50The way my mother taught me, and that's how I base my arguments. My mom taught me this. You guys can't argue with me. The way we use sugar is because fermentation has this funk and curtail to it. And as a chef, you need to balance that out to make it palatable. My mother taught me to use sugar not to make it sweet so it can curtail and mute that funkiness. Sometimes you want it, sometimes you don't. In this case, I want to mute it, but not too much. I'm just going to add a little bit of sugar in here and we're going to taste. A little bit of sugar. I'm just probably like two tablespoons right there, a little bit more.

45:27And what we do is, even though I give you guys a recipe, the recipe is for reference, I would encourage in every step of this, you add an ingredient. You add 50 % of it and you taste, or actually 25 % of it and you taste it. And then you add the other 25%. And you could stop at 75%, 50%, wherever you like or add the whole thing. So I'm just doing this for demonstration purposes. Chef, would you taste this with me? Yeah, don't threaten me with a good time. Right?

46:01A little bit more sugar. A little touch. So if you notice, tasting it, you get the acid first. You get the fish sauce first and then you get the funk in the back, right? So this finishes with the more the sugar and it's not sweet, right? You're getting acid first. You're balancing everything. Essentially when we teach classes, we always talk about hitting all five of the flavor profiles that you can taste on the tongue. And that might look like a lot of sugar, but just know for everything that you're... This is a dipping sauce, so you'll probably get like a tenth of a teaspoon onto your product that you have.

46:35Right, so that also is a reflection of how much sauce you're gonna make. Don't drink this stuff, right? It's not a drinking sauce yet. It's just like ketchup, right? like ketchup. Well actually, you know, to be honest, like some people like a lot of ketchup. Yeah. But it wasn't meant to be consumed that sort of thing. So you want to taste it now? Let's make sure we stir everything until it dissolves. And this is no heat, no cooking. The acid in this should be able to dissolve everything. It should bloom the chilies, should bloom the garlic. It's really well balanced now. That's really good. It's not sweet.

47:06It's like perfect. Right? Yeah. So really good. So it's that easy to put together. My mouth is Now we're gonna have to get all the goods that we prepared already. Right. So this is the everyday fish sauce and then should we just do the, quickly, the chili fish sauce? Yeah, we'll do the chili fish sauce. So one of the things that we wanted to set up was Supreming. Man, knife skills. Knife skills. Put your knife skills to the test. Man. So Supremes is basically taking the rind off, taking off all the white... What's the white stuff called? Pith. Taking all the pith off and taking the flesh out. You can use a smaller knife if you're more comfortable.

47:48But all I'm going to do is just phase the top. Phasing the top is just making a straight line out of the lemon on top and bottom. So that way, whether it's top or bottom, you can lay it flat. And then if you look at... There's these lines that run through it and there's these points. Show the camera right up here. There you go. Right, so you see these lines that run through? There's this beautiful star pattern. I'm gonna connect my blade from this point, from this end point here, to that end point here. So I'm gonna apply the knife that way and then just kind of follow the curvature of the lemon to take the rind off.

48:30Right? So. It's one of those things where like you do it like a million times a day without even thinking about it the moment you get on camera from the audience. It was the most difficult thing ever.

48:45So this recipe is the chili fish sauce, right? That we're going to be doing right now. And this one has a lot more fine dining applications, I would say. The reason why we're supreming and not just juicing it is because in our household, my mother really love pulp of lemon. It adds so much dimension to the fish sauce, not just texturally wise, but because it's sitting in that liquid. Is there a waste bin? Just put in there. Yeah, just put in a couple. Because of, let's deseed it, and because of it's sitting in there, all those oils, all that acid really permeates through everything. So I have my shadow bowl.

49:31This is allium. Allium is anything that's part of the whole family. The thing that I hate the most is raw, raw shallot or onion. What you want to do is macerate the shallot. So what maceration means is I'm gonna apply an acid to this shallot and it's gonna cook through acid so that the shallot is gonna become sweet and it's not gonna be raw. It's gonna be more mellow. It's gonna be more mellow. Okay so I'm just separating the segments out. I'm just cutting a V wedge in there. Yeah, cutting the V wedge. There might be a seed. I'm not too worried about the seed. If I hit the seed, I just go around it.

50:10If it goes into the bowl, it's totally fine. It's not going to count a bite. We could pick it out later. No one's going to choke on it. No one's going to choke on it. Watch. Someone's going to choke on it. I know, right? Just because you said that. I'll just keep my mouth shut. Right. And then what I like to do is just take a strong fist squeeze all that remaining juice into the bowl. These rinds I like to save for other recipes that may be in the dish I mean that may be in the cookbook. You use this to brine fish with. Also throw that in just some water and have some spa water afterwards. Sparkling water.

