Tammi Tasting Terroir

So I’m back. Hopefully this blog will come alive again now that I’m back to focusing on food and identity full time in my PhD (after a manic year off as a worker). But on to the real story…

Last weekend, to celebrate receiving a scholarship for the rest of my PhD (yay!!), I invited about 20 of my friends and family who have been through the first couple years of my part-time student/mother/worker struggles with unfunded study. Most are fellow students, all are lovely, and most also really like pho (Vietnamese noodle soup). (N.B. I know I should use diacritics, but am too lazy to go copy them and paste them here, so indulge me.) I had never made pho before, though in a cooking class in Saigon I was shown the basic method for pho bo (beef pho). As the grateful recipient of a lovely big 15L stainless steel pot for last summer solstice, what better way to use it than to make pho for loads of people? Well, you’ll see that my lovely pot wasn’t as big as it seemed…

Friday morning, Stuart and I wandered dreamily through Minh Phat (Vietnamese grocery off Victoria St, Richmond) gathering crucial ingredients, then over to a fruit shop for a few missing herbs (esp. sawtooth coriander) and finally the butcher for the meat and bones. I first asked for 4kg of shin bones and was told they didn’t have any. Weird, huh? I accepted this bizarre response and asked for 4kg of flank, which I got (and realised was A LOT of meat!). I then asked for 1.5kg of topside, whereupon the woman serving me lfinally ooked quizzically at me so that I said, “I’m making pho”. She appeared quite excited about this and thrust a bag of beef balls at me, insisting I needed them too. Sure, why not? Finally, she asked me to wait, rushed out back and dragged a huge bag of bones in, pulling four out and telling me, “for you, no charge today.” I was delighted (and she clearly was too – I guess not many Anglos pop in to get ingredients for serious quantities of pho – and I think she must originally have thought I wanted their bones for a dog?), thanked her graciously, paid for the rest (only $47 for all that!) and then Stuart and I lugged our 10kg of meaty goodness back to the car and rushed home.

Dearie me, I wish I’d started the stock earlier, but I think I had extra bone, which made up for a slightly too short cooking time… so now it’s 11:30am, guests will arrive at 7pm, and this stock wants a minimum of 6 hours…

Method & Ingredients

Remember, I was cooking for 20 (and ended up serving 25, with plenty of ingredients except the rice noodles, which ran out for the last 5 of us, but I had some dried to make up the shortfall).

4kg shin bones
4kg flank, cut into pieces about 15cm long
1.5kg topside, sliced thinly
4-5 brown onions
8-12 shallots
2-3 bulbs ginger
6 cinnamon sticks
12 star anise
4 brown cardamom pods
6 cloves
1/2C salt
1/2C sugar
1/2C fish sauce (buy a good brand, which should say “Nuoc Mam Nhi” – any from Phu Quoc are great)
4kg fresh rice noodles
spring onions, finely sliced
sawtooth coriander
coriander
bean sprouts
Vietnamese basil
chilies, sliced
lemons, quartered
chili paste
hoisin
nuoc mam cham (dipping fish sauce: fish sauce, lemon, garlic, chili, sugar)

First, take your bones and soak them in warm water with lemon juice and a generous pinch of salt for about 1/2 hour. This starts to release the blood so you will get a clear stock. Then pop them into boiling water for a further 5-10 minutes, before transferring them to your stockpot full of boiling water. I put them into my 15L pot and simmered them there for about 3 hours, skimming the scum off the top frequently.

While the bones are simmering, lightly bash the cinammon, cloves, star anise and cardamom to break them into smaller pieces, then dry roast them for a few minutes in a (preferably cast iron) frypan (to release more of their oils before adding them to the stock). Put the spices into a muslin bag and drop into the stock.

Next, hold the onions, shallots and ginger over an open flame until chargrilled and set aside to cool. When cool, pull and rub the blackened skins off, cut the onions in half, and pop all of it into a muslin bag. Add these to the stock after about 2 hours.

