A Food "Bletter" for Dan and Dori

Years ago, when I took a few years off to sail professionally, we had to rely on the old-fashioned mail service to communicate experiences and adventures to our friends and family. Phone calls were prohibitively expensive, so letters and postcards were the media of choice. I still have many of the letters and cards sent to me in those college years by some folks that I still consider to be close friends -- Dan Nathan's notes from London; Mark Kling's letters from all over, and Richard Eidlin's political missives from the left wing; I especially treasure one set of letters from my dear friend Patty Joffee, who died a few years ago, and whom I miss dearly. I would also sometimes make copies of my outbound letters, since I fancied myself an essayist in the tradition of E.B. White, whose collected Essays accompanied me on every trip I was taking back then. Bundled in crumbling rubber bands, these letters are a bit of a time capsule into the years of 1975-1981, the years just after high school and before I began my professional career. For most of us, those are formative years, and I now feel lucky to have preserved these snapshots (even if their contents should probably never see the light of day!)

Today, perhaps out of laziness, this blog seems to have taken the place of the letters of yore -- and while it takes a lot of work to keep this blog current, I sometimes miss the way personal letters are, well, personal -- where the writer and reader can share the story of a particular trip or adventure through the lens of a shared past experience. My notes to Richard always shared our high school history of would-be revolutionaries, our anger and optimism shining bright in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon's corruption. Patty's artistic, chocolate, and traveler sensibilities would inform much of our back-and-forth, and Mark's dark humor would always make me laugh and would help shape the way I described a particular sailing trip or port experience.

For Dan, it was food -- something I've always appreciated as necessary to my physical well-being, even as I lack even the most rudimentary palate. For me, food is hot or cold, bland or spicy, textured or pureed. That said, and against the backdrop of my sense of regret at having abandoned the art of letter writing for this mass-consumed (even if carefully produced) blog, let me adopt a new web log -- or "blog" technique -- that of a letter -- a web letter, or "bletter" -- dedicated to a friend, and focusing on the unique and, in most cases, overlapping interests of our friendship. In this case, it's the "wanna-be-but-never-gonna-be-foodie" reaching out to Dan and Dori -- both of whom appreciate food in all its glorious subtleties.

Hi Dan and Dori: You guys would love this place: filled with markets where every manner of fish, meat, vegetable, spice, etc. are laid out in bamboo baskets on the ground. Every corner has a street food vendor, whose equipment arrives each morning before dawn in two sets of baskets hung from the ends of long, flat, shoulder-worn wooden poles. As they walk down the streets, bearing either raw food materials or cooking implements, these baskets barely sway as the women navigate uneven streets and speeding scooters.

Vats of simmering broth sit atop propane burners, and pots of thick, viscous soups, bubbling away are perched on concrete platforms in the markets, surrounded by miniature red plastic tables and chairs for the patrons. Steamy odors of corn soups, black bean soups, and pigs feet boiling away combine to a not-unpleasant melange of flavors that defies description -- although I am sure you two, with a little help from Jennifer, who has a discerning nose and tongue like none other, could figure it all out. For me, I just avoid the pig feet.

These markets lack ice, it goes without saying, and the butchers' sections, while usually under a roof, are simple square tables with round, hand-hewn cutting blocks on top, each piled with cuts of meat for sale. The soups we favor -- cau lau and pho -- each contain a few carefully-sliced bits of pork (cao lau) or chicken or beef (pho). So far so good on the food born illness front, so the meat must move smartly from the butchers' blocks to the soup bowls.

In Cat Ba Town, where seafood is abundant, I saw many flat shiny aluminum bowls filled with wriggling eels and fish, no doubt having been extracted from one of the many fish farms that morning ... so far, and I'm sorry to report my lack of courage, no eels for dinner. In fact, I've been a bit of a coward, sticking to chicken as the meat dish of choice, even if prepared Vietnamese style in a variety of soup and noodle settings. As far as the bullfrogs that are kept inside wire-mesh cages, the snake, the larvae, or the dog meat, I've been able so far to steer a wide berth.

Jennifer takes a cooking class tomorrow, complete with a morning visit to the local market. That's a great investment for someone who can taste the delicate flavor of star anise in the pho broth, and can make a wonderful dressing with a pinch of this and a dash of that. Since I treat cooking like a high-school chemistry class -- two teaspoons of this, one tablespoon of that -- I think I'll just stick to the cookbook. I know she hopes to get a better handle on the greens and noodles that are indigenous to this area -- Dori, your penchant for piquant salads and obscure noodles would find complete fulfillment here, as the market stalls devoted to noodles, vegetables and greens have bundles of this and that and stuff that I've never seen before ... and that's before we even get to the fruits. One fruit that we've come to enjoy has a white, crispy meat flecked with black specks. It's know as dragon fruit here, pitaya in the states, and, served cold and sliced, is delicious.

In Hoi An, which Vietnamese claim is one of the culinary capitals of the country despite its relative small size, there are several local dishes we've come to really enjoy, including the aforementioned cao lao, which boasts the local noodle, wheat-based, thick, and square in cross-section, parboiled with some bean sprouts and served in a bowl alongside a gathering of spicy greens (don't ask), and topped with a sauce (don't ask), a few slices of pork, and, yes, I can get this, a few drops of spicy fish oil. Another, banh bao vac, or, "white rose," features tiny dollops of shrimp wrapped in see-through rice-paper and steamed ever-so-briefly. Finally, and my favorite owing to its close resemblance to Doritos, is the local version of fried wontons, where two large sheets of thin dough are laid offset, with a small piece of meat or crab between the sheets, and then flash fried to form a 4" x 4" flat chip of sorts. Served 4 to a plate, and sprinkled with some diced bits of tomato, cilantro (I had to ask Jennifer), and cucumber, it's the local version of nachos .... yum

No discussion of food in Vietnam would be complete however, if I didn't mention that we have found ourselves longing for pizza and hamburgers on a weekly basis, and thus break stride with our efforts to stay local by visiting a local restaurant that serves up some Western food. I mentioned to Jennifer the other day, after enjoying some local food that featured marinated pork and chicken over a barbecue, that a Texas-style BBQ would probably be a big hit here, as long it was served on tiny tables with short chairs.

We've loved the food here in Vietnam -- even if I can't describe most of what I see in the markets. I especially love the colors and sights and sounds of the market; the schizophrenic mix of raw food vendors who don't give a damn about Westerners, contrasted with the finished food vendors who live and die by our purchases; and the overhanging tarps and the food scraps and leaves underfoot. I love the morning energy of the markets, and the afternoon lethargy. I love the small clusters of bored or satisfied vendors that gather to play cards on greasy sheets of cardboard, and I love the shoulder-to-shoulder masses of locals that rely on these markets for their daily sustenance.

I love it all, believe me I do, just don't ask me what anything is, and don't ask me what's in any of the dishes I eat. For that, I need the two of you, Dan and Dori, to partner with Jennifer, and together I'm sure you three could help guide a simple palate through this complicated culinary terrain. Perhaps one day, we make a collective return trip to this part of the world? Until then, I miss you both tons, and please give a great big hug to Louisa and Izzy from both of us.

Love, Jon