Published:  00:00 Saturday - January 10, 2009

The best Asian cookbook for 2008 was overseas Vietnamese Pauline Nguyen’s Secrets of the Red Lantern: Stories and Vietnamese Recipes from the Heart.

As its subtitle suggests, it’s not just a cookbook. The author’s life story is also creatively woven around succulent recipes, telling the story of the Vietnamese family running the successful Red Lantern restaurant in Sydney.

Pauline has lived in Australia since 1978 and inherited her passion for food from her family. She said: “Dishes are a kind of language in my family and help us to express what can’t be spoken.”

The book introduces 275 Vietnamese dishes such as fried meat rolls and braised fish. Through special, simple and familiar Vietnamese recipes, the author reveals her family’s cooking secrets. The traditional recipes in the book express the nostalgia of the Vietnamese diaspora.

Pauline completed the book with the help of her brother, Luke Nguyen, and her husband, chef Mark Jensen.

“Up until now, all the recipes were kept secret,” Luke teased. “My dad encouraged that.”

But Pauline thinks “It’s good for Mark and Luke to have them written down.”

Luke and Pauline’s dad used to say: “If I give my children money, they just spend it, if I give them my recipes, they last forever.”

“The motivation for this book is my daughter and our father, who left us a treasure trove of authentic Vietnamese recipes,” Pauline said.

The Red Lantern Restaurant was opened in 2002 and it has been recognised as the Best Asian Restaurant by food critics in Sydney for the past three years.

The book is recognised by the world’s leading cuisine website www.epicurious.com.

Pauline’s bilingual book is written in English and Vietnamese. The 400-page-book is sold at US$48 and is published by Andrews Mc Meel Publishing House.