The once-obscure cuisine of Vietnam is, today, a favorite for many people from East to West. Adapted and modified over thousands of years, it is probably best known as a particularly delicious result of combining traditional southeast Asian cookery with visible outside influences notably, the crunchy baguette from its French-occupied past. Drawing on archeological evidence, oral and written histories, and wide-ranging research, Vu Hong Lien tells the complex and surprising history of food in Vietnam.
Rice and Baguette traces the prehistoric Vi't s progress from hunter-gathers of...