Down the Rabbit Hole of Vietnamese Cuisine

[Guest guest]

Attached is an article that was in a national Canadian newspaper on Friday ,

in which Chef Didiet Corlou reassures the writer that cooking and eating

dogs in Vietnam is a cultural hurdle he has overcome, since the dogs are

'farm-raised' and even suggests what roots go well with a dog meat dish.

What he implies and what the writer seemingly accepts is abominable. Whether

or not dogs are bred and raised on a farm for human consumption, taken from

the streets or from someone's home, they cannot be humanely raised and

slaughtered for food.

The Globe and Mail takes letters to the editor at letters

For further facts against dog eating, please visit:

http://www.animalsasia.org/index.php?module=3 & menupos=1 & submenupos=4 & lg=en.

Thanks, Andi Mowrer

" Down the Rabbit Hole of Vietnamese Cuisine "

By JANET FORMAN

Friday, August 19, 2005 Updated at 2:00 AM EDT

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Hanoi - Bushwhacking through Hanoi's 1912 market with Didier Corlou, the

executive chef of the colonial-era Metropole Hotel, is like falling down a

rabbit hole of Vietnamese culture.

The moment I step into the teeming aisles along with the other two students

at the hostelry's half-day cooking course, the jocund Frenchman is crushing

a fresh leaf under our noses. " This type of soft mint is good for soup, " he

coaches. We venture a sniff, but separating this scent from the riot of

spring onion, squid and charcoal brazier around us seems futile.

To us, the market is a tangle of squawking ducks, steaming noodles and

crimson-lipped, betel-chewing aunties tending pyramids of fecund fruit. But

in the midst of the chaos, Corlou looks completely at home.

After 20 vagabond years turning the local produce of Africa and Asia into

five-star cuisine, he finally found his soul along the old alleys of Hanoi

and has spent the past decade probing Vietnam's sophisticated gastronomy.

Indeed, he has since written two cookbooks: Vietnamese Home Cooking and

Didier Corlou's Vietnamese Cuisine. The city's ancient markets are his

research tomes, and in the early-morning chill, Corlou is a joyful blur

springing from garlic vendor to fishmonger's stand where the morning's haul

of carp is still wriggling on ice. When I signed up for a cooking course and

market tour with the Metropole during my week-long visit to Hanoi, I didn't

expect this kind of total emersion.

Leaping over a mound of lotus leaves to keep his blue-striped native-style

scarf in sight, we pull up alongside the chef cradling a knobby purple orb.

" Remember last night's potatoes? " he asks, referring to the satiny mound

that lasted just moments on my plate at the Metropole's Le Beaulieu

restaurant. " We prepared it Vietnamese-style with no butter, cream or wine;

just a little olive oil. " This is probably the reason we managed to sleep

after feasting for hours, as well as why these nimble Vietnamese

grandmothers still fit into their clinging cheongsams.

This hectic market lane, however, is no place to pause in contemplation, as

any barrier to the traffic flow will probably be mowed down by an urgent

delivery of plump Dalat strawberries or a single-minded housewife doing her

daily rounds. So we sprint after Corlou, narrowly dodging a messy skirmish

with a " walking supermarket " - one of Asia's itinerant vendors who balance

delicate cargo such as eggs on shoulder poles - before braking nearf a

russet knoll of chili.

" The Vietnamese don't like too sweet a taste, so they do things like put

chili on their pineapple, " notes Corlou, who is already at the next stand

pinching a ginger root. " You can tell ginger's age by the suppleness of its

skin. Like people. "

He winks as he turns to hoist a crab - whose struggles imply that it sees a

pot of boiling water in its future - to check its gender. " My wife tells me

the females give more flavour, " he explains.

" And these, " he nods toward a pile of gnarly brown galingale roots, " are

very good with dog. " Our mouths open in silent " Ohs " of horror. " No, no -

not 'madam's dog,'. " he clarifies in haste. " These are raised on a farm. "

Which for Corlou appears to make all the difference.

