Here’s a nice sad story that sticks in my mind when I eat this dish. When I was growing up I always wanted a pet rabbit. One lucky day, my grandmother finally bought a rabbit from the Vietnamese farmers’ market in our neighborhood, where a vendor sold live ducks, chickens, and rabbits. I held him, petted him, but couldn’t think of the perfect name for my new pet. I decided to go out to play, and came home and ate a delicious curry that my grandmother made…you guessed it. Nowadays, when it comes to this curry I just stick to chicken.
I prefer chicken with bones for dishes like this so it can make its own stock. This way, you get lots of dripping sauce to dip bread– which is my favorite way to eat both stews and curries. I like to tear the bread and dip it in the sauce. It’s not necessarily a delicious recipe, but I like to think that my grandmother was great at using livestock in her recipes.
Unlike Thai curry, which is made from spice paste, the Vietnamese use a powdered curry mixture. My family mostly ate yellow Madras curry. I buy the Pyramid brand, which is sold at Asian stores.
