There are few cookbook authors who I trust as wholeheartedly as Andrea Nguyen, the James Beard Award–winning author of eight cookbooks, including most recently Ever-Green Vietnamese. If she tells me to put fish sauce in my marinara, I do it. If I hear that she reheats her banh mi by splashing some water on it and popping it in a toaster oven, I’m following suit.
I’ve heard Nguyen affectionately nicknamed “the godmother of Vietnamese cooking,” but she’s also just an extremely scrupulous, pragmatic, knowledgeable recipe developer. A recipe for oven-fried imperial rolls in her newest book was published only after she traveled far and wide, trying every possible rice paper out there and putting every internet hack to the test.
When I’m looking for a reliably crispy bánh xèo or an at-home method for creamy soy milk, I know Nguyen has the answers. My own recent book about tinned fish even features a sardine banh mi adapted from a technique for sprucing up canned sardines with ketchup and lime juice from The Banh Mi Handbook. In this gallery of recipes, we’re celebrating some of these types of tricks we’ve learned from Nguyen over the years, both from her books and from articles she’s written for Epicurious.