Vegan. Vegetarian. Pescatarian. Flexitarian. Keto. So many of today's dietary practices fit into a well-established mold, with cookbooks and websites galore devoted to helping one uphold them. While this can simplify the search for a regime that you know and feel strongly about, for those who are more, let's say, diet-agnostic, these definitions can seem limiting. Especially when it comes to enjoying the traditional dishes of one's heritage.
In particular, how can one enjoy pho without beef stock? Or ban cuon without fish sauce for the nuoc cham to dip it into? In several ways, as Andrea Nguyen demonstrates in her upcoming cookbook, "Ever-Green Vietnamese: Super-Fresh Recipes, Starring Plants from Land and Sea," which will be published April 25. The veteran cookbook author of award-winning titles including "Vietnamese Any Day" and "The Pho Cookbook" has unleashed her version of a plant-based cookbook and unlike recent, widely acclaimed vegan and vegetarian cookbooks on Asian cuisines (like Hetty McKinnon's "To Asia, With Love," Hannah Che's "The Chinese Vegan Kitchen" and Joanne Lee Molinaro's "The Korean Vegan Cookbook"), Nguyen makes room for meat and seafood in some recipes, while focusing primarily on vegetables.
