100 Million Years of Food (11 page)

Employing heuristics means you won't waste time agonizing over making the right decision in those soul-draining wastelands known as shopping malls. The anthropologists Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that these kinds of quick-and-dirty cognitive shortcuts allow us to acquire information efficiently, but with the result that we sometimes end up acquiring information of dubious value. As they put it, the human capacity to acquire culture was built for speed, not for comfort.
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Food taboos challenge us with the same kinds of conundrums. What should we eat? Most animals don't need to worry about this problem, because the information is more or less wired into their brains from birth and constrained by predictable environments. Humans, on the other hand, do worry, because our brains do not come prewired with food preferences. Instead, we're equipped with a raft of heuristics that can be applied to the problem of deciding what to eat and what to reject. Almost choked on a bone at the age of three? Does the food in question smell like sweaty socks? Parents and older siblings like it? Someone you admire and respect likes it? The great advantage of heuristic-based food preferences is that a kid can grow up anywhere in the world and quickly acquire an effective repertoire of safe foods. The principal drawback is that we sometimes end up rejecting perfectly good grub, as every parent knows and fears.

During a family dinner in Sapporo, I quizzed one of my Japanese friends about the ethics of eating whale and dolphin meat. The doctor, normally extremely congenial, but with a few glasses of wine in his system, turned beet red. “People in America eat cows and pigs! What's the difference?” he sputtered. I described the viewpoints of Westerners with regard to dolphins and whales (smart animals, TV shows) versus cows and pigs (long association with barnyard status) but the doctor became ever more irritated, so I decided to drop the matter, lest a perfectly good evening and excellent meal be spoiled. Sometimes our food heuristics lead us into strange dilemmas. To a pescatarian, a fish has membership in the edible category, while mammals belong to the realm of friends; laudable philosophy to some, laughable to others. To the Bantu in East and South Africa, fish were despicable snakelike monsters. To Tibetans, fish were helpless beings that lacked the ability to cry out in pain and therefore deserved compassion.

Just as notions about friendship can be recruited into food psychology, so can cultural rules about eating be drawn into ethnic politics and used to fence off outsiders. When I was growing up in Ottawa, Canada, English-speaking kids would slur French Canadians with the epithet “frog,” apparently referencing their habit of including frog legs in their dietary preferences. I, too, quivered with revulsion at the thought of frog legs passing my lips, but when I overcame my prejudice as a teenager traveling in Quebec, I found the slight flesh of
cuisses de grenouille
, fried in a batter, to be exquisitely tender and savory, better than any chicken wing.

According to the Roman historian Plutarch, an elephant-nosed fish species was worshipped by the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus. When the residents of Oxyrhynchus discovered that the residents of Cynopolis were eating the elephant-nosed fish, they retaliated by eating dog, sacred to the Cynopolitans, thereby triggering a civil war.
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If it seems far-fetched that humans would wage war over someone dining on their city's mascot, consider that in Vietnam, where dog meat is commonly eaten (particularly in northern and north-central Vietnam), dog-kidnappers have been caught and killed by village vigilantes in recent years. Hang, who lost two of her dogs to thieves, told me that she would have happily joined in to thrash the miscreants. (One theory is that dogs may have been originally domesticated as a source of meat.
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) A Vietnamese ex-soldier recounted to me that when he was interned in a refugee camp on a Malaysian island during the 1970s, refugees caught cooking pork in their dwellings were caned by local authorities. In southwestern Ethiopia, the Walamo were said to be so offended by people eating fowl that they killed such transgressors, though ritual experts were exempted. Clearly, one person's totem is another person's meal.
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Fresh fish, generally odorless, quickly decomposes at or above room temperature, exuding its distinctive odor. People in Southeast Asia, as well as ancient Rome, discovered that the rapid decomposition of fish could be controlled and transformed into a tasty and pungent condiment. The technique is ingenious. Small fish like anchovies, sardines, and mackerel are placed in a vat and covered evenly in salt, which draws out the water from the fish and prevents the fish fats from going rancid. Spices, sugar, or rice bran may then be added, and in the case of the Romans, wine as well. The fish flesh, slowly dissolved by enzymes from the fish stomachs, feeds fermentative bacteria. Weights are used to push the fish below the surface of the accumulating liquid; if the fish are exposed to the air, they soon rot. After one year of fermenting in the sun, the amber-colored fish sauce is ready to be drawn off.
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Lower-quality fermented fish sauce stinks because it contains too much bacteria, which leads to spoilage. Factory-produced fish sauce contains sugar and added chemicals to boost the flavor of a cheap, watered-down product. Despite growing up with Vietnamese food and traveling all over Vietnam, I never knew what genuine high-quality
nuoc mam
tasted like until Hang e-mailed me an address on the outskirts of Saigon, where her fish sauce, still in the infant phase of production, could be purchased every Sunday. I arrived by motorbike at a house with no signage, no placard, not even any indication of fish sauce bottles. A young man and woman came to the gate. “Hello! I'm a friend of Hang. Is this the shop that sells
nuoc mam
?” I asked cheerfully.