Next, you’re going to add the flank to cook for 2-3 hours. This is when I realised I needed the bigger pot. Stuart dragged his brewing pot out for me, which is about 40L – it takes up 2 burners but does the trick. Add the salt, sugar and fish sauce now. After 2-3 hours, pull the flank back out, pop it into a baking dish with some of the stock and leave to cool.

Once the stock has been simmering for about 6 hours (you can definitely go longer – this is a minimum), pull the bones and muslin bags out and strain it through a piece of muslin into a clean pot. (I was able to put it back into the 15L pot at this stage – and I had added some water when I went into the big pot.) Did I mention that it’s very very helpful to have a second person around when you’re making this much pho? Stuart was very helpful and appreciated!

Your stock is ready! The flank should have cooled, now you can cut it into bite-sized pieces (and I removed a lot of fat whilst doing this – very happy chooks Saturday morning!). Taste the stock and adjust seasonings if you need to with salt, sugar or fish sauce. It’s also common in Vietnam to adjust with msg or ‘pork powder’ or ‘chicken powder’, which are msg-free stock powders (Knorr is a favoured brand in Saigon). I was very happy that I had no need to add any.

As guests are ready to serve, have your flank in one bowl, the topside in another, a pot of boiling water next to the stock, and your rice noodles ready to go, as well as your array of plates of herbs, lemon, bean sprouts, fresh chilies, and chili paste and hoisin. I used Stuart’s brewing sieve to dip the noodles into the boiling water to heat and soften them before placing them into a bowl. Next, I added the raw sliced topside, then boiling stock, then flank pieces before handing the bowl to the grateful recipient to add their own herbs, etc. Voila!

My favourite comment of the evening may have been, “I’d pay $8.50 for this” from a Vietnamese Australian friend, though I did also appreciate, “it tastes just like real pho in Saigon”, even though much of my theoretical work thus far has been contesting notions of authenticity and its instability as a category, let alone its essentialising tendencies… I guess the point is that we all agreed it was rather delish.

I think next time, though, I might cook it for just 10 people!

I’m sitting in the backpacker ghetto in Sài Gòn, trying to tempt my sore tummy back into the realm of the well by tenderly offering it ‘comfort food’. I’ve tried countless fruit shakes and lassies, pumpkin wontons in coconut soup, and goat’s cheese salad so far, plus a number of plain baguettes, all to no avail. I cannot face any noodle dishes (except pho), spring rolls, grilled meats or anything I devoured in the lead up to my belly’s demise. Is this irritating? Supremely. Do I think I can fight it? Not even going to try. I accept my need for cultural succor in the midst of an otherworldy month in Southeast Asia. Here I am studying the foodways of Viêt Nam, incapable of consuming any more of them, at least for the time being. Yet this has led to what I am finding a very interesting reflection.

Normally when we travel, Stuart and I are slight food fascists – not only do we try not to eat Western food during our travels (except a selection of breakfast foods, which we indulge), we scorn the idea of traveling in a country and not wanting to eat their food. Among the many reasons for our stance on this is the idea I am working on in my thesis about food being an avenue to understanding and belonging to a culture. So we try to eat our way to understanding, so to speak. Some would say we are ‘consuming culture’, though I am increasingly at odds with that concept. Culture is not a consumable, it is an interaction. And food offers a rich opportunity for this interaction – that is, over the table.

In fact, another brief reflection on my own life that I’ve had this trip is how I don’t eat nearly as much or as well when I’m alone (which is common to many people), and I have often subsequently wondered about the legitimacy of my food interests given my propensity not to eat or to eat very simple foods when alone. I have realized that my interest in food is as much about an interest in community as it is food (though I do, of course, adore good food), and so when there is no community, no table to share with friends and family, food is no longer a primary concern.

But back to the main topic here, about me sitting in a backpacker ghetto eating Western food in Sài Gòn. What am I doing? Why am I not out there, eating more banh xeo and chatting with locals? Well, aside from being sick, I think many of us are gathered here because we need some cultural succor as well. We need linguistic and cultural familiarity, and sometimes just food we recognize. It’s all very exciting and wonderful to be challenged hourly by new foods, drinks and the environments in which they are prepared and consumed. It is also a constant de-centring – it’s destabilizing. Those who have heard me on the topic of de-centring before will know that I am in favour of this experience, and find it worthwhile in the same way that learning to write in the margins enriches any reading of our lives. But such de-centring is also unsettling, and therefore eventually quite tiring. I think then that people need a recharge, and I am trying to come to terms with my own need for this supplement. And so here I am, in the ghetto.

