Cooking The Books

The Floating Markets of Vietnam

Along with the snake another thing that made it onto my heavily food biased 10 things to do whilst away was to visit a floating market somewhere and eat on the river.  With this is mind we were always going to visit one down in the Mekong Delta - the mouth of the great river in the south of Vietnam.  

A quick search around in some guidebooks suggested Can Tho was the best town to start in and so we headed there and, after our meal of snake, hired a long tail boat for the next morning along with a lovely English speaking local lady as guide.   By setting off at 5.30am we were told we could make it to two markets - Cai Rang and Phong Dien.  Cai Rang would consist of bigger boats and Phong Diem smaller canoe like vessels, manned by a woman or two.

To complete my task I had to do more than visit a market though and this was easily accomplished in Cai Rang where a little restaurant boat sat moored to a larger ship.  Inside a lady turned out bowls of hu tieu (a local noodle soup with pork and dried shrimp stock) and cari ga (curry chicken) which were passed outside for consumption on your own boat.  The market sellers popper over, grabbed their lunch and left, returning the bowls once they'd finished.  The food was tasty, sure, but it was the setting that made it, the diesel smoke that hung heavy in the air, and the noise of the engines, adding to rather than taking away from the meal.


Once our hunger was sated and one more item was ticked off my list we got to view the market proper.  It wasn't as dense with boats as I was expecting but it was great nonetheless and it was the real deal - people threw pineapples between boats, weighed fruit and exchanged cash, and I didn't see another tourist the whole time. 

Whilst for the small boats it was pretty obvious what was on offer from the proud piles within them, the larger boats had to choose a different route for advertising.  This they accomplished with the addition of a skyward pole with a sample of all they had, uniformly spaced up it, replacing a flag.  With all this activity the water was a tad dirty, littered with the outer leaves of cabbages or any specimens that had passed rom ripe to rotten.  Most of it was organic matter though and I'm sure the fish appreciated the feed.

Talking of feeding, between Cai Rang and Phong Dien we hopped ashore to see a plant nursery and there saw possibly (we did spend 2 months in China) the greatest toilet of our trip.  Two logs extended over a pond so you carefully shuffled out and went into the pond below.  If this wasn't fun enough said pond was a fish farm so as soon as anything hit the water it erupted in a frenzy of fish, fighting to be the recipients of a between meals snack.

The second market was far removed from the first, gone were the widely spaced boats replaced with a scrum of smaller ones side to side over a far smaller area.  Passing through just involved floating in to the mass, colliding as you went, and waiting for the boats to separate one by one allowing your passage.  This was an obviously slow process but it allowed you time to snap away and purchase some fruit for the return journey.  The conical bamboo hat is such an overused image of the far east but overused or not there's many places where simply everyone wears them (namely poor areas of China and SE Asia) and here was no different as they littered the small market.

After this market was over we hopped ashore to Phong Dien town and visited another market - this one land based - with such exotic delights as rat - in cages and skinned - and bags of live snakes. 

This finished a fantastic food related day, just leaving us a couple of hours to meander back through the many canals of the region, waving at local children and watching fisherman in action.  A fine end to a fantastic four weeks in Vietnam.

Snake

Some point last year Fergus Henderson - of St John/Nose to Tail Eating fame - and another chef - whose name evades me - had a show on TV called Hot to Eat an Elephant.  From the adverts it promised to be smorgasbord of weird eating with this view strengthened by Fergus's penchant for the less desirable bits of an animal.  As a fully paid up member of the weird eating brigade I tuned in but ended up pretty disappointed.  Dog was seemingly dismissed prior to tasting and post-eating described as fatty and chewy (I thought it was very good), rat never made it down their gullets due to cleanliness concerns and elephant failed due to moral concerns, even though the tribe they visited ate it regularly and had already slaughtered one in their honour.  I got left with the feeling Fergus was a bit more fussy than some of his recipes (a nice bit of spleen anyone?) would suggest.  One thing they did crack on with was snake though - in Vietnam and in the form of a multi-course snake meal.  At the start of this trip the gf and I made a list each of 10 things we wanted to do over the course of it and this segment had such an effect that 'Eat snake in Vietnam' made it onto mine.

It was only after I was thousands of kilometres south of Hanoi that I found out these multi-course meals were a very northern thing and I thought I'd missed my opportunity.  Chatting to a moto driver in Saigon reignited my hopes but the 1,500,000 dong price tag quashed them soon afterward.  Two days before leaving the country though a chance encounter with a Vietnamese/American citizen (emigrated after the war now back to his home town for a wealthy retirement) on a local bus in the Mekong Delta found us sitting in his friend's restaurant eyeballing 1.5kg of snake, decidedly still alive, with the prospect of a 470,000 dong bill.

The full 6 courses of the north weren't to be sampled but we would get a couple, along with the rather dubious sounding drinking of the blood and eating of the heart - still beating of course - and the gall bladder.  With these organs in short supply we agreed I could have the heart and the gf the honour of the gall bladder.  Normally I like a little alcohol (well a lot actually) down me when eating weird stuff but before I'd had a chance to even sip my beer the blood turned up.  I swear when I've seen this on TV a shot of hard liquor has been produced and a small quantity of blood drizzled in, the red swirling to pink before the lucky diner necks it in one.  No such luck for us as we were presented with a half pint glass with maybe 3cm - 4cm of blood sat in the bottom.  We were told to drink quickly - I can only assume before it clotted - and as the gf's list item specifically mentioned eating a snake and drinking its blood she went first.  Before my turn she said it just tasted salty and I concur, I'd add that it had an irony taste too.  I was very pleasantly surprised that it was cool, a pleasant side effect of the animal’s cold blooded status.  Pleasant surprise or not though it was still pretty heavy going and I was glad of the cold beer waiting in front of me.