The woman and man ushered me in. A small collection of
nuoc mam
bottles occupied a corner of the room. Inside the house, another young man joined us. The trio conferred among themselves in the lilting Central Vietnamese dialect, vanished into a kitchen area, and soon came out bearing a circular tin tray arrayed with rice noodles, broad leaves of lettuce, thin slices of boiled pork, a bowl of pickled fish, and two bowls of fish sauce, one with added chili. We sat on a reed mat on the floor. This fish sauce was distinctly darker than standard mass-produced factory
nuoc mam
. I wrapped some rice noodles and pork in a leaf of lettuce and dipped it into the fish sauce. The first bite sent a jolt through me—a remarkable medley of salty, velvety flavors, as if the little fish had been transformed into fine whiskey.

With such lively flavors jostling around the tongue, one can understand why fish sauce anchors the cuisine of the Southeast Asia archipelago, from Thailand to the Philippines, and why the Romans also celebrated fish sauce.
Garum
was called for in more than 75 percent of the dishes listed in the cookbook of the first-century Roman gourmand Apicius and was transported in terra-cotta amphoras across the breadth of the Roman Empire. One
garum
trade route started from Spain and went east to Lebanon, via Sardinia and Rome; another route plied the Rhine and Rhone rivers into the heart of Europe, and across the English Channel to consumers in London and York.
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The Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis observed, in an epigram on oysters: “A shellfish, I have just arrived.… Now in my extravagance I thirst for noble garum.”
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Hang's name and mission are steadily rising in public profile, thanks to Vietnamese media. Hang is constantly texting, making calls, checking the Internet, networking, traveling around the country—all of this from a woman not yet thirty. It's a rare and inspiring combination: a condiment that tastes heavenly, the key to a savory, low-meat, affordable traditional cuisine; shepherded to market by a visionary from a humble background; each drop of fish sauce churned and wrung by families from one of the poorest regions of a developing country, using small fish in a fermentative process that can take up to a year to complete. It's like fair-trade coffee but with an odor evocative of boatyards and tidal pools. This area in Central Vietnam is cursed with agriculturally unproductive sandy soil, so the fish sauce venture could be an important source of income for locals. Hang is also committed to raising money for children in the area who are believed to be suffering from the lingering effects of Agent Orange. Many have serious medical conditions and lack quality care, leaving them and their families suffering in squalid conditions.

While Vietnamese cuisine, particularly in the central and southern regions, hinges on
nuoc mam
, I grew up with food that was a mixture of Canadian and Vietnamese, potatoes alongside rice, butter next to fermented fish sauce. Since my brothers and I whined about the smell of fish sauce—part of the confusion of being a second-generation immigrant—it was only used sparingly at our meals. To see whether Hang's traditional
nuoc mam
brand tastes as extraordinary as I believe it does or whether it's just bias from my knowledge of Hang's methods and ideals, I purchase a small bottle of dark fish sauce. It's the link to a culture that I once struggled to accept as my own, and it's important that I understand my ancestral cuisine inside out, beginning with fermented fish sauce. To do that, though, I need to consult some genuine experts.

It's been ten years since I've seen my first cousin Chi (Elder Sister) Vinh and her family. I first met them during my inaugural visit to Vietnam in my twenties, and I knew that Chi Vinh's son, Duc, was a perfectionist over a soup pot, and everyone in the family had strong opinions about good and bad Vietnamese food. They would be perfect to judge the quality of Hang's fish sauce.

