40 Top CNN Dishes

Ngọc Trân’s first book began with CNN. The network’s list of must-try Vietnamese dishes had given international readers a framework for understanding the cuisine, but no single resource existed that collected all forty dishes, tracked down their best versions, and made them cookable outside of Vietnam. Ngọc Trân, already established as a photographer with a particular interest in food and travel, took that gap as a commission to herself. She spent a year travelling across her native country, visiting local cooks from north to south, researching the regional variations in classic recipes, and photographing every step of preparation with the same precision she brought to her other photographic work.

The result was a cookbook that solved a problem most Vietnamese cookbooks ignore: accessibility for the reader who wants to cook these dishes but doesn’t have access to a Vietnamese market. Every recipe in 40 Top CNN Dishes offers substitutions and adaptations, structured so that the dish remains authentic in character even when the specific ingredient isn’t available. The writing is Ngọc Trân’s own; the introductory text was written by Michael Arnold, then Director of Content at Oi Vietnam magazine, who had worked with her on food and lifestyle coverage. Published by Phuongnam Books in 2016, the book was Ngọc Trân’s first, and the foundation of the creative practice that would eventually produce the Vietnam: The Lifestyle & the Food series.

A list of great dishes is an invitation. A book that tells you how to cook them at home is the reason to accept it.

CNN has listed its must-try Vietnamese dishes. Ngọc Trân has cooked all forty of them, tracking down the most outstanding version of each recipe by travelling across Vietnam in person, then photographing every step of preparation and writing each recipe in the clearest, most accessible English possible.

40 Top CNN Dishes is a cookbook built around a principle rarely applied to Vietnamese food publishing: flexibility. Every recipe can be adapted to the cook’s taste, budget, and available ingredients, with alternatives offered for those who can’t access Vietnamese staples abroad. No special equipment required. No ingredients so obscure that finding them makes the recipe pointless. Just forty dishes, the ones that define Vietnamese cuisine to the world, made genuinely cookable, wherever you are.

“Just as the accents of the spoken word vary from place to place, so too do the ingredients and cooking techniques of favourite national dishes shift subtly from one area to another. Try a classic beef salad in Hanoi and then order the same thing on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, and you’ll be in for a whole different taste experience. The sensations of flavour that belong to Vietnam are legion, and you could spend a whole lifetime exploring its richly complex, wandering pathways.”

“These are not merely Vietnam’s best dishes – they’re the absolute best versions of these dishes that the country has to offer, as cooked by its most representative local cooks.”

— Michael Arnold, Introduction to 40 Top CNN Dishes