Typically when I shoot food it’s always the finished dish – the meticulously pretty, stylishly arranged and beautifully lighted endgame of unseen and rarely photographed kitchen labors. Sort of like the photograph at the top. So I jumped at the chance to photograph my dear friend Tootie preparing virtually from scratch a traditional dish of her native Vietnam known as nem (pronounced nahm), a flavorful cured-meat finger food. Tootie prepares nem alongside other traditional food for her large family's annual celebration of Tết, the Vietnamese New Year, which this year is Monday, Feb. 8. I first tasted Tootie's nem during a road trip with her husband (and my likewise dear friend) Tommy. The addiction was immediate. Below is an image I created of Tootie and Tommy during a photo shoot I did with them last year. They're as adorable as Facebook puppies. OK, almost.
 

A brilliant home cook acquainted with my globetrotter's passion for exploring foods of the world, Tootie has taken me to school on Vietnamese cuisine and that country’s time-honored foodways during glorious meals at her cozy home as well as over dinner at various Vietnamese restaurants. Our grocery-shopping “tours” at local Asian markets find me walking alongside my culinary teacher like an eager undergraduate as she narrates the relative freshness -- and overall worthiness -- of the daily selection of, say, pig feet and exotic imported fish. She points to a refrigerated bin of durian, a spiny-skinned fruit found throughout Southeast Asia and whose pungent smell was once described by travel and food writer Richard Sterling as a mix of “pigs**t, turpentine and onions, garnished with gym socks.”
 

“Everybody has an opinion about durian,” says Tootie, a corporate executive and mother of two.
 

In Vietnamese culture the balance of food, family, work and life is inextricably connected. As might be expected, Tootie’s kitchen creations reflect the distinctly rich flavors and a deep respect for the unique gastronomic traditions of her 1,000-year-old native homeland. This holds true whether she is preparing popular staples like phở, bánh mì (Vietnamese sandwiches or “po-boys”) and gỏi cuốn (spring rolls), or fish porridge and the richly complex bún bò Huế (rice vermicelli and beef soup), the latter born in the former royal courts of central Vietnam.
 

Now for the nem ...
 

First, sirloin beef is run through the grinder.
 

Next, Vietnamese-style shredded pork skin is washed, chopped and minced.
 

The diced pork skin is spooned into the mixing bowl of ground sirloin beef along with salt and pepper, sugar, peppercorn, garlic, seasonings, plus a curing and hardening ingredient. (FYI: I slowed my shutter speed to 1/15 of a second to create the appearance of a veritable kitchen-mixer meat bomb spinning at 2,000 rpms ... just because I can.) 
 

Next step is mushing and flattening the mixture of sirloin, diced pork skin and spices into a flat tray before putting it into the refrigerator for at least one hour to allow the mixture to ferment and harden.
 

When the trays of spiced, fermented beef are pulled from the fridge they’re ready to be sliced into small cubes and (literally) pressed into service.
 

To dress up the nem for Vietnamese New Year, Tootie places each meat cube on a banana leaf, tops it with a thin sliver of garlic and hot pepper, and slowly rolls it up. Then she uses a thin strip of banana leaf to tie each square as though it were a tiny gift.
 

Finally the nem is refrigerated 1-3 days. This helps tame the garlic (not so much the hot pepper) and enables the flavors and spices to mingle. Once unwrapped the food is transformed into bite-size morsels of Vietnamese paradise. Don't say I didn't warn you.