50:48Sparkling spa water so let's save that. In spirit of our mothers and our matriarchs where they existed in a harder time and food was extremely scarce resources was extremely scarce so you want to always try to pay homage when I'm cooking food because no matter where I'm at in life I have this deep appreciation for where food comes from because I know what it's like to not have it I know what it is to open a fridge and just see a water jug or milk right you know you're poor I you know you're poor when you know you tell your mom you're hungry and she tells you to drink water. Right? So I'm just cutting up because the lemon supremes are pretty malleable.

51:33I'm just chopping it up with a spoon. And before I add to this, before we use this, we're going to let it sit for about a minute or so. Right? And I'm going to add, I'm going to add chilies to this. And let's add the garlic to it as well too.

51:59Right, and sort of let that permeate. And once again, this is a slightly different recipe. A little bit more evolved. Remember how I talked about blooming fish sauce with water?

52:14You could swap the water out. You can use seltzer water. yeah salt water softens everything up and pulls the flavors out my mom in our region we use coconut water it's so good with coconut water but as she migrated here to the United States in her diaspora talking about the 80s here there wasn't no Coco Rico or Vita Coco I mean there was no Vita Coco in the 80s there was however Coco Rico Coco Rico is a very high corn syrup if not high sugar soda that is that is flavored with coconut juice. Super delicious, but not very healthy, right? And then sometimes you switch between, and once again, in substitution of coconut water, because we had coconuts all over the island.

53:01You go to anybody's front yard and crack open a coconut. But in substitution of coconut water, this is not sponsored by Vida Cocoa, by the way. In substitution of coconut water, it went to Coco Rico. And when she didn't have Coca-Rico, she went to 7-Up. And sometimes when she didn't get 7-Up, she'd go to Sprite. And I just remember as a kid, I was like, are we ever going to migrate to Mountain Dew? Smell this? Oh, wow. So these very harsh things that are shallots, garlic, that can be pungent, right? With just a little bit of acid, it brings out these beautiful oils. It becomes a perfume now, right?

53:41Just like when you crush garlic, or you mince garlic, slice garlic, right? It has a pungent sort of spicy spell. The moment you put heat into it, when it starts to cook, it starts to caramelize, starts to smell fried garlic in your dining room or in your kitchen. Same thing with this, like same thing, shallot and garlic. The moment you start to cook it through the method of acid, maceration, these beautiful aromas come out, right? And that's what we want in the fish sauce. Okay, back to fish sauce. We have a bowl of pure fish sauce. Because of the salt, because of the anchovy, because of the funk, just like a whiskey, the bouquet on this is extremely strong.

54:23And to soften that up and to get those notes that we want to appreciate and taste, we bloom it with coconut water, opposed to water. Right? That's the sweetness. I'm going to use a big bowl. That's right. Yeah.

54:41then Think of this as your seasoning the shallots all those other things and it's gonna dump all this stuff in here because for me Especially for this recipe Being overzealous is actually a good thing. You're just adding more spices more flavors more aromatics

55:03Grab a spoon. Yes, so let's taste it at this stage No sugar yet Why do we need sugar again? This is a quiz for everyone. Balance. Balance of? F word. No. Funk? Or the other word? I thought you said that. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Right? So let's taste, but very acid-forward, very aromatic. Right? And then this is just going to balance everything. Let's start off with half and see where it goes.

55:39It's very possible to enjoy this for people who really enjoy tart and sour and funk. It's very possible to do this recipe and totally okay to not do with the sugar at all. This is a very traditional standard in our family home.

56:04I got a bunch of chilies there.

56:09Developing my tolerance. Let's use the rest of this coconut water. The fish sauce at the end, it's a little strong. It's a little bit strong, so it's blooming a little bit more. Nice. I'm gonna see the difference in them, in it. And for reference too, for fish sauce, in theory, you could keep this in the fridge for two weeks, but the characteristic of the fish sauce will change because the shallot, the acid will die, the shallot will change character. It will, all the ingredients will sink to the bottom. It won't be as fresh. I would encourage, just like any other salad dressing, if you make this, plan to use it within 48 hours, right?

56:49I'm sorry, 36 hours, three days. two to three days, max. And it's so easy to do. You don't need to make this ahead of time. That's good. Oh, yeah. That's perfect. Thank you. Amazing job. I think we're going to wrap it up there for our segment. One of the questions that I really wanted to ask you real quickly, I saw that you have a lobster boba in the cookbook. I was going to ask you, what other recipes are kind of a must-try out of your book? One of my favorite recipes is my mother's bread pudding. I'm a Costco kid. Any Costco kids in here? Keep it real. We love Kirkland. No shame. So my mother was very fortunate enough to be able to have a family friend that had a Costco membership.

