New Vietnamese Cuisine : MARKETS : The Best of Little Saigon: Made in America

* Little Saigon Supermarket, 9822 Bolsa Ave., Westminster, (714) 531-7272, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

The powerful whirling helicopter blades kicked up thick clouds of dust as Twan Ngo pushed her youngest child into a hovering American chopper. It was April 27, 1975, three days before the fall of Saigon and the last time Ngo would see her suburban Saigon home.

Many of the 165,000 Vietnamese who came to the United States in the first post-war wave of immigrants were relocated in Northeastern or Midwestern cities. At first the Ngos found themselves in Green Bay, Wis., where, as you might expect, they found little in the way of Vietnamese food.

Eventually, along with many fellow transplanted Vietnamese, the Ngos wound up in Orange County near the neighborhood centered on Bolsa Avenue--and running from Westminster through Garden Grove to Santa Ana--that came to be known as Little Saigon. Lured by the warmer climate and a growing, cohesive Vietnamese community, the Ngos found many ties to their culture here, one of the strongest being the ready availability of Vietnamese foods and ingredients.

“You won’t find most of these vegetables in Wisconsin,” Ngo says, picking over the greens in the produce section of the bright, ultra-modern Little Saigon Supermarket on Bolsa Ave. By “these vegetables,” she means the dozens of Vietnamese specialties such as bac ha , the pale green spongy stems that go into sour soup, or muop huong , a squash resembling a large zucchini.

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In recent years, specialty produce farming has turned into a livelihood for a number of local Vietnamese farmers, evolving hand in hand with a now-sizable Vietnamese food industry. Many of these California-grown or -made goods are distributed nationwide to serve the million or so Vietnamese who have come to the United States over the years.

At the center of this commercial activity is Orange County, where Vietnamese residents officially increased 271% in the last decade (the Vietnamese-American Political Action Committee contends the number is nearly twice what the census reports). The sheer size of this local customer base opened up a lucrative market for prepared foods as well as shelf-stable items; in much smaller Vietnamese communities, it probably wouldn’t be economic to market these perishables.

But at Little Saigon Supermarket, Ngo chooses from an increasing range of Vietnamese-style processed meats, all sorts of fresh noodles, herbs, pickled vegetables and soy products (such as fresh tofu and soy milk) that are impossible to import. The selection has made Vietnamese eating here as close to authentic as it gets outside of Vietnam itself.

As the selection shows, Little Saigon Supermarket owner David Tran knows the Vietnamese food business inside and out. Tran came to the Little Saigon area when it was still in its awkward growth stages--a mere stretch of bean and strawberry fields, flower warehouses and bottling plants, and just a few Vietnamese stores and businesses.

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He had left Vietnam in ’78 on a crowded boat and ended up temporarily in Escondido, learning English and studying to be an electronic technician. Tran found it impossible to support his family on a technician’s wages, but having been a businessman (a bicycle wholesaler, to be exact) in Vietnam, he perceived a growing need for Vietnamese wholesale food distribution. He formed Delta Food Company and began to supply Orange County’s escalating number of Vietnamese restaurants and markets with wholesale produce and other ingredients used for Vietnamese and Chinese cooking.

As time went on, local Asian farmers began to produce small quantities of specialty herbs and vegetables. “Some would ask him to distribute them,” says Denise Tran, who is David’s sister-in-law and also vice-president of the market.

The 1975 Vietnam trade embargo meant an end to Vietnamese imports. Producers in other Asian countries, particularly Thailand, began putting Vietnamese-language labels on foods they had in common with Vietnam, such as fish paste, dry rice noodles and curry powder, and exporting them to the US for the expatriate market. In the beginning, Tran stocked a lot of these items, but they weren’t created specifically for the Vietnamese palate, and many Vietnamese cooks have never ceased to regard them as mere substitutes.

Now, however, Vietnamese in this country are no longer dependent on imports. They’re producing their own extravagant assortments of Vietnamese-style sauces, spice blends, pickled fish, fresh rice papers, deli foods, sweets, beverages and baked goods, all made in America.

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There’s as much competition among the various brands of these foods as there is between American breakfast cereal or coffee companies. You see five or six styles of curry powder and at least that many of the fresh hot chile sauce called tuong ot toi (not to mention many other varieties of hot sauce). Four companies manufacture the skinny fresh rice-noodle cakes called banh hoi and at least half a dozen make the bologna-like Vietnamese sausages chua lua and cha bi. The UPC bar-coded packages of fish dumpling paste in the freezer case also come from several companies.

