“So do I put the fish sauce before or after the garlic and ginger?” I impatiently asked my mother, my ear pressed against my cell phone while hastily tossing ingredients into a wok. It was my first attempt at making gà kho, a caramelized chicken dish, as part of a traditional home-style Vietnamese dinner for my foodie friends in Seattle.    

After an inauspicious start — the chicken looked soggy and smelled too salty — the sugar melted and browned and the flavors amalgamated to the way mom used to make it. The meal was a hit, and when I visit my friends in the Northwest, a return to Vietnamese cuisine is always on top of the agenda.

I remember feeling so much pride and not just because I didn’t butcher the meal. I’ve always believed that food is an open window into a community’s rich culture, heritage and history. Most of my friends in the rainy city never had tried Vietnamese food and their first experience was a pleasant one. It made them want to test more. 

That same pride in our cuisine is partly why Santa Cruz, Calif., resident Andrea Nguy?n wrote “Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors” (Ten Speed Press, $35).

The 344-page book is one of the most comprehensive on Vietnamese fare with more than 175 recipes and 50 glossy color photographs. What makes this book special is that it does not just give an accurate portrayal of Vietnamese food, but also gives context to the country’s history and culture. 

The volume, out this fall, begins with Nguy?n’s journey from the Far East to West and then takes the reader through the roots of Vietnamese cooking, tips on using fish sauce and an ingredient guide.

“Context is very important. Many people out there think that Vietnamese food was heavily influenced by the French and that’s not true. The French were in there for a very short period of time. Vietnamese people have had the repeated pattern of being invaded and kicking foreigners out but absorbing the best of those foreign ideas and making it their own,” Nguy?n said. 

“It’s a fantastic survival tactic. That’s why our language, culture and cuisine have Chinese, Indian, Southeast Asian as well as French influence,” she said. Add in the American and Australian food experiences, Vietnamese cuisine “has these other layers and that it is constantly moving and I wanted to put that across.”

Nguy?n, 37, tested each recipe four to five times and had non-Vietnamese folks recreate each dish to make sure the instructions could be used by anyone.

“With most books about Vietnamese cuisine in the United States...the instructions are not very clear for whether you are a first-generation Vietnamese or if you’re not Vietnamese at all and don’t get it,” she explained.

My editor and I thought it would be a great idea to visit her at her parents’ home in San Clemente, Calif., and try four of the book’s recipes in advance of one of the biggest family-eating days of the year: Thanksgiving. I know what you’re thinking. Life as a journalist is a tough. I lived through it, though, and I came ready with an empty stomach.

When I got to the house, Nguy?n had just finished chopping freshwater apple snails, shitaake mushrooms and scallions into bite-sized pieces for a steamed dish in her mother’s kitchen. Her mom, Nguy?n Th? Tuy?t, was in the backyard carefully scooping out heaping tablespoons of shrimp and sweet potato batter into a metal pot filled with canola oil.

“Bánh tôm should be like this,” Nguy?n Tuy?t said as she fished out a delectably golden fritter the size of a baby’s fist. “This is the tradition.”

The two continued to prepare a traditional four-course meal just as they’ve done since the family arrived to the United States after the end of the war in 1975.

“When my mother left Vi?t Nam, she could take very little and one of the few things she could stuff into her purse was a very tiny notebook of handwritten family recipes,”  Nguy?n recalled.

“My parents are Vietnamese foodies and when we settled here in San Clemente, there just weren’t that many other Vietnamese around. The only way we preserved our heritage was through food.”

It’s a heritage Nguy?n Tuy?t nurtured with her little ones. Even though she worked 18-hour days as a seamstress, she found time to use those cherished recipes to serve meals with her children’s help.

Her own father had paid close attention to the details of food and how it was cooked, and she passed that on to her youngsters. Everyone had a job from preparing the food, to cleaning and even setting the table down to the placement of the chopsticks. 

Raised with the nightly meals; the notebook and love for all sorts of cookbooks led the author to write “Into the Vietnamese Kitchen.” Nguy?n also remembered times when her mom and her mom’s friends would talk of how to correctly  recreate the dishes of their homeland and pass the knowledge on to her.

“I knew how important it was to them and also in terms to my own identity, and how the food forms and shapes my identity because that’s all we had,” Nguy?n said. 

“We didn’t live in Little Saigon. We weren’t a full part of that community. We were here so we had to create it for ourselves and we did that through food. We also shared it with other people, whether Vietnamese or non-Vietnamese.”

Nguy?n hadn’t planned for a life in the culinary arts. She had graduated with a business degree from the University of Southern California and was working as a college administrator when she started writing about Asian cuisine part-time for local papers and culinary magazines.

The idea for a cookbook hatched when she was a child but she didn’t begin to collect and refine recipes until about 10 years ago.

“I just had it in my back pocket. I was eating this food and having these experiences  and knowing that what my family experienced here in the United States and the importance of food to us was worth putting out there for other people,” Nguy?n said. 

“At first there were people who said I was way too young to really know what I was doing.”

But she kept writing. Then one day in 2003, she hooked up with Phil Wood, president and founder of Ten Speed Press, who was instantly taken by her history and enthusiasm.

“I knew she would do a wonderful book when I first met her when she began talking about her family’s early days and her relationship with food,” Wood noted.

“We immediately signed her up.”

He agreed to the project because there was a need for a book about Vietnamese cuisine that was reader friendly with modern design and photography elements.

“There were some other books about Vietnamese food but she’s got the best book on the subject.  There was nothing out there that explains what food really means to the Vietnamese family,” Wood said.   

Wood offered her a book contract in early 2004.
 
“By the time I got the contract I knew what 90 percent of the recipes (that) were going to be in the book because I had already mapped it all out and knew where all my chapters were,” Nguy?n said.

“So the way the book is organized is the project I wanted to do since I was 10.”

One of the main things Nguy?n wanted to  convey  was the pride the Vietnamese have in their food. 

“I often times hear people be apologetic to Westerners and say things like ‘fish sauce is stinky’ or ‘you won’t like that,’” she said. 

“Millions of people have been eating it for eons so it can’t be bad. I think that people should not be apologetic about the cuisine of their country especially if they really love it.

“I was always interested in food, not just cooking it but really researching it and learning the history and presenting it and teaching people. This book really allowed me to do that.”

Nguy?n Tuy?t said she is pleased that the recipes have found their way into the volume so future generations can enjoy them.

“With Andrea’s book, she holds on to the old traditions but shows them in a new way. With this book you learn something that belongs to the old time and you can change and adjust to your own way,” she added.

By the end of our meal my stomach was at ease. The servings were incredible and sitting there with Nguy?n and her parents. it reminded me how special it was to share an authentic  meal with those you care about. It made me eager for my own family Thanksgiving.

As for Nguy?n, she continues to cook, write and was gearing up to teach students about basics of Vietnamese cuisine. She still holds on to her mother’s orange notebook, now carefully placed in a plastic bag for safe keeping. 

“It’s a family heirloom and my mom gave it to me when I got the contract. She’s like, ‘Here, you can have it now. I have my recipe box.’ ”

And now, so can the rest of the world.

Rice soup with chicken seafood and mushroom