Here is a nice traumatizing story that lives in my mind when I eat this dish. I’d always wanted a pet rabbit when I was growing up. One lucky day, my grandmother finally bought a rabbit at the Vietnamese farmer’s market in our neighborhood, where a vendor sold live ducks, chickens, and rabbits. I held it, petted it, but didn’t quite think of the perfect name for my new pet. I decided to go outside to play, and came home to a delicious curry that my grandma had made with…you guessed it. Nowadays, I just stick with chicken when it comes to this curry.
I do prefer chicken with bones for a dish like this so it makes its own stock. That way, you get lots of drippy sauce for dipping bread in—which is my favorite way to eat both stews and curries. I like to tear the bread and dunk it into the sauce. This isn’t necessarily a đặc biệt recipe, but I like to think that my grandma using livestock in her recipes was pretty đặc biệt.
Unlike Thai curries, which are made with spice paste, the Vietnamese use powder curry blends. My family mostly went for yellow Madras curry. I buy the Pyramid brand, sold at Asian stores.