In addition, Little Saigon Supermarket stocks prepared deli foods such as cakes, vegetable-filled rice noodle rolls, taro balls, mung bean desserts and other tidbits, all from bakeries and snack shops in the area. These are displayed on a huge table in the middle of the store and their packaging is still rather basic: foam trays enveloped in shrink wrap or “clam shell” boxes designed for take-out foods. But the manufactured foods’ packaging is starting to get more sophisticated.

Now there are even convenience products such as spice packets to flavor duck soup, mixes for Vietnamese rice rolls and a Hamburger Helper-like mix to season bo kho , the Vietnamese beef stew. So far though, no Vietnamese TV dinners have become part of this burgeoning industry’s repertoire.

Shopping List

It’s not possible to cover all the locally made Vietnamese products here but this will give you a little taste of what’s out there.

SOUP SEASONING MIXES

Noodle soups are a daily food in Vietnam, as popular as breakfast cereals or hamburgers in this country. Over there, few people bother to make them at home, since the soups are sold on practically every street corner. Expatriates apparently take a different view, for there are scores of styles and brands of convenience-style soup seasoning blends on the market. These aren’t instant soups but rather a combination of spices in a tea bag-like sachet that you cook (usually with meat) to make broth with just the right taste.

Vifaco, in La Mesa, makes seasoning for pho , the famous Vietnamese beef noodle soup, and they’ve put fairly good English directions on their box. (You can also get the right meats for this soup in the butcher section and the proper fresh thin rice noodles in the fresh rice noodle section, near the produce.) Anise, cinnamon, ginger and allspice are the soup’s predominating flavors.

Pho originated in the beef-eating North, but in Hue, where the food is spicy, they use beef and pork-hock for their soup called bun bo Hue (pronounced boon bo whey ). Bun is the style of fresh rice noodle that goes into the soup; bo is the braised beef that garnishes it. Kung Sing, based in Santa Ana, makes bun bo Hue seasonings, available in sachets. Kung Sing also makes a pho seasoning and has a long list of seasoning mixes in its line.

Not to be outdone by all this, the D & D Gold Product Corporation in Santa Ana, which often packages products under the Golden Bell label, has the exclusive rights to manufacture a pho soup seasoning base from a recipe of the well-known noodle soup restaurant chain Pho Hoa. (For a Vietnamese company that’s kind of like having the recipe for McDonald’s secret sauce.)

Joseph Dinh, the nephew of one of D & D’s owners, suggests that for the best flavor, you should not make soup the regular way, adding the spices at the beginning. Instead, you should simmer meat and onion in water until the broth is almost done and add the seasoning packet only in the last 30 minutes.

D & D also makes seasoning packets for duck noodle soup and is a manufacturer of Vietnamese-style spice mixes, condiments, and mixes for flour products such as dumplings and pancakes. One of the company’s principles, Sam Tieu, manufactured chile paste and plum sauce in Vietnam. At first he worked as a chef in this country and eventually used his food production expertise to become a major partner in D & G Gold which does have an excellent chile sauce in its line.

CURRY PASTE AND POWDER

Although the French and Chinese have left a more significant mark on Vietnam’s cooking, India has contributed curry, primarily in the south. Unlike the Thais, with their various red, green, orange, yellow and roasted curry mixtures, the Vietnamese have just one sort of cari (as they call it). It’s Madras-style, ocher-colored and tasting predominantly of the warm Indian spices: turmeric, cinnamon, cloves and cumin. What goes into the curry dish is another matter--it may be chicken with lemon grass, or shrimp or squid or tofu. I’ve even had goat curry in our Vietnamese restaurants.

Little Saigon Supermarket devotes a sizeable hunk of shelf space to curry powder mixtures and curry pastes suspended in oil. Kung Sing brand cari ni an do is the curry powder and cari dau an do is the paste. Golden Bell, of Pho Hoa fame, also makes curry powder and paste, as does Zesty Foods, the distributor for Pepper House International.

MORE SEASONING MIXES:

Among the spice mixtures in Kung Sing’s extensive line is Seasoning for Orange Duck. The instructions are in English and Vietnamese and they tell you blend the seasoning mix with butter, rub it on four pounds of whole duck legs, then bake. Kung Sing also makes Oriental Spices for Catfish. Denise Tran says, “You simply sprinkle on the filleted fish before cooking it, preferably over charcoal--but broiling is OK.”