Now, what I want to do next is talk about other ghettos. Migrant ghettos, socioeconomic ghettos, racial ghettos – the word has been used, mostly in a derogatory fashion, for some hundreds of years. The original ghettos were the Venetian Ghettos, where Jews were forced to live from about the 14th century. The term continues to apply to minority groups who either willingly choose to live amongst ‘their own’ or who are forced to by a majority group, usually through violent means. But even when the minority group that is willingly choosing to collocate with others of their group is relatively affluent, the term ghetto carries negative connotations. We need only read some of the more racist journalists or politicians to know that they ‘don’t approve’ of these ghettos or, as we often read in Australia, ‘ethnic enclaves’. Yet these same people typically also ‘don’t approve’ of new migrants moving into ‘their’ neighbourhoods. Catch 22. I’d like to focus on migrant ghettos, and I’d like it to be clear that I’m not using that term derogatorily, just descriptively.

Melbourne has a number of migrant ghettos, including Carlton as the original Italian area (which, interestingly, is no longer ever referred to as a ghetto as far as I know, though it maintains a very high population of Italian migrants – in fact, none of the Italian neighbourhoods are called this anymore, which makes me wonder ever more about the shifting notions of race in the geopolitical sphere, where Italians are now ‘white’ though that was not always the case). Some of the better known ghettos these days include Footscray and Richmond, where the Vietnamese have settled for the last 30+ years. Footscray’s ethnic diversity is broadening as many more African migrants settle there, but Richmond’s Vietnamese character is threatened by inner-urban gentrification as the wealthy buy in to its proximity and vibrant scene (which, ironically, will disappear like the other vibrant scenes that exist wherever migrants, artists, musicians and academics cluster when they are driven out by increasing prices). But for years, Victoria Street has been “Little Saigon”, a place for the Vietnamese outside of Viêt Nam and for the non-Vietnamese who want a taste of it (often literally, when they go there entirely for the fabulous range of restaurants).

For the migrants who choose to live together then – what motivates them? Obviously, everyone is different, but I think we can draw some generalities as I did for the backpackers above. Migrants seek comfort and familiarity in a place where every time they leave their own home they are in a linguistic and cultural mist. In fact, their own home may be of such different construction and layout, the occupants a very different, often smaller constituency, the sounds outside and inside so foreign, that even to be at home is not to be entirely ‘at home’. If you don’t speak the language of your adopted country, when do you get to relax? Is it any wonder that groups that are culturally and linguistically distinct seek to live amongst ‘their own’? Interestingly, we never talk about the migrants in Melbourne as ‘expats’, do we? But let’s talk about expats.

Hm, where do expats live when they go overseas? In ‘expat communities’, you say? Right, so… ghettos. Aha. Why do they live in these ghettos? Why don’t they assimilate? Why don’t they learn the language? (English-speaking expats are particularly well known for their failure to even attempt to learn the language of their adopted countries.) Why do they insist on eating all their own foods?

So. Ghettos. They make sense. They allow people to make sense of their worlds, and to be at ease while they do so. Of course it seems best if they come out of the ghettos and interact and learn about their adopted countries, and contribute some of their own cultural knowledge to the host countries. All of this is also assuming that coming out is an option. With no language, and particularly in the case of refugee migrants, where the support services for them to have access to language classes might be very limited, it can clearly be very difficult to leave the ghetto. For women, there is another set of concerns, whether it’s a Western woman in an Islamic country or a Muslim woman in a Western country, or some other configuration where the ways of the home and host countries are directly at odds. But where these particular hurdles don’t exist or can be overcome, surely we will all be better off if we make forays out of the ghettos until it becomes comfortable.

I think I’m feeling well enough for a short wander to the Ben Thanh Market, where I can practice some language and have a bowl of pho for lunch.