You’ve heard me discuss in length before about the realistic Vietnamese family meals that we eat everyday. So what are specialty dishes?  Well, they’re everything else.

“Specialty Dishes” are your vermicelli noodle bowls, your egg rolls, your Phở, your steamed egg loaf with broken rice. In short, the dishes that when you see mom and aunties prepare, you’d think “Wait, who’s dead or getting married?  Or is it somebody’s birthday?  Or memorial?  Or is it Sunday?”  Either way, when you see them, you know it’s a special occasion, because these dishes are too time consuming and costly to prepare for a family of 5 on a week day.

So let’s get together under the squash vines, and I’ll show you how to make some specialty dishes, while I tell you a story.