57:38And in those days, Costco's going to hate me for this, but in those days, my mom, we didn't have the extra disposable income to get Costco membership. our family friend was Asian, an Asian female, the same age as my mom. My mom was an Asian female. And you walk in the door, just flash the badge and they'll let you in. So we milked that for years. And in doing so, we were able to get very competitive price bulk items. One of those things being Costco croissants. And I think they come in a bulk of six. They come in a plastic clear tray. It's one of the things that I really loved about Costco. sometimes we wouldn't eat all the croissants on purpose because she would take the croissants and make bread pudding out of them.

58:20And she wouldn't use the regular bananas. She would use the, they call them the Asian or the jungle banana, South American bananas called lady fingers, which have a lot more sugar, more aromatic and perfume. But she would make bread pudding super easy to do with those lady finger bananas and seasoned with sesame seeds and coconut milk. So it's a very Vietnamese way to do bread pudding. I think the things that most in deer, that recipe has this nostalgic endearment moment for me because we didn't have a luxurious kitchen like this. We had an oven, but it rarely worked, right? We would store our pots and pans in there.

58:57What she did have was a crappy toaster oven for toasting bagels. And in her small little tray that she had, she would make this beautiful croissant bread pudding. And for me, that croissant bread pudding showed me when times were good. When my mother was happy, she did some, that was that little thing that she did extra because she had a little bit more capacity and things were a little bit, things were well. And for me, that recipe is easy, but also delicious. I've had a few of my James Beard Michelin star chef friends make the recipe and they really enjoyed it. And it means a lot that I could go back to my mom and said, I was at Google HQ, San Francisco.

59:40My Michelin chefs tried your recipe, mom, and they loved it. That's amazing. Well, I'm going to turn it back over to Oscar, and then we're going to finish up with a little question and answer segment. So y 'all get ready with your questions. Oh, that sounds good. Yeah. No, thank you very much. That was awesome. Yeah, I think we'll turn it over for some audience questions right now. if anyone in the room wants to grab the mic. Hi. You seem very in touch with your culture and your roots and your family. And I was wondering if you had any advice for anyone who would want to be more connected with their culture and might feel a little bit separated from them.

1:00:18That's a great question. For me, being in touch with your family, this wasn't the truth five years ago. I didn't know anything about my parents. they are both refugees they are they have massive ptsd so they don't being american for them was erasing their identities before they're like don't be vietnamese because for them being vietnamese from the south uh they felt that their identities were being preyed on like literally they were running away from people who were trying to exterminate right so their identities for them has association with um being a nuance um and this sounds kind of dark but it kind of feels like they were they were they were dehumanized right for being who they were so they told me not to be them they wanted they didn't want to tell stories they didn't want to range they didn't want to tell me stories about their past because they felt that being american was better than being Vietnamese.

1:01:21But I have to, we can sympathize, I'm sure a lot of you can sympathize with me, where we don't know who we are. We're stuck in a third place. We can never be truly American. We can never be truly rooted in who we are. So my journey started five years ago, where I started cooking pop-ups, and I was cooking other people's food, and they're like, aren't you Vietnamese? I'm like, I don't know anything about Vietnamese food. That challenge propped an opportunity for me to talk more and connect with my mom over recipes, not over history, but through the recipes, These memories would trigger, shoot, cry, right?

1:01:54Because it would trigger moments of starvation, memories of people who have passed. And all these beautiful stories, hard but beautiful stories came out of it. So I would encourage you, just like a job promotion, a friendship, a love relationship, a passion project or hobby. If you want to be great at something, if you want to learn more about something, including yourself, put the work into it. And as painful as it's been for my family and myself, it's been amazing. It's been refreshing. Because for those who are dealing with parents who have trauma, it's always worth it. Because you learn who they are as people, and you remove the sort of stigma of who they are as parents.

1:02:43And you look at them as, oh, my mom was beautiful. My mom was young. and my father wasn't so grumpy all the time, right?

1:02:54And all of our parents have different timelines. You don't know when that timeline is going to end. If they live a full life, amazing. If they don't, that's unfortunate, but I would do it as soon as possible. Connect with them. Learn stories and listen. Listening is a skill, remember that. Sit there, listen, absorb, right? and then you realize that you are just the 2025 version of them. In my view, I feel like when your parents, they were trying to, you know, they did it out of love, right? They didn't want you, they wanted you to be more American at that time because they thought that was an easier life for you and stuff.

1:03:31But at the end of the day, it's really important to know both sides and connect with the pain as well, right? This is a universal concept, you know, specifically regarding our mothers. Like our mothers, we are in our mother's stomach for eight to... Nine months. Nine months. Is the usual amount, yes. My apologies. Nine months, right? Forty weeks. Forty weeks. Thank you. Thank you. Forty weeks. Right? And if they're lucky, we live under their roof. We're with them in constant interaction for 18 years. And if we live a full life, those 18 years with them compared to our 90... What's the life expectancy now?

