Cao Lau

The golden color of cao lầu noodles begins with ash.

Ash is gray, and so light that a passing breeze can carry it off. It is what remains when firewood burns out. It is hard to see what a handful of gray ash could do for a golden noodle.

Hoi An was once a port town, where trading ships from many places came to dock. Vietnamese merchants did business alongside traders from China, Japan and many Western countries.

In Hoi An, cao lầu is a dish of the streets and the boat landings, while mì Quảng belongs to the villages of the surrounding area. In the past, out in the countryside, cao lầu was hardly ever sold.

A bowl of cao lầu is built from the bottom up. At the bottom of the porcelain bowl lies a layer of blanched bean sprouts. Next comes a layer of fresh greens: lettuce and fragrant herbs from Trà Quế village. On top of the greens, the vendor lays golden noodles just dipped in hot water, a few thin slices of xíu pork and some crunchy bits. Once, those were pork cracklings. Now they are usually fried cao lầu dough.

Then come a few spoonfuls of sauce made from the xíu pork. The bowl must not be too dry, yet it holds less sauce than a bowl of noodle soup or phở. It is tossed well before eating.

Seen on its own, a single strand looks like the cut noodles of mì Quảng, only a deeper gold and stiffer. It is chewy and firm to the bite, nothing like the soft noodles of phở or mì Quảng. That deep gold comes from the kitchen of the noodle maker.

In the old days, as people in Hoi An tell it, the ash came from firewood brought in from Cù Lao Chàm. It was wood from mountain trees, with a dense, solid grain. The water to filter the ash came from the Bá Lễ well, an ancient well with a square mouth. It goes back to the Cham people of long ago. Its water was clear, clean and low in alum.

In the kitchen, everyone has a task. A woman filters the ash with well water, discards the dregs and waits until the water settles perfectly clear. Then she soaks good rice in that ash water.

When it first goes in, the rice is pure white. Then, grain by grain, it slowly turns a pale yellow, as if someone had slipped turmeric into the water. This is where the golden color of cao lầu begins. But the ash water also leaves something in each grain that the eye cannot see.

Once the rice has soaked, she grinds it in a stone mill into a thin batter. The next task is the hardest of all, so it usually falls to the men. A man pours the settled batter into a large pan over the fire. He holds two huge bamboo cooking chopsticks, like two small oars. He stirs without stopping, as if rowing a boat through a pan of batter, until it turns thick and heavy.

With the same chopsticks, he scoops the thick dough onto round bamboo trays lined with banana leaves and sets them in a steamer. The dough must be cooked just right, neither raw nor overdone. Lifted out of the steamer, the slab looks like one big rice cake, and it tastes much the same, only chewier.

The worker cuts the slab into lumps and sets them on a wooden board. Two hands knead them again and again, until the dough is supple and evenly soft.

Now it is her turn. Under her hands, a round wooden rolling pin rolls forward and back, pressing the dough into thin sheets as long as the whole rolling board. On the chopping block, her knife comes down, chop, chop, and each sheet becomes noodles. She lays the cut noodles on a tray and steams them once more. Only then are the cao lầu noodles truly cooked.

Now what the eye could not see comes out. The noodles carry a flavor all their own, the taste of the ash water. And thanks to the ash water, they keep for a few days without going bad.

The ash has given up its secret. The first hands ever to make cao lầu noodles hide themselves far better. Each person looks at one part of the bowl or the kitchen, and guesses differently.

The slices of xíu pork on top of the bowl look a little like char siu, a Chinese dish. Looking only at that, one might think of Chinese hands. But Chinese families in Hoi An say their dishes are wontons, steamed buns and the dumplings called bánh vạc, and that cao lầu is not one of them.

The way the dough is rolled and the noodles are steamed looks a little like the way the Japanese make a kind of thick noodle. Looking only at that, one might think of Japanese hands. But to know that for certain, more written records would have to be found.

And the way the rice is ground looks a little like the way mì Quảng is made. Looking only at that, one might think of Vietnamese hands. But cao lầu noodles are golden, firm and taste of ash water, quite unlike the soft noodles of mì Quảng.

Very little has been written about making cao lầu. Most of its story lives only in the memories of the families who practice it. One elderly woman, a well-known noodle maker in Hoi An, was 80 when she recalled that her family had made cao lầu since her grandfather's time. The dish may be older still, from the days when the port was crowded with trading ships. Whose hands came first, and when the dish was born, no one can yet say for sure.

Even the name cao lầu has its stories. One playful tale says that long ago, anyone who wanted this dish had to climb to a high upper floor to sit and eat, and the name came from that climb. Others say the words cao lầu were once used for a house with an upper floor and for an elegant eating house, and only later became the name of the dish. Two tellings, and each one has an upper floor in it.

Today, the noodles are no longer made with water from the Bá Lễ well and ash from Cù Lao Chàm firewood, as the old tale tells. Noodle makers buy ash water ready-made, and some places even use machines to grind the rice, beat the dough and cut the noodles. The craft itself is still passed down at home, never taught in any class. The young stay beside their elders, hearing their advice and watching their hands.

Almost every day, the big markets of Hoi An sell the noodles, piled in baskets and on bamboo trays lined with banana leaves. For festivals and for the Lunar New Year, many families buy noodles at the market and make the dish at home. Here the ash water proves its worth. The noodles need not be cooked right away, and they stay good for a few days.

In one Hoi An family, the noodles were bought a few days earlier. Only when the New Year comes does the father dip them briefly into a pot of boiling water. Then he lays the noodles over a bed of green leaves, adds a few slices of xíu pork, ladles on a few spoonfuls of sauce and tosses it all well. He lifts a clump of golden noodles with his chopsticks and takes a bite. Firm and springy. Within that gold, the taste of the ash water is still there.