Taste
Vietnamese-style rice dishes

By Joan Namkoong
Advertiser Food Editor

Rice noodles, translucent and brittle when dry, are eaten at least once a day in Vietnam. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser Vietnamese rice in Chinatown You can find a variety of steamed rice preparations as food to go in Vietnamese stores in Chinatown. Phuoc Thanh Market at 170 N. King St. and Dai Loi Market at 190 N. King St. have fresh supplies daily.

Rice comes in so many forms, shapes and textures in Vietnam that sometimes you don't know you're eating rice.

"Vietnam does seem to make more foods out of rice," said Vietnamese culinary expert Mai Pham as we traveled by bus over a two-lane highway from Hanoi to Haiphong. She is the chef/owner of Lemon Grass restaurant in Sacramento, Calif., and author of "The Best of Vietnamese and Thai Cooking" (Prima Publishing 1996) and the forthcoming book "Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table" (Harper Collins, August 2001). She was leading a tour of culinary enthusiasts through her native country.

All meals are built around table rice, white and long-grained, eaten at least once or twice a day with a variety of dishes, she explained. Vietnamese prefer their rice on the dryish side, not too sticky or moist. "Leftover rice might be dried and pressed into cakes," said Pham. "Rice is ground into powder to be used as a binder in sausage-making. A gruel of rice soup is served for breakfast, topped with pickles, dried meats, and fish and fresh herbs. Rice is used as a base for sweet cakes and puddings, often steamed in banana leaf."

Rice is so precious it is never wasted. Even damaged kernels that we might cast off are eaten in a special dish called "broken rice," made with pork; these kernels are a little drier when cooked.

"Pulverized rice becomes rice milk, nutritious for babies when mixed with breast milk," Pham said, elaborating further. "Rice flour is used in bread to give French-style baguettes a lighter texture. Rice is used as a fermenting agent in fermented fish products, and rice makes rice wine. Rice becomes paper that covers peanut candies."

Then there are the many delicious rice dishes, a play on flavors and textures that are sweet and savory, crisp and soft, chewy and velvety, all in the same dish.

There is sticky rice layered with mung bean paste and shredded coconut on a puffy toasted rice paper. Street vendors know how to perfectly balance the sweet and savory ingredients in this crunchy-soft traditional breakfast food.

Banh cuon is a savory steamed roll: pork, onions, shallots, wood ear mushrooms and seasonings are encased in a steamed rice sheet and eaten with crisp blanched bean sprouts, mint, basil and the ubiquitous, slightly sweet table sauce, nuoc cham (made from garlic, chilies, fish sauce, lime juice and sugar). To watch a banh cuon maker deftly steam the translucent rice pancake on a cloth set over boiling water is to watch true dexterity and expertise.

Bang xeo is a sizzling crepe made of rice flour, turmeric and a little coconut milk. Cooked in a heavy iron pan, it is topped with pork, shrimp, onions, bean sprouts, a little pork fat and beaten egg. You break off a piece of this crisp omelette-like pancake and wrap it in a peppery mustard leaf, dip it in nuoc cham and enjoy the crunchy, savory bite.

In Hue, ban kheou is a crisper version, made in a smaller pan and shaped like a taco. It is even more beguiling because of the combination of mung bean and rice flours.

Then there are banh beo, small ramekins of steamed rice flour batter topped with chopped shrimp and a piece of crisp pork fat. It's just a light bite's worth that you dip in nuoc cham. Banh nam is another rice flour pancake steamed in a banana leaf, topped with shrimp, pork fat and spring onion. Both are a specialty of Mrs. Red's restaurant in Hue; restaurants are known for specific rice dishes and do them well.