Shimmying gently past a toddler teetering after a fleeing chick, Corlou

seeks out a sparkling heap of scallops. " I don't buy if they're too white,

since that means they've been sitting too long on ice, " he informs us,

pointing out the ideal creamy hue. It's a priceless pointer, yet my mind

keeps drifting back to dog. Hard as I try to shift my cultural bias, I still

have trouble applying concepts such as " farm-raised " and " free-range " to

Fido. It's not that Corlou has forgotten how shocking Vietnam's canine meat

stalls are to Westerners; he, too, was once taken aback by local delicacies

such as embryos in his duck eggs. Yet after more than a decade adapting to

his new homeland, this 49-year-old from France's rugged Brittany coast sees

many things from a Vietnamese perspective.

It's a complicated culture, layered by centuries of war and foreign

occupation. And even though India, China, Thailand and the United States

have all left their marks, it is France - whose strong black coffee and

crusty baguettes have become local staples - that is most visible in its

cuisine. Even the sound of Vietnam's signature dish, pho, echoes the French

word feu (fire), a relic of the days colonial workers cried, " Eh! Feu! "

(Hey! Flame!) to hawkers balancing coffre-feu (fire chests) of soup on their

backs.

Vietnamese society is so complex that it took eight years of tutelage from

Corlou's Vietnamese wife and in-laws for him to fully grasp its subtleties.

But now, Corlou feels confident giving local food his own spin: placing

caviar atop a banh cuon pancake; perfuming crème brûlée with cardamom;

floating chunks of duck foie gras in pho; or harpooning a Roscoff onion with

cinnamon bark, then roasting it slowly until it's crisp on the outside and

liquid within.

Despite his gift for innovative pairings and intricate presentations, Corlou

has little patience for arrogant chefs with " big hats and bad attitudes, "

and his hundred-person staff eddies past our cooking demo in the Metropole

kitchen with modesty and precision. An apprentice proffers bowls of steaming

pho, whose tender noodles are handmade a few metres away, as we observe

Corlou and a sous-chef cut herbs with tools that look like kindergarten

shears, too respectful of the leaves to hack them with a knife.

Our lesson rolls through six classic dishes including banana flower salad

with a lemon sauce to remove the plant's bitterness; fish steamed in

Vietnamese beer; and a hands-on moment as each of us attempts the

surprisingly tricky task of rolling vegetables and herbs into packages of

nem (spring rolls). Our heat source is a simple stove-top burner, for even

today most Vietnamese cook over embers or open flames with no thermostats,

switches or timers, which Corlou feels bestows an intimate understanding of

temperature now lost in the West.

Our session culminates in a lesson on nuoc mam, a potent sauce made from

oily fish, such as mackerel or anchovy, fermented for a year in earthenware

jars similar to wine casks. Its liquid is tapped off in first, second and

third distillations like olive oil, and the best can be cellared for 50

years. Just a few drops of this substance confers the spicy oceanic base

note that marks a dish as profoundly Vietnamese.

As the hours slide by we absorb far more from Corlou than culinary secrets,

such as adding herbs at the last minute to let their full flavour bloom, or

how to create a voluptuous salad dressing without oil: This bicultural chef

offers a key to the heart of Vietnamese culture through its food.

After nibbling joyfully on every dish, sipping crisp sauvignon blanc along

the way, we're surprised to find room for phase three of the cooking course:

lunch at the Metropole's Spices Garden restaurant, where dozens of dishes

are laid out on low market-style wooden platforms. The flavours waltz across

two cultures: fresh noodles with Australian beef, grilled duck foie gras

with lemongrass and ginger, and tamarind sherbet. It's Vietnam touched by

Corlou's Gallic wand.

Tampering with traditional cuisine, especially in its birthplace, can be

risky, but Corlou carries it off with a mix of cheekiness, respect and the

roguish eye of a boulevardier. " It's like giving a subtle makeover to a

beautiful Vietnamese woman, " smiles a man who appears to have arrived home

at last.

Special to The Globe and Mail