And you know you've made it when Martha Stewart cooks Vietnamese. The best way to explain is in terms of its elements. For example, the soul of Southern Italian cuisine is pasta and tomatoes. That's not to say every dish must have these ingredients, but it tends to be true. For Vietnamese cuisine, its soul is rice and nuoc mam.
Rice is the main staple of our diet.
Steamed rice is the most common form, but there are also a variety of rice noodles and, for lack of a better description, rice tortillas. These are used in dishes such as spring rolls or egg rolls. Nuoc mam is what you get when you layer alternately fish and salt in a barrel and leave it to ferment in the sun. The sauce is collected from a spigot at the bottom of the barrel. In its pure form, nuoc mam is so pungent that it is always diluted.