These Easy Healthy Vietnamese Recipes Will Elevate Your Weeknight Dinners

Crisp gỏi du’a leo is a classic Viet salad often served as an appetizer with fried shrimp chips for scooping. To lighten the knife workload on weeknights and turn it into a side salad to accompany other dishes, I add kale for texture and a bunch of fresh herbs for punchy notes. Make sure the kale plays well with the other veggies and tastes good when raw by selecting curly kale with frilly, tender leaves resembling a swirly skirt, not a stiff scratchy tutu. A generous amount of spicy-sweet candied nuts stands in for the meat that’s typically found in this salad. In Vietnamese, cucumbers go by two charming names, du’a leo (“climbing squash” in southern Vietnam) and du’a chuột (“mouse squash” in northern Vietnam), so this salad may also be called gỏi du’a chuột. Around my house, we regularly have this salad and call it the 3C gỏi (cucumber + carrots + cashews).

Several times a week, I rely on this versatile vegetable stir-fry to put a fast, tasty side on the table. It features a green veggie that’s cut on a steep diagonal to ensure the pieces cook quickly and absorb flavors well. One or two other vegetables play supporting roles by adding contrasting color, flavor, and texture. Simply seasoning with ginger, garlic, and salt during the steam-cooking process allows the vegetable’s flavors to brightly shine. Choose what’s freshest and in season to produce a winning dish every time. A carbon-steel skillet or wok heats up well to cook this dish in a flash; whatever you choose, have a lid handy.

Variation: Don’t want to do a mixed-vegetable stir-fry? Use this recipe to cook 1 1⁄4 lbs. asparagus or green beans. The seasonings and cooking remain the same.

Pro tip: Line up all the ingredients near the stove because the cooking happens fast.

In tropical Vietnam, cauliflower is a prized cool-weather crop that’s typically stir-fried, added to soup, or pickled. Home ovens are uncommon in Vietnam, so few people roast cauliflower. In my California kitchen, however, I coat cauliflower wedges in salty-sweet-spicy seasonings typically reserved for Cantonese-style char siu barbecue pork, and then high-heat roast them. The contours of the wedges caramelize here and there to develop a deep savoriness that evokes the prized edges and corners of char siu pork. Serve this cauliflower as a satisfying main dish or tuck it into bao and bánh mì.