1:04:1180, 90 years? Yeah, between that. For the rest of our lives, for the most part, we are, as an American standard, right? We are out of their homes. We are out of their lives. We're living our own lives. Yeah. Right? And as a 40-year-old man, I know I look 20. As a 40-year-old man, I started to understand this universal concept. I looked at my parents now as a 40, and I see that they're old now. Right? They're getting frail. Right? And this is true for every moment in time, every generation. Right? That's not an old thing. That's not a new thing. Right? So if I can, you guys probably know this, but if I can spark a little bit of inspiration, love the people around you.

1:04:54You know, time is the most expensive thing that you don't have. Right? So connect with your people. Learn your stories. Everyone has beautiful stories. I never thought I'd be in Google headquarters on a show, cookbook. Yeah. I was ashamed of my story. I think everyone has a beautiful story. You just got to dig for it. Exactly. And if I was to add to that, even if it's not for reconnecting with culture, just get to know your parents a little bit more. I feel the same thing with you. As I age and as my parents age, I'm realizing that I always knew them as mom and dad, not as who they were before or the type of people they were and before they had me and that kind of stuff.

1:05:35So it's super powerful. We do have a couple of questions online as well. One of them is, it's on this topic, you are a great chef, but what is your favorite dish that your mom makes that you know wouldn't be good if you made it? If I could round the cookbook. Yeah. So for my birthday, my mom said I was always the easiest child because for my birthday, opposed to getting presents, she would ask me what dish did I want her to make? And it's a very easy recipe, it's called Bum Yum. B-U-N, one word. space, N-H-A-M. And that is a very regional specific dish. And it's a rice noodle salad. And that's why I put it on my cover.

1:06:15Oh, beautiful. And the thing that this, it's rice noodles, all the herbs, there's perilla, there's mint, there's banana flour that you shred very thinly. And it's very reminiscent of red cabbage, that sort of flavor and taste profile. Bean sprouts, sometimes green papaya shredded very thinly. and grated coconut and shrimp floss, which is basically dried shrimp that's blitz and pulsed and or pounded to turn into like these fine shrimp, dried shrimp fibers, almost like shrimp jerky, but dried. Garnished on top makes it super umami and then this everyday fish sauce and coconut milk. Hack. Suggestion.

1:06:59Fish sauce and coconut milk together is the most amazing combination. And for our southwest region of Vietnam, that combination is usually combined for anything that's fresh, specifically salads. So I would recommend, if you're making a salad at home, especially a rice noodle salad, do the fish sauce with some warm coconut milk. It's the best combination. You get fat. My mouth is salivating.

1:07:31It's fatty, silky, salty, aromatic, a little bit sweet. So that's the dish I would do with the book cover. It's not that hard to do either. It's a salad. And it looks beautiful as well. One last question. Anybody in the room? So like with the recent success of new wave Vietnamese cooking, like Gao Kitchen and Chef Thuai and things like that, Where do you see Vietnamese cuisine going next? I love New Wave Vietnamese cuisine. I welcome and encourage more of it because identities are complex. I feel that this year, it was an amazing year for Vietnamese cookbook authors, Thuay included. But there's only like five Vietnamese cookbooks.

1:08:13I want 50 Vietnamese cookbooks this year. I never thought there'd be a day that Vietnamese food would be trendy or there'd be a space for it. I encourage more of it because I want people to understand when I'm celebrating Vietnamese cuisine it's not a nationalist thing not at all I'm very proud to be Vietnamese but the more nuances we put into our identities I find people more people can relate to it they could be like it humanizes the space it doesn't exotify it right that's the last thing I want to do I don't want to be like this is authentic and you know this is a fixated identity on how things need to be like no I want someone who is from South Africa to be like, that's so similar to what my family does.

1:08:57We use coconut milk in the same way. Or somebody from Senegal, like, you have egg rolls in your cookbook? We have egg rolls in Senegal, too. Quick story. Senegalese, Senegal in Africa, there's a French colony there. They brought, during the French and Vietnamese Di Binh Phu War, they brought Senegalese soldiers to Vietnam opposed to fighting the war they fell in love with Vietnamese women Vietnamese women came but went back to Senegal and that's how you end up with egg rolls in Senegal. Wow yeah how about that no at the end of the day it's just good food right? That's the thing you would think that DER or celebration of other people's cultures is not making space for other people but it actually is it's a way to bridge people together right?

1:09:43Absolutely. So thanks for your question. Yes, thank you. And thank you guys all again. Thank you, Shep, too. Wonderful.

1:09:53Thanks for listening. You can watch this episode and tons of other great content at youtube.com slash talks at Google. Talk soon.