Bo Kho Seasoning: Vietnamese beef stew, which has Chinese seasonings and is served with French bread, is basically a simple dish to make; the only complicated thing is gathering the long list of seasonings that go into it. To the rescue: Kung Sing’s gia vi nau kho , which means (roughly translated) “stew seasonings.” You use the seasoning to marinate the stew beef before simmering it in liquid.

Fresh Chile Sauce: Many companies make Vietnamese fresh chile sauce called tuong ot toi , but Huy Fong brand is the one that seems to be everywhere--from Mexican delis to gourmet shops. Maybe it’s because Huy Fong was smart enough to print the label in Spanish, French, Chinese and English as well as Vietnamese. This sauce of roughly pureed fresh red chiles, with their seeds, is potent--nothing you’d want to dip corn chips into. Huy Fong also makes a chile and garlic sauce and a smooth seedless chile puree labled Sriracha, after the Thai sauce.

MARINATED, PRESERVED FISH PRODUCTS

Mrs. Binh Harrison started Viet-My, her fish importing and packing company, in Alexandria, Va., back in 1972. She procured Vietnamese mudfish, gourami and anchovies, marinated them and packed them in the Vietnamese manner (but in a USDA-approved plant, using the purest sea salt, imported from Holland). To most Vietnamese, the flavor of these salted fish is as basic as salt and pepper in a Western setting. Without them, certain dishes are like garlic bread without the garlic.

When the embargo cut off her import supply, Harrison had to scout around for a new way to get the salted fish she required. After an unsuccessful attempt to make her product from Thai preserved fish, she eventually found a Singaporean supplier that could cure the product to her exacting standards. The freshwater fish she uses, such as mudfish and gourami, must be cleaned and salted down within 40 minutes of being alive.

And what do you do with Viet-My’s anchovies of the East? Mam thai chau doc, which is marinated fillet of salted mudfish, is the obligatory seasoning for mam chung , a sort of steamed Vietnamese-style meatloaf. It’s also eaten with pork belly slices with mint and herbs, rolled in rice paper burrito-style. Mam nem xay, or ground anchovies, is an essential ingredient in the dipping sauce for Vietnamese-style beef fondue and many other dishes. And mam loc chau doc, whole salted and marinated mudfish, is delicious steamed under a layer of seasoned pork puree (see meats).

Viet-My now makes about 16 other products including a soy bean paste sauce called tuong bac cu da, which serves as a dipping sauce for fried tofu or stir-fried rau muong (Chinese watercress). Because it is high in protein, tuong bac cua ca is popular as a vegetarian food.

BEVERAGES

Mighty Soy, Vita Soy, Wy Ky Foods, Soy Foods of America and Visoy Foods are all makers of soy milk. Both Chinese and Vietnamese love this lightly beany-tasting liquid as breakfast. They often eat the unsweetened version warm with a dash of chile oil and Chinese crullers (yu t’iau, which are sold here in the deli area). The sweetened soy drinks aren’t ignored at breakfast, but they are also popular as a pick-me-up snack and come in handy six-ounce bottles as well as larger containers.

Visoy also makes an herb-infused sugar cane drink that they label Imperatae and Cane Drink. No one could figure out what imperatae means, but the Chinese characters on Visoy’s label say that the cane juice is steeped with mao gen , a plant or medicinal herb that is thought to be a cooling element in the diet. This is why the drink is so popular on hot days. If sugar cane juice doesn’t sound appealing, you might want to try Visoy’s Iced Chrysanthemum Tea.

Roasted Brown Rice Drink Mix: This mild-tasting flour with roasty overtones contains barely a trace of sugar. The label claims it is good for babies and explains that you can drink it hot or cold. The drink is another product made by Kung Sing spice company. According to Denise Tran, you mix it into milk or water like Milo (a prepared drink like Ovaltine, popular all over Southeast Asia).

GREEN VEGETABLES

Little Saigon Supermarket’s produce department has all sorts of vegetables I’d never seen before my visit. Fortunately, I met Mrs. Tuyet Luu, a steady customer at the store, who explained in great detail how to cook my newly discovered greens.

“For this,” she said of the muop huong, a large slender green squash, “you peel off the skin and fry your meat in garlic first and then toss in the squash for a few minutes, because it cooks very fast.” It’s also best to cut the squash, which has a slightly spongy texture, into rather large pieces so it won’t overcook so readily. For soups, muop huong is traditionally paired with rau den, the red amaranth leaves often called Chinese spinach or red spinach.

