How the First Family of Fish Sauce Does a Holiday Feast
Cuong Pham, Apple engineer turned food legend, celebrates the holidays with seasonal recipes from The Red Boat Fish Sauce Cookbook. Read on for celebratory recipes—and the stories behind them—from the Pham repertoire.
Thomas J. Story
Chef Diep Tran joins Tiffany, Ann, Cuong, Tracy, and Kevin Pham, along with cookbook co-author Tien Nguyen to celebrate the holidays at the Phams’ Napa Valley home.
Cuong Pham uncorks a split of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon he bought at auction and pours a glass for his son, Kevin. They toast, swirl, and sip, assessing the glycerin levels, the color, the aroma. Cuong’s wife, Ann, and daughters Tracy and Tiffany join in the tasting and nod in approval. The family knows a thing or two about barrel-aged artisanal products: They own and run Red Boat Fish Sauce, the world’s premier manufacturer of the essential Vietnamese condiment.
It’s a clear day here on Napa Valley’s Silverado Trail and Cuong and the Pham family have gathered on the patio to celebrate any number of occasions worth toasting: It’s the tenth anniversary of the launch of Red Boat, Cuong and Ann just purchased this sprawling brick traditional on a hill ringed with oaks and boasting sweeping views of Napa Valley, and Cuong is about to embark on a new venture as a budding winemaker, the third career for this former Apple engineer turned food legend.
“Fish sauce and wine have a lot in common,” says Cuong. Not only are they both artisanal products that are aged in barrels, Cuong also points out that “they both are heavily influenced by terroir.”
The terroir of Red Boat fish sauce is Vietnam’s Phú Quốc Island and its surrounding waters, where the best black anchovies swim and where Cuong’s barrelhouse ages and ferments the product that helped bring the family to this celebratory moment.
Thomas J. Story
While Red Boat was once the go-to secret ingredient for cooks and chefs who used it to boost the flavor of marinades, sauces, dips, and more, now it’s on the shelves of just about every grocery store in the U.S. And it only exists because Cuong missed the taste of home. Specifically the fish sauce he’d grown up with in Saigon, a briny concoction that gives umami-packed depth of flavor to countless dishes in the Vietnamese culinary repertoire, from the versatile salty-sweet dipping sauce nước chấm to caramelized lemongrass pork chops to rice-noodle salads scattered with herbs.
And, of course, today Red Boat is showing up in the dishes of the feast cooked by Diep Tran, the Los Angeles–based chef behind the lauded but now closed Good Girl Dinette. Tran is now Red Boat’s development chef and co-author of the forthcoming The Red Boat Fish Sauce Cookbook: Beloved Recipes from the Family Behind the Purest Fish Sauce, a compendium of new and classic Vietnamese recipes that serves as a master class in fish sauce cookery. All of the dishes served today are from the cookbook, so the affair is as much a book launch party as it is a holiday feast.
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In the kitchen, Diep is joined by co-author Tien Nguyen and various members of the family as the afternoon unfolds. Scallions are sizzled in oil, shrimp paste is packed around sugarcane to be grilled, a savory-salty-sour cocktail of fermented Meyer lemon and vodka is mixed, and the table is set. The centerpiece is a show-stopping turkey, a dish that Diep has been cooking since her days at Good Girl. It’s been brined in a marinade of ground coriander, fresh ginger, sugar, and, yes, fish sauce, then spatchcocked to roast evenly until gloriously bronzed and lacquered. It’s without a doubt the best roast turkey we’ve tasted in years.
Read on for celebratory recipes—and the stories behind them—from the Pham repertoire. Whether they’re classic or brand new, one and all they’re fresh, vibrant, and guaranteed to become instant classics at your holiday feast.
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Salted Meyer Lemon Cocktail
This cocktail is a boozy take on the beloved soda chanh muôi, the salted lemonade soda found at restaurants, bakeries, and street stalls throughout Vietnam. Leave out the vodka for a refreshing drink any time of year. Salting and preserving the lemons takes three months, but that investment of time is worth it; once made, they’ll last indefinitely.
Sticky Rice
No matter the holiday or special occasion, sticky rice is always, always part of the feast. These days, of course, satchels of glutinous rice can be found at most markets, and a rice cooker with a sticky or sweet rice setting will cook the rice in no time. Here’s one of the Pham family’s favorite versions, where Chinese sausage, and fluffy-salty-sweet pork floss are gently folded into the sticky rice, which is then finished with a shower of fried shallots. We can eat this sticky rice any time of day, from breakfast to lunch to dinner, or as a snack in between.
Vietnamese Salt-Pickled Daikon and Carrots
Red Boat Salt adds a layer of complexity to this classic Vietnamese pickle of carrots and daikon. If you don’t happen to have any in your pantry, you can, of course, use kosher salt instead. Whichever salt you use, make a big batch. This is, after all, a universal pickle: It goes well with most everything. Covered and stored in the fridge, it will last up to 2 weeks.
Blistered Vegetables with Scallion Oil
Blistered vegetables were a hit at Diep Tran’s restaurant Good Girl Dinette, in part because grilling vegetables causes their natural sugars to caramelize. Dousing super-fresh produce in fish-sauce-infused scallion oil will make an appetizer that is crunchy, sweet, and salty all at the same time. You can use these techniques to blister pretty much any vegetable in your garden.
Chao Tôm
Chef Cuong Pham’s sister’s place has long been the spot where the entire Pham family would come together to catch up, especially during summers when the kids were out on vacation and the daylight stretched long into the evening. Cooking and eating, of course, were a huge part of these gatherings, and the grill stayed hot throughout it all, sizzling with skewers of these bundles of Chao Tôm, shrimp freshly ground into a savory paste and wrapped around sweet sugarcane stalks. If you are fortunate enough to have fresh sugarcane at your local farmers’ market, pick up a few stalks and make good use of them in this recipe. Otherwise, canned sugarcane is widely available at Asian grocers and will work just fine. The Chao Tôm are great snacks to nosh on, especially when dunked into Nuôc Châm. You can also slide the shrimp into moistened rice paper wrappers, or serve them as part of a rice noodle bowl. This recipe makes about 20 pieces.
Red Boat Holiday Turkey with Gravy
This is the turkey Diep originally developed for her restaurant, Good Girl Dinette, and she continues to make it every year. To achieve a juicy, richly flavored holiday bird, Diep takes the initial step of spatchcocking so it lays flat while roasting—and roasts faster and more evenly. (If you’d rather not do this step yourself, it’s worth asking your butcher to do it for you.) She then slathers the bird with a wet rub of ginger, toasted spices, and Red Boat fish sauce, and lets it sit in the fridge for up to 4 days. Finally, when it’s time to roast, Diep encases the turkey in generously buttered parchment paper to keep the bird juicy and tender.