Bun, or rice noodles, are as important as rice on the table, providing that neutral base from which flavors can shine. They are eaten at least once a day in soup or bun dishes throughout the country and they come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors and flavors. There are rice noodles as thin as somen, and flatter ones like linguine, served in phú, the beef noodle soup. A thicker rice noodle, similar to udon, is served in a broth with rau ram (polygonum or Vietnamese coriander), pork slices and a generous squeeze of lime. In Da Nang, flat rice noodles made with turmeric are de rigueur, topped with small shrimp, pork, chicken, bean sprouts, herbs, peanuts and chives, laced with broth, lime juice and pickled chili peppers. It's a terrific breakfast dish.

Cau lau noodles are a specialty of Hoi An, where water from the local wells is said to be responsible for the dense, chewy texture of this rice noodle.

And leave it to Vietnamese ingenuity: When you want a little richness and crunch, simply fry a piece of rice noodle in oil (pork fat is best) until brittle; it will look like and mimic the flavor of a crisp pork rind, adding crunchy texture to noodle dishes.

In Hue, fresh rice noodles are made of rice kernels, soaked and ground, then fermented for a day. Kneaded into a ball, the thick and firm dough is partially steamed, then mixed with tapioca flour for the proper chewy consistency and a bit of transparency. The well-mixed dough is hand-extruded over a large cauldron of boiling water, cooked briefly to set, then drained and rinsed.

The noodles become the basis for a regional kind of phú called Hue noodles: rice noodles topped with a pork chop, a slice of beef and pork ball, all in a clear beef broth with chili sauce floating on the top. At Cha Ca La Vong restaurant in Hanoi, rice noodles are the base for grilled fish seasoned with galanga, turmeric and shrimp sauce, enhanced with lots of fresh dill and scallions and of course, nuoc cham.

Rice takes on a crisp texture in rice papers. They are to the Vietnamese table what bread is to a Western table, important and always there. These thin sheets are formed of a rice flour and water batter that is steamed on a cloth over a pot of boiling water, the fire beneath fueled by rice husks for the proper temperature. Deftly lifted from its steaming cloth, the soft dough sheet is dried in the sun on bamboo mats, taking on the woven pattern of the bamboo.

Rice papers are eaten freshly made when they are soft and pliable. Or they can be dry and brittle, soaked in water to restore their pliable nature, ready to encase fresh ingredients in a summer roll or deep fried as cha gio or spring rolls. Hue-style fresh rolls require a more translucent rectangular rice paper to encase the pork and vegetable filling.

Even more fun are toasted rice papers, flavored with shrimp, ginger, sesame seeds or pineapple. Puffy and crisp, these rice crackers are eaten as a snack, crumbled atop dishes to add crunchy texture or used to scoop up savory salads.

As in most Asian countries, rice is not only sustenance in the physical sense but in the way its people live. There is a cycle of planting, tending and harvesting repeated today as it has been for hundreds of years, dictating the daily pattern of life, what a family does and when it eats.

For rice farmers in the south of Vietnam, where the fertile Mekong Delta lies, it is a cycle that is repeated three to four times in a year. Rice seedlings are planted in rows, making weeding easier and aerating the soil to produce a better crop of rice. But in the central area of Vietnam, only two crops are planted each year, with seeds sown directly into the ground, scattered so that weeding is more difficult and yields are smaller.

Other life depend on rice, too: mice, migratory birds and ducks feed on leftover grains in the field. And villagers return to harvested rice fields to retrieve kernels left in the field to become seed for the next season, perpetuating an age old cycle of life and sustenance in this 4,000-year-old land.

One thing is certain: Rice farming dictates the landscape, a beautiful scene of green rice plants undulating in the breeze, farmers shielded from the sun under their conical hats, plowing, weeding and threshing, and a water buffalo pulling a plow or grazing as it awaits its next chore. It is a sight to behold.

Rice is entertainment, too, in Vietnam. In the water-logged fields, farmers devised clever puppets that float on the water, attached to long rods and manipulated from behind a curtain. The puppets take on life-like movements, and the splashing water adds another dimension to the stories enacted on this watery stage, offering cultural wisdom and perpetuating traditions.

Here in Vietnam, rice in its many forms offers nourishment for the soul as well as life itself.