In 1988, before her Vietnamese-Thai restaurant Lemongrass opened in Sacramento, Mai Pham ran into a serious problem: She couldn't find lemongrass.

The aromatic Asian herb, plus an assortment of other fresh Asian herbs her authentic dishes demanded, were almost impossible to buy — even in a California city that is 15 percent Asian.

"I had to go to the farmers' market, and when I'd find somebody who had a few stalks, I'd befriend them," said Pham. "When I'd find somebody who had fresh herbs, I'd befriend them, and buy everything they had."

Two decades later, fresh lemongrass is in supermarket produce sections — and Mai Pham played a key part in the revolution. With two best-selling cookbooks, including the award-winning "Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table," Pham has helped introduce Vietnamese and Thai dishes to the American dinner table.

The once-exotic cuisines of Southeast Asia have joined the American mainstream, even appearing in college cafeterias. On Thursday, Pham will be at Buffalo State College's Student Union for a noon demonstration and tasting of Vietnamese favorites.

"The world is so different from when I was going to school," said Pham, who attended the University of Maryland after her family came to the United States in 1975. "When I was going to school, International Day was horrible Chinese food, most of the ingredients coming from cans."

Pham's visit was arranged by the food service company Sodexo, which runs most of the cafeterias at Buffalo State College and at more than 600 colleges in North America. When the giant food service concern decided that Thai and Vietnamese dishes should be added to its repertoire, Pham was tapped to help, adding more than 50 dishes.

Her Buffalo appearance is meant to showcase the new offerings, while giving students and other observers a demonstration of how simple the dishes can be. The Thai and Vietnamese offerings will be on the Buff State menus this month, said Jill Nabar, Sodexo marketing supervisor.

"On this tour I focus on iconic dishes," Pham said. "If they know how to do one good salad roll, they can do other kinds. If I teach them one version of Thai green curry, they can make other curries."

Pham's immersion in Vietnamese and Thai cooking grew from her own history, she said.

She was born in Vietnam but was still a child when she moved with her family to Bangkok. Her father, a Vietnamese diplomat, was transferred back to Vietnam in 1965, bringing his family with him. They were evacuated as the South Vietnamese government fell in 1975.

In the United States, Pham fell in love all over again with the food her mother and grandmother cooked. The dishes were a way of holding onto her culture and family history, she said.

"When we came here in 1975, no one really wanted to talk about Vietnam," Pham said. "You wanted to talk about your life because you'd been through this tragedy. So in many ways it was healing for me to cook the cuisine, to cook Vietnamese food. People would say, 'What are those salad rolls?' All the sudden people were very interested in what I was doing, interested in my grandmother's recipes."

After graduating from college and working for then-California Gov. George Deukmejian as a speechwriter, Pham tried to sell a cookbook translating the Thai and Vietnamese food she had grown up with to American home cooks.

"Publishers who rejected my proposal said that couldn't be done," Pham remembered. "It was not possible, not salable because no one understands what a cookbook about Vietnamese and Thai would be about."

Pham didn't listen. "I wanted to do that cookbook because it's what I know — I know Vietnamese and Thai, and I wanted to do both." She found a smaller publisher, and "The Best of Thai and Vietnamese Cooking," published in 1995, was a hit. It's still in print, 15 years later.

When she decided to open Lemongrass, Pham opted to cope with the lack of lemongrass and other herbs by dealing directly with farmers. "In the beginning, the farmers didn't want to do it, because they were afraid that if they spent all this time, no one would buy it," she said. "Promising to buy everything they had, that was the only way I could get it."

Now lemongrass is everywhere, she said.

While Thai restaurants were more widespread in the United States, Vietnamese home cooking is winning fans for combining healthiness with flavor, she said.

"All you have to do is look at it," said Pham. "Visually you can see it's quite healthy. You know a plate of herbs when you see it, you know a bowl of noodles in clear broth."

Vietnamese salads are made with no oil, and meat dishes are often served with plates of herbs and lettuce leaves for wrapping. "It's not dense food like lasagna," she said. "Vietnamese food is kind of fluffy."

For all her success in reinterpreting Asian classics for American tables, Pham has learned through her restaurant experience that not everything translates well.

Deep-fried marinated quail, a Vietnamese treat, didn't sell and the dish was removed from the Lemongrass menu. "Americans don't like to fuss around with bones," she said.

Another tough sell is whole fish. "They also don't like the whole fish, because it has the eyes, and a tail. I tell them that's what a fish looks like, but they won't buy it."

There's no bones to worry about in two simple classics Pham recommends to any beginning cook.

"First of all, Vietnamese salads are very doable," she said. "Very simple. The key is usually in the way things are cut — they're finely shaved. You should buy yourself a Japanese mandoline, one of the rectangular plastic ones."

She travels with her mandoline "wherever I go," she said. Shred a cucumber or carrot into "almost paper thin slices," she suggests. "Drizzle some Vietnamese dressing on it, or even nice olive oil, salt and pepper, and a squeeze of lime or lemon."

Thai curry is "easier than you think," she said. The hardest part "involves going out to get the curry paste at the store."

The key is not piling meat and raw vegetables with curry into a pot to cook, Pham said. "Too many vegetables, not blanched, will make your curry too watery."

How much curry paste? Use a small amount at first and gradually add more. Once you get the balance right, she said, Thai curry can find itself at home in your kitchen, too.

Thai Green Curry Chicken

1 to 2 tablespoons Thai green curry paste

1 (14-ounce) can coconut milk

1/4 cup water

1/2 pound chicken thighs, skinless, boneless

2 cups canned sliced bamboo shoots or sliced zucchini, blanched

1/2 cup frozen peas

1 jalapeno, cut into thin strips (optional)

20 Thai basil leaves or 3 tablespoons chopped cilantro (optional)

Cut chicken into 1/2-inch strips. Blanch in boiling for 1 minute, then drain.

In another pot, combine Thai green curry paste, coconut milk and water and bring to a boil. Add remaining ingredients and cook until chicken and vegetables are done, about 5 minutes.

Serve with white or brown rice. Serves 4.

agalarneau@buffnews.com