Vietnamese food, Vietnamese house, Vietnamese people and love story

“Vietnamese Food is Home” is a collection of short essays on culinary culture, which you can read a little bit every day, leisurely while drinking morning tea or taking advantage of the last metro ride home. But for Vietnamese women, this can also be considered an interesting handbook about dishes, culinary addresses, and customs of each Vietnamese family.

The book is divided into 6 parts, like a metaphor for fortune in Vietnamese culture. Part one is about special markets with traditional snacks from North to South. Part two, called "Com hang chao cho, ai loi the trai" is about typical culinary experiences with rustic yet delicious dishes such as broken rice, porridge, bread... Part three, Ann Lee divides home-cooked meals by day of the week, as if reminding people of the warm meals that always linger in their minds. Part four, "Mung 1 early in the morning", is a gentle essay about culinary dishes to burn incense on holidays. Part five is about the leaves in Vietnamese meals, where people may not have meat or fish, but the meals always have a lot of vegetables. Part six is about experiences about customs and manners, the cultural undercurrents from Vietnamese meals, from which we can see the warm and cold presence of life every day through a bowl of rice, a cup of tea or sometimes just pepper or chili...

At the beginning of the book, Ann Lee writes: “The tigers go down the mountain, go to the ocean, but sometimes they still turn back, missing the forest where they were born. The children who leave the sunny, warm city, leave the green, shady countryside, leave the home garden with the yellow squash trellis, the cool, sweet rainwater tank, even if they travel all over the world, until they grow up and grow old, will still remember the flavors of the dishes raised by their grandmothers, mothers, and beloved aunts who held their hands when they were young, as well as those who stay behind, no matter how many years have passed, still remember every sweet and fragrant taste their children loved. How can we not grow up and forever miss Vietnamese dishes, no matter where we are, they remind us of home?”

Indeed, when reading the pages of “Vietnamese food is home”, one can clearly imagine the portrait of Vietnamese women in every home. That woman, regardless of her appearance, when standing in the kitchen filled with the smell of fish sauce and the dishes being stirred, will always radiate a bright aura. Because no wife or mother would pour out bitter resentment into meals for her husband and children.

Writing about familiar rustic dishes, but not just simply describing how to cook and eat, but always hidden in each word of Ann Lee is the flavor of each land where those fresh products are born, it is the experiences passed down from grandmother to mother to daughter, it is the eating and living habits of many generations of Vietnamese people.

Ann Lee divided the family meals into a weekly schedule, each day with a different tray of food, and Sunday was the perfect and proper guest meal. There, Ann Lee played the role of the kitchen owner, confiding about cooking, eating, kitchen and family, past and present, only revolving around family meals, with dishes that everyone had tried or ate regularly every day, but there were pages that touched the readers' hearts, here and there like reminders, here and there like a pause in the children's hearts when thinking about their parents....

As a daughter, a mother and soon to be a grandmother, Ann Lee dedicates to her writings the kindest, warmest and most cherished words, as if cherishing the loving affections of her life. In the pages she writes about dishes, about rustic cakes, about street food, home-cooked meals or culinary ingredients, it is always clear as if she is carefully taking care of the kitchen and meals for her own family every day. The big message behind the story of food and gifts is that wherever there is smoke from the kitchen, there is someone cooking and waiting for us to return, that place is our home. Food nourishes us every day, and the way women take care of their families through meals nourishes the Vietnamese soul, so that wherever we go, we still feel home in the heart of that kitchen.

The culinary journey that Ann Lee presents in the small book is the journey to find the love that is gradually disappearing in the modern city, where women have to go to work to earn money and rush to prepare meals for their families. It seems that Ann Lee wants to remind young girls, like her daughter, that we are constantly striving to become better versions of ourselves, but what we need to keep is to become a happy person. And the happiness of every Vietnamese family is often most clearly shown through each meal...

Ann Lee is the pen name of journalist Le Lan Anh, who has been involved in the women's magazine industry for many years. She was the co-founder and developer of the publication "Today's Women" for many years, and devoted much of her time to the topics of women, marriage and children. After books such as "Beloved Forty", "Still in Love", "Eat and Love and Eat and Love", "Just Love Is Enough", "Hello Yesterday's Love", "Daughter-in-law 4.0, Modern Mother-in-law"... Ann Lee sent readers the essay collection "Vietnamese Dishes Are Home", as a gift for women on the eve of March 8, 2025.