It was a good few minutes before the organs came out but the heart was still happily beating away, no idea how long it would have carried on for – or it did for that matter but inside me - if I hadn't swallowed it.  We were told not to burst them, swallowing them whole instead, but there was little possibility we'd have given them a chew.  This time around some alcohol was present but just in the form of an inch of beer in the shot glass with them to help them down.  They tasted of nothing but the beer.  They were definitely for bravado over pleasure.

The snake itself was served some time later after a good simmering in the hope of tenderising.  First course was boiled snake - on a bed of onion and banana flower - served with rice porridge.  The snake was far from tender with the skin, in my mind, as edible as any other materials used in the making of handbags, shoes and belts - I've heard locals eat it though.  The meat itself, whilst a work out for the jaw, was very tasty.  A thick muscle ran down each side of the spine with smaller ones over the ribs and some intercostals too along with a surprising amount of fat.  Clichéd or not it tasted like chicken more than any other meat I've eaten, just with a lot of bite.  It chewed up okay though and I was more than happy to eat it.

Whilst waiting we asked how many people a 1.5kg snake would normally feed and were told 6.  With this in mind it was no surprise that come the final course we were absolutely stuffed.  Luckily the second course was a relatively light snake and straw mushroom soup/hotpot, sat simmering over a hot plate with greens and some crinkle cut starches of some description to go in.  The snake was much the same as the first course (they'd both been simmered the same way then unceremoniously portioned with scissors) just maybe a bit more tender with the extra cooking.  I may well have imagined that though.  Not wanting to waste food - especially expensive food - we ate as much of the main event as possible but didn't really put a dent in the other bits in the stock.

Overall I'd recommend snake meat to anyone wanting to try something different, if you don’t mind chewing a bit it’s very tasty - you'll know yourself if you're open minded enough for the preliminary titbits though.

The Street Food of Hoi An - Banh Can

Name:  Banh Can

Time of Day:  Lunch and afternoon

Location: The bang mi op la stall (south end of Thai Cao Van), once they've finished breakfast.

Cost: 10,000 dong (c. 30p)

The Rest:  This is only one letter different from banh canh but the dish is fairly far removed.

I didn't notice so much at the time but looking at the photos we've near as damn it got a Vietnamese toad in the hole, well a deconstructed one anyway.  Deep fried batter cups (the yorkie) are joined by a finger of deep fried pork paste (the sausage), the whole lot being covered in nuoc cham (the gravy).  Crispy batter with a sweet, sour and spicy sauce and some meat to go with it.  Who could ask for any more?

The preparation was impressive too, a lady sat in front of 5 vats of oil, deftly filling the submerged moulds and then removing the cooked batter cups with chopsticks.  With the number of people eating this was a non-stop jobs for a good few hours.

The Street Food of Hoi An - Banh Canh

Name:  Banh Canh

Time of Day:  Available all day

Location: Just east of the Chao Long stall on Thai Phien

Cost: 15,000 dong (c. 50p)

The Rest:  Banh Canh is a noodle soup with a difference, mainly two types of noodle - as well as thick rice noodles you get a handful of macaroni too.  The stock is the typical meaty affair, taking flavour from the pork chops simmering in it, one of which graces the dish along with a couple of fried fish balls.  More protein is added through a pair of hardboiled quails eggs.  As with pho and bun it is transformed into a hot and sour soup post serving though the addition of lime juice and chili to taste.

Whilst eating I noticed myself chewing on mouthfuls of grated cucumber and thick rice noodle bathed in spicy stock.  It was a real deja vu moment but for the life of me I couldn't remember where I'd had it before.  It was only later that day or the next that it dawned on me, this is exactly what you get eating laksa in Malaysia, especially the sour Penang laksa that is devoid of coconut milk.

A fine dish and a nice reminder of food in prior countries.

The Street Food of Hoi An - Banh Mi Op La

Name:  Banh Mi Op La

Time of Day:  Breakfast only

Location: The south end of Thai Cao Van

Cost: 15,000 dong (c. 50p)

The Rest:  Early one morning I noticed a stall rammed full of locals.  I went over to take a closer look and saw everyone eating what looked like mini fry ups out of metal trays.  The owner shouted 'omelette' at me, beckoning me to join the throng of before school and work locals.  Whilst it definitely wasn't an omelette my interest was beyond piqued and I pulled up a stool.

As you can see what I was served was a quite underdone fried egg in its own frying recepticle (a quartet of which I've now acquired to repeat the dish in England) complete with luncheon meat and a couple of pieces of beef.  The dish is finished with a ladle of pork stock which carries on the cooking of the egg and mingles with the yolk when you start mopping away with provided baguette.

It's as good as it sounds, in fact scrap that - it's far better.  Rich yolk mixes with stock which then soaks into crisp baguette which I chose to top with little squares of egg white and meat.  I'm not sure of the honours system in Vietnam but Banh Mi Op La Inventor should be Sir Banh Mi Op La Inventor.