Chile leaves may be called la ot or rau ot in Vietnamese. Unlike the spicy fruit of the chile plant, the pointy, triangular leaves have a mild flavor, rather like a somewhat intense spinach. Because their texture is more substantial, they are much easier than spinach to fry. There are often delicious little flowers in the bunches, and both leaves and flowers are wonderful deep-fried. Mrs. Luu also suggests using them in shrimp soup or any stir-fry dish.

Dot bi, or opo squash leaves, are broad and slightly fuzzy with hollow stems. I suggest removing the stems because I find them harsh-tasting and stringy, but the leaves lose their slightly fuzzy quality when they are cooked in broth.

La trau, also known as betel palm, are flat, sturdy, vividly green leaves shaped like teardrops. They are not for cooking but “for the old people to chew,” in Tran’s words.

Can nuoc is a milder breed of celery than the Chinese celery called ca vin in Vietnamese. The latter is added to stir-fries as a seasoning, while can nuoc is stir-fried either with meat or on its own. It’s especially good with strips of beef, Mrs. Luu says.

NOODLES

The 1,000-year Chinese presence in Vietnam imposed more than chopsticks and stir-frying on the local eating habits. It also left noodles, which loom large in the Vietnamese diet. Noodles are not just lunch dishes or midnight snacks. They appear at almost every meal--in soups, in stir-fries, or mixed with bits of meat or fish and fresh herbs and wrapped in lettuce and/or rice paper.

You have to go to three parts of the market to see all the noodles. Dry noodles are on the right wall at the front of the store. There’s a cooler in one of the aisles for fresh wheat noodles.

Fresh Rice Noodles: Fresh rice noodles, which come in half a dozen widths, have their own section next to the produce department. They include products from the V.N. noodle company and Ban Hoi Chao Doc No. 2, who make the fresh rice vermicelli called bun toi. Several other companies make the familiar wide flat rice noodles.

You can tell competition is fierce in the fresh rice noodle business because there are at least four brands of banh hoi. These are lacy noodle doilies that look like they’ve been made from thread. Banh hoi are used like a tortilla to pick up morsels of barbecued meat or grilled meat balls wrapped in a morsel of lettuce and garnished with a few leafy herbs from the ever-present Vietnamese salad platter.

MEATS

Cold Cuts: The Vietnamese love their French-inspired cold cuts, and they show up in many guises. Thinly sliced, they’re eaten with sheer rice noodle sheets, several sprigs of a fresh herb and dipping sauce. Or they may be layered on a French roll spread with mayonnaise to make the Vietnamese-style submarine sandwiches called banh mi.

There are products from no fewer than six meat companies in Little Saigon Supermarket’s cooler against the back wall and in the freezer opposite it. A random sampling of their wares would find the inevitable cha lua (also called gio lua ), with its bologna-like texture and banana-leaf wrapper. Cha bi has a similar flavor but a crunchy texture from pork skin threads. There’s a Vietnamese version of fromage de tete (head cheese)--unappetizingly labeled by one company as “steamed pig’s head loaf.” All these and more sausage varieties are produced by Great Wall, Great River, Tay Ho, Phu Huong and the Viet-Hung Paris company.

Que Hong, another meat company, makes thit doi, a cured pork roll with an ultra-thin wrapping of steamed pork-skin. The snowy covering makes the roll look like a cylindrical French pate.

Meat Balls: A popular specialty made by Que Hong, among several other companies, is bo vien, a smooth-textured meat ball that is put into soups and used as one of the ingredients in hot-pot dinners. Tay Ho makes a seasoned, ground pork mix, nem nuong, which is usually made into meatballs and barbecued. Similarly, Phu Hong makes gio song, a smooth seasoned pork paste that can also be barbecued or mixed with salted fish and steamed as a sort of meat loaf. The paste is sold frozen.

Frozen Fish Paste: If fish meat emulsion doesn’t strike you as particularly appetizing, you haven’t yet learned to ignore the creative names on some Asian labels. If you were to call the Gai Phat Food company’s fish paste a quenelle base, or even a dumpling, it might be more appealing. In any case, this smooth puree of mild fish is lightly seasoned with garlic, onion and spices and its wonderful fried as little patties or scooped with two spoons into tiny egg shapes and poached in hot broth.