White Asparagus Salad Recipe (Goi Mang)

Traditional Vietnamese cooking is widely known for its healthy properties and for the freshness of the ingredients. The food is simply prepared with very easy cooking techniques, which is great if you’re in a rush.

Gơi măng tây (which literally translates to "French bamboo shoots" in Vietnamese) is a typical Vietnamese salad that embodies these qualities. What are French bamboo shoots you ask? Asparagus! Fresh white asparagus are available at my local market, so I decided to use them in this dish. They provide a different texture for this type of raw salad. It's a bit more work than cooking green ones, as white asparagus have to be carefully peeled for optimum tenderness. 

Vietnamese Green Mango Salad Recipe: Goi Xoai

Vietnamese salads are usually made with the same dressing. A blend of lime juice, garlic, sugar, red Thai chiles and fresh mint leaves bind raw vegetables into a flavorful and healthy salad course. Today, I made green mango salad, called gơi xoài xanh. I create long, thin strips of mango that I mixed with similarly sliced carrots. It makes a very tasty salad thanks to the tangy, sour and sweet flavors.

I made it vegetarian, but you could pair the raw vegetable salad with boiled, shredded chicken (gơi gà), boiled shrimp, dried shrimp (tôm khô) or fire-roasted shredded dried squid (khô mực), which is my favorite. 

Chinese Cabbage Salad Recipe

This salad course is simple and very easy. I shredded a head of Chinese cabbage and mixed it with pickled onions, Vietnamese mint and pickled garlic. The mint enhances the flavor of the cabbage and gives it a fresh taste.

The best part is that this type of gơi (Vietnamese pickled salad) can be done very quickly and it's very low in calories. I'm attending a yoga class today, and this salad will keep me in a Zen state of mind long after the class is over.

Banana Flower Salad (Goi Bap Chuoi Chay)

In case you were wondering, banana flowers really are the flowers of the banana plant. They are also known as banana blossoms or banana hearts. The taste is reminiscent of artichoke hearts. They are consumed throughout Southeast Asia and also in India as well. In fact, I bought the banana flowers I used in this dish from an Indian market.

Gỏi bắp chuối chay literally means vegetarian banana flower salad in Vietnamese. It's a popular dish in the Buddhist community where many recipes, due to dietary restrictions requiring vegetarianism, are made to simulate meat. Banana flower salad is thought to imitate the flavor of gỏi gà, Vietnamese chicken salad. Other recipes use ingredients such as tofu skin or fried soy gluten that are chewy and resemble the stringy texture of meat.

This is a dish that is not only exotic but tasty as well. You might not make it every day, but it's definitely something you should try.