Book- Vietnamese Street Food by Tracey Lister

Author: Hung Tran, Last Update on : 19 Apr 2021
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When I created this Rice Paper Roll website, there was a question popped up in my head. Besides a thousand web pages about rice paper roll, is there any book in Australia from authors presenting rice paper rolls in a systematic way. I went to my local library and easily found some books about Vietnamese food. Today I introduce a very good book from Tracey Lister and Andreas Pohl: Vietnamese Street Food.

"Tracey Lister is an Australian chef. She knows how to shop, cook and eat in Vietnam, and through her successful cooking school, the Hanoi Cooking Centre, she follows her passion to promote Vietnamese food. "Andreas Pohl, her husband, works as a writer, researcher and educator. " They completed this book to show their love of Vietnamese food and culture in 2011.

Page by page, with a rich series of photos of food and street scenes, the book brings me back my childhood, my school time and my university's time. It touches somewhere in my head and in my heart a memory of some foods which I had in front of my school's gate. The whole eating-street-food-around-school habit recalls in my mind. It is such a strong message from authors about the beauty of street food.

 The book dedicates the first chapter, 25 pages - from page 18 to page 43, for ROLLs. All kinds of rice paper rolls from Hanoi to Saigon, but more than a half from Hanoi. There are a total of 10 recipes for Rolls in this chapter. You can find full details of each recipe with photos, and especially some stories or special introductions. I just list here several popular recipes: beef rice paper rolls (bo cuon nem - bò cuốn nem), Tofu and roasted rice spring rolls (nem thinh - nem thính), prawn and omelette spring rolls (Nem cuon tom trung- Nem cuốn tôm trứng).

Click on this link to see the video about the best books for rolls.

I also notice the way the book presents the name of a recipe. It is also the trend in many Melbourne restaurants served Vietnamese food that I went to- the original name of the recipe is kept originally. I will follow this approach, which is a very good way, to present recipes in this website. Goi Cuon (Gỏi Cuốn), the Vietnamese name of the rice paper roll, is an example of the approach.

Recently, I just met Tracey in Melbourne and very surprised to know that this book was printed in German and Finnish language. So I decided to show the German version in this blog besides the English version.

You can purchase the Vietnamese Street Food book by Tracey Lister in our e-store.

Note: this book's intro was originally in the book section on the website. The book section is relocated to the blogs area.