Chi Vinh and her engineer husband, Anh Quy, have retired but still live in the same house, with the doorbell that I first rang fifteen years ago. When she sees me, Chi Vinh exclaims, “You are very thin!”

While affluent urban areas in Vietnam like Saigon have been swept up in a tidal wave of obesity in the past two decades due primarily to the replacement of walking and cycling with motorbikes, cars, TV, and video games, my weight has remained more or less the same, creating the illusion that I've lost weight. I reassure Chi Vinh I haven't, not much.

“I just thought you were sick,” she responds.

By Vietnamese standards, I'm doing everything wrong: no wife, no children, no stable job, and I have no comfortable fat around my waist. These are not people to mince their words. I pull out Hang's fermented fish sauce.

“A small present for you, Anh Quy and Chi Vinh. It's also part of my research.”

My cousins' suspicions that I've gone stark mad seem to deepen. Anh Quy, ever the analyst, takes off his glasses and turns the bottle around and around, examining the dark liquid. Chi Vinh asks, “Where was it produced?”

I tell them it's from Quang Tri, a poor province in Central Vietnam. Chi Vinh really thinks I've lost it. “Quang Tri! What does Quang Tri have to do with fish sauce?? Phan Thiet and Phu Quoc are famous for fish sauce.”

The dinner table is piled with lovely Vietnamese dishes: papaya salad with pork, shrimp, and peanuts drenched in a vinegary dressing; and a big bowl of sour fish soup with pineapple, the family favorite. While five kids wolf down the feast, I remind My-Hanh, Chi Vinh's daughter, about Hang's fish sauce, and she brings it out to the table. My request seems a trifle absurd, this introduction of a Vietnamese food product among a family of food connoisseurs who were born and raised in the country. Everyone stares at the small bottle. The label has no fancy lettering or flashy colors. My-Hanh pours out a little dish of the dark amber liquid. They dip their fish into the sauce. I pray that no one gets an upset stomach. Suddenly, My-Hanh's husband blurts out: “This fish sauce is very good!”

I'm amazed. My-Hanh's husband and I have exchanged perhaps ten words in fifteen years. He seems to regard me as akin to lint, a minor inconvenience that came with the rest of his wife's belongings. Yet here he is, eagerly dipping bits of fish into musky Bamboo Boat fish sauce, his face lit up as if he's just encountered a long-lost friend. The rest of the family also begin to show signs of delight at the earthy flavors of Hang's fish sauce. My-Hanh asks me where she can buy more Bamboo Boat fish sauce and how much it costs. The price is a significant premium over the regular factory-made fish sauce that they buy, but I sense that Bamboo Boat will pull in the customers nonetheless, once Vietnamese are reawakened to the pleasures of traditional handmade food that harkens back to their ancestors.

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Nuoc mam
is a condiment of coastal Southeast Asia (and formerly ancient Rome), but in mountainous areas of Vietnam, it's considered a luxury. Family matriarch Aunt Tam told me in Ottawa that when she was a girl growing up in northern Vietnam, only the rich families could afford fish sauce. Everyone else resorted to
tuong dau
, fermented soybean paste. I asked her for the recipe for
tuong dau,
but she told me it was too complicated to write down. She brought a bottle of her home-brewed fermented soybean sauce to our house. It smelled like old shoes and tasted like tofu would if it went to a bar, got drunk, was mugged on the way home, and woke up with a hangover. Nonetheless, it's a famous seasoning for committed Vietnamese vegans who abstain from fish sauce.

When I fly to northern Vietnam to learn more about fermented soybean sauce, everyone tells me the same thing: go to Hung Yen, famous for the production of this condiment. I call up my old friend Ly to help me with translation and also as an excuse to catch up. Ly and I know each other from days of dancing Argentine tango in Hanoi. Early on a Saturday morning, Ly is still as feisty as ever. I know I'm in the company of foodies because it takes us an interminable drive through Hanoi and the outskirts to find a place to eat breakfast. I glance longingly at all the noodle and bread stands through the van window, but Ly and the driver dismiss successive eating options that seem perfectly acceptable, all packed with diners at seven in the morning. We continue along several miles of asphalt until Ly and the driver agree on a grungy restaurant at the edge of the highway. We dig into beef noodle soup redolent with fatty flavor and served with a stack of fresh herbs, and accompanied by a special side of tangy bitter melon for me—worth the wait.