What a week! I’ve finally finished undergrad and moved all of my stuff back home. I’ve been pretty busy so I thought this week I’d take a much needed coffee break by making some traditional Vietnamese Iced Coffee. I have a pretty bad caffeine sensitivity so this will likely be the lone coffee entry this year.

It has taken me 17 weeks to attempt a Vietnamese item because:

1. I wouldn’t do Vietnamese dishes justice.

2. They contain animal parts or ingredients that I probably wouldn’t be able to identify in English, let alone explain where you can purchase them.

3. Google always pulls up recipes written in Vietnamese, if written at all. I think they’re usually passed by word of mouth or stored in the brains of elderly Vietnamese women. Then, when you ask them where they got the recipe, they’ll tap their temporal bone with their index finger, wink, and say, “recipe up he-ah, okay?"

For anyone who’s ever had the misfortune of listening to my long & puzzling response to the question, “Are you Chinese or Vietnamese?", I think you should skip to the next paragraph. Everyone else, in case you’re wondering: my parents are of Chinese descent but were born and raised in Vietnam. So, I relate better to Vietnamese culture and traditions. However, my dad (who can speak/write in Vietnamese and three dialects of Chinese) decided it’d be worthwhile to teach us how to speak the least common language in his repertoire, Teochew. This means I can’t communicate with most Chinese or Vietnamese people and am the most useless Asian to travel to Asia with. So there you have it, the answer to that FAQ is, I’m as confused as you are. But to save time, I usually tell Chinese people I’m Vietnamese and Vietnamese people I’m Chinese to keep the conversation from flipping away from English.

So while I love Vietnamese food, I wouldn’t be able to read a recipe scribed in Vietnamese. I always try to learn from my mom but that usually ends in her going, “You do all wrong" before kicking me out of the kitchen. I’ve also never seen my mom use measuring tools so it’s difficult to follow along. It also doesn’t help that she stores many ingredients in unlabelled containers. Needless to say, I will never be able to prepare Vietnamese dishes with the same level of expertise as my mother.

Vietnamese Iced coffee however, seemed like a very safe and foolproof traditional Vietnamese recipe. Except that I couldn’t figure out our Vietnamese espresso filter and had to use the espresso machine instead. Does that ruin the authenticity? Check out that crema, though!

Before you cast judgement on me, that is steam from the coffee and not a dirty glass, I promise! This ended up being much easier to make than I imagined. I remember trying to make iced coffee a few years ago before my mom took over and insisted that if you don’t follow a very specific process (and wait for the coffee to cool before adding ice), you can get diarrhea. But while my mom was at work, I rebelliously (as rebellious as someone with a weekly food blog can possibly be) made this without following whatever the secret Vietnamese procedure is. I also didn’t wait for the coffee to cool. It’s been 6 hours, and aside from the usual caffeine overdose symptoms that I get after every cup of coffee, I can safely say my mom’s iced coffee hypothesis is false. But that could also be because the ice I used isn’t from Vietnam ;). I’ll be back with a more nourishing item next week!

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Brew coffee in a Vietnamese coffee filter or with an espresso machine.

Stir in condensed milk.

Add ice (crushed or cubed. Or maybe blend with crushed ice to create a Vietnamese coffee frappucino?).

Enjoy!