After having now cooked about a dozen recipes from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen by Andrea Nguyen, I can highly recommend this cookbook, especially for those just learning Vietnamese cooking. The recipes are well adapted to the American kitchen (Nguyen came to Southern California as a young child with her family) with easy to follow detailed instructions. In addition to a broad range of recipes, the book includes sections on Vietnamese ingredients and kitchen equipment.
There is also a short history of Vietnamese cuisine and the story of Nguyen’s family’s flight from Vietnam just before the fall of Saigon. The artistic photos accompanying the recipes inspire both Vietnamese cooking and food photography. The book, together with a large bottle of fish sauce, makes a great gift for yourself or your favorite cook.