when western palate meets eastern food
Thuy and I pored over the menu. I opted for lau but I was out of luck. Lau was off that day.
"Why don't you try some black chicken?" suggested Thuy. "Ga ac tiem. Very nourishing. It's made with medicinal herbs and it makes you feel strong."
Black chicken. The words conjured up memories of plump poultry carcasses coated with what looked like a layer of soot which I had sometimes seen on supermarket shelves back home. I had often wondered what the black stuff was. Now was the time to find out. In any case I was, dare I say it, invariably left unsatisfied by the morsels of skin and bone served up each time I ordered chicken in a com bui. I hungered for a large helping of protein.
"Yes, please," I said.
The waitress laid a blue and white pot shaped like an incense urn in front of me. It was about six inches high; this chicken was obviously much smaller than its British supermarket counterpart. But not to worry. There was always the rice to fill the gap.
"This is the pot it's cooked in," said Thuy, indicating the incense urn. "You put it in a saucepan of water and steam it for three hours."
"Really?" My eyebrows rose. It seemed an inordinately long cooking time for such a small dish. Even an average Christmas turkey wouldn't require much more than that.
I lifted the lid and revealed a brownish-black liquid with a few seeds floating on top. A small dark hump of something solid only just broke the surface, like a fleeting appearance of the Loch Ness monster. Poking around in the murky soup I discovered a charcoal-coloured bird, not much larger than the embryos in hof vit lon, the duck eggs cooked with unhatched chicks inside, another Vietnamese delicacy. I grasped it fimly between my chopsticks and brought it into full view. A bald, beaked head dangled floppily on a limp neck. Minuscule claws peeked out from the ends of tiny bony feet. Where was the protein I had craved? And how would I be able to disengage the flesh of such a fragile creature with either chopsticks or fork and spoon?
"No problem," said Thuy blithely. "You eat everything."
"Not the head surely!".
"Of course," Thuy beamed.
I removed the head and set it fastidiously aside.
"And the feet, with these claws?"
"That too," said Thuy. "Very nourishing."
I picked the feet off and laid them beside the head.
"I'm afraid I'm too squeamish."
"What does squeamish mean?" asked Thuy.
"It's how a lot of unadventurous British people feel about strange foreign food."
Thuy looked puzzled so I followed up with a more precise dictionary definition.
"But the bones," I complained. "I can't get the meat off."
"You eat the bones," Thuy explained. "Very tender."
I took her word for it. The first mouthful was not the nasty shock I had expected. The bones were indeed pleasantly chewy, giving way between my teeth like a liquorice stick.
I transferred the bird to my bowl of rice and spooned some soup over it, along with a few rounds of black mushroom and slivers of ginger which were lurking at the bottom of the pot. The mixture was unusual but tasty, with a hint of medicinal flavour which suggested that it must surely be doing me good. It had, of course, no connection with the sooty chickens in British supermarkets, so as far as they were concerned I was none the wiser. But I had learned a little more about Vietnamese cuisineand Thuy had learned a new word - squeamish.
Published in Saigon Times Daily 1996
"Why don't you try some black chicken?" suggested Thuy. "Ga ac tiem. Very nourishing. It's made with medicinal herbs and it makes you feel strong."
Black chicken. The words conjured up memories of plump poultry carcasses coated with what looked like a layer of soot which I had sometimes seen on supermarket shelves back home. I had often wondered what the black stuff was. Now was the time to find out. In any case I was, dare I say it, invariably left unsatisfied by the morsels of skin and bone served up each time I ordered chicken in a com bui. I hungered for a large helping of protein.
"Yes, please," I said.
The waitress laid a blue and white pot shaped like an incense urn in front of me. It was about six inches high; this chicken was obviously much smaller than its British supermarket counterpart. But not to worry. There was always the rice to fill the gap.
"This is the pot it's cooked in," said Thuy, indicating the incense urn. "You put it in a saucepan of water and steam it for three hours."
"Really?" My eyebrows rose. It seemed an inordinately long cooking time for such a small dish. Even an average Christmas turkey wouldn't require much more than that.
I lifted the lid and revealed a brownish-black liquid with a few seeds floating on top. A small dark hump of something solid only just broke the surface, like a fleeting appearance of the Loch Ness monster. Poking around in the murky soup I discovered a charcoal-coloured bird, not much larger than the embryos in hof vit lon, the duck eggs cooked with unhatched chicks inside, another Vietnamese delicacy. I grasped it fimly between my chopsticks and brought it into full view. A bald, beaked head dangled floppily on a limp neck. Minuscule claws peeked out from the ends of tiny bony feet. Where was the protein I had craved? And how would I be able to disengage the flesh of such a fragile creature with either chopsticks or fork and spoon?
"No problem," said Thuy blithely. "You eat everything."
"Not the head surely!".
"Of course," Thuy beamed.
I removed the head and set it fastidiously aside.
"And the feet, with these claws?"
"That too," said Thuy. "Very nourishing."
I picked the feet off and laid them beside the head.
"I'm afraid I'm too squeamish."
"What does squeamish mean?" asked Thuy.
"It's how a lot of unadventurous British people feel about strange foreign food."
Thuy looked puzzled so I followed up with a more precise dictionary definition.
"But the bones," I complained. "I can't get the meat off."
"You eat the bones," Thuy explained. "Very tender."
I took her word for it. The first mouthful was not the nasty shock I had expected. The bones were indeed pleasantly chewy, giving way between my teeth like a liquorice stick.
I transferred the bird to my bowl of rice and spooned some soup over it, along with a few rounds of black mushroom and slivers of ginger which were lurking at the bottom of the pot. The mixture was unusual but tasty, with a hint of medicinal flavour which suggested that it must surely be doing me good. It had, of course, no connection with the sooty chickens in British supermarkets, so as far as they were concerned I was none the wiser. But I had learned a little more about Vietnamese cuisineand Thuy had learned a new word - squeamish.
Published in Saigon Times Daily 1996
