Vietnamese Food Any Day by Andrea Nguyen

The pandemic has been a cooking bonanza for us.  We had joined a Food 52 cookbook group last fall, and never really got deeply into it, but once we were on lock down at home, it unleashed us to try tons of new things.  In April it was hard to get anything, but now we are able to get quite a few things and it seems more important than ever to support our local Asian grocery, which we have shopped at for over 20 years, and has really had a good supply of things even when the grocery store has run low.  This month is Vietnamese food,cooking from this magnifiscent new cookbook from Andrea Nguyen.
We have two of her other three or so cookbooks, and have made a few things out of the Bahn Mi cookbook, including the rolls, but not much.  This book is packed with recipes that have two goals.  One is that you find the ingredients in a regular grocery store (we are skipping that step) and two is that they are pared down so that they can be made easily on a weeknight.  So far we have made about 20 dishes from this, and have another 15 to 20 that we plan to make--even putting unusual ingredients on our shopping list in order to make them.  Everything has been out of this world delicious and flavor packed, and best of all we have gotten well into the habit of making things that were long forgotten, like just how easy it is to make rice paper spring rolls and how delicious the flavor combination of lime juice, fish sauce, and sugar are.  This is a book to buy, you will not be sorry.  Read the introduction if you are new to Asian cooking, and you will be well equipped to make spectacular meals.