I love to make pizza. Yesterday, I made a simple three cheese pizza. Here are the cheeses.

Mozzarella, gouda, parmesan. How I came to this combination has its roots in my ten years living in Vietnam. Before I explain, let’s look at the final product.

Delicious. I’m not afraid to tell you. You might wonder how gouda ended up on my pizza.

I moved to Haiphong, Vietnam in the summer of 1994. This was shortly after the U.S. had lifted the embargo against Vietnam. Yes, the embargo originating in the Vietnam War nearly three decades earlier. If you’ve been to Vietnam in the last fifteen years, you would not have recognized the Vietnam of 1994. It was slowly emerging out of severe poverty and an ’80s decade of turmoil and despair. Just ask a Vietnamese about the “thoi bao cap” – the time of state-sponsored economy – and they will tell you stories. All sad. Don’t ever wish for a government controlled economy. But that’s for another day.

When I arrived in 1994, I called it Vietnam BC – Before Coca-Cola. That will tell you the lack of foreign goods and influence at the time. As I got accustomed to the new foods – I was not an adventurous eater at the time – I longed for some American staples and comfort food to get me through. They were hard to come by. Cheese – especially – was difficult if not impossible to find. Milk and dairy was never part of the Vietnamese diet, so we just had to get by without it. On a trip to Hanoi, we once found the “Laughing Cow” processed cheese. You know the round, soft, overly-processed stuff that might taste okay on a cracker. Well, once we decided, out of desperation, to make Laughing Cow Cheese Pizza. It did not go well. At all. In fact it was disgusting. We had to live without pizza.

Until the day I shall always remember. I was riding my bicycle in the center of town and I passed a small shop with a refrigerated glass display case. I saw something round and orange on the inside. I stopped to inspect. It looked like a massive block of cheese. Gouda. At that time, I had never heard of gouda but discovered it was from the Netherlands. Okay, Europeans know their cheeses. Let’s try it. I took home a chunk, and upon first bite it had that taste. Cheese. Real cheese. Heavenly.

With the newly found goods, a pizza couldn’t wait any longer. It could not have been worse than Laughing Cow. Gouda shredded nicely. Pizza went in the oven. It melted wonderfully. It came out of the oven. It smelled incredible. We ate. Instantly in love. We had pizza. Real pizza. Gouda cheese pizza. We would survive.

As time went on, other cheeses became available, but we had become so enamored with gouda that it continued to make it onto our pizza. And I soon learned that it blended well with mozzarella, giving it a little more vibrant flavor.

To this day, I love to mix gouda on my pizza and I have a desperate younger self who used what was available to thank. Give it a try.