Khmer Fish Noodle Soup

A low rumble, over and over: stone turning on stone, deep and steady.

The sound is not loud. It is low and thick, and it goes on and on, like someone whispering very softly. It never hurries, and it never rests.

Two round millstones sit one on top of the other. From the gap between them, a white stream seeps out. It is white as milk and thin as water. It runs slowly down and gathers into a pool of pure white batter.

Beside the stone mill stands a woman who makes noodles. She feeds rice into the mill, waits for it to grind through, then adds more. She soaked this batch of rice all through last night.

The rice she chooses cooks up soft. It is called gạo mùa. In Sóc Trăng, people say good noodles are made from gạo mùa, ground in a stone mill just like this. The noodles come out clear and chewy, and fragrant with rice. Over in Trà Vinh, some noodle makers choose a fragrant rice from the autumn harvest instead. They too soak it for a night before grinding, to make fine, thin noodles.

In a corner of the kitchen, an earthenware jar is sealed tight.

A Khmer noodle cook in Trà Vinh says that every Khmer home there keeps a jar like this. It holds mắm bò hóc, the Khmer people's own kind of fermented fish. The cook adds that most Khmer women there know how to make bún nước lèo. It is a dish of rice noodles in a broth made with fermented fish. And every family spoons mắm from the jar as a dip for boiled pork.

The Khmer of the Delta make their mắm from the fish that fill the rivers, the canals and the rice fields. In Trà Vinh, the cook says, people soak snakehead, climbing perch and other fish overnight. The next day, they pack the fish into the earthenware jar with salt and rice. They seal it tight and leave it for many months. In Sóc Trăng, people salt snakehead and field catfish together with shrimp, large and small. That too is left for many months.

The woman lights the fire, sets a pot of water on it and stands by the stove to watch. As soon as the water boils, she spoons mắm bò hóc into the pot.

Not every pot is like hers. In Sóc Trăng, many pots are made with mắm of gourami or of snakehead. Some cooks blend mắm made from gourami and mud carp with mắm bò hóc. Up in Châu Đốc, people make bún nước kèn instead. Some cooks there use cá trèn fish, fermented only a short time, in place of mắm bò hóc. One pot gets fresh coconut water. Another is cooked with a stock of simmered pork bones or chicken bones.

After the mắm has boiled a while, the flesh of the fish dissolves completely. She strains it once, throws away the solids and keeps only the liquid. A noodle cook in Sóc Trăng says the soul of this dish lies in the pot of broth. It lies in the fermented fish, in the lemongrass and in the ngải bún. She bruises a few stalks of lemongrass and drops them into the pot. Next she adds a few ngải bún roots, which look like turmeric but darker. Ngải bún softens the scent of the fish, then gives off a fragrance all its own.

She turns the fire down low and lets the broth simmer gently. The dish she is cooking has been made for many years. At first it was only a simple noodle dish in Khmer home kitchens. The Khmer, the ethnic Vietnamese and the ethnic Chinese lived side by side on the same land. They learned to cook from one another. From there, the dish spread across the whole south.

Today, people set pots of broth like this on the fire in Trà Vinh and Sóc Trăng. They do the same in Bạc Liêu and Cà Mau. Cần Thơ and Kiên Giang have them too. On certain days, the kitchens of a few pagodas in Bạc Liêu and Sóc Trăng cook a vegetarian pot of broth.

On the stove, the broth fills the air with its scent. The lemongrass smells strong and warm, the ngải bún gentle. Woven through them is the deep savor of river fish and field fish, which waited in the jar through many months. The scent drifts out of the kitchen and calls everyone in the house to the table.

When it is time to serve, she lays white noodles in a bowl. She has already boiled the snakehead, peeled away the skin and picked off the white flesh piece by piece, clean and very tender. The shrimp, large and small, are boiled and peeled. Then she slices roast pork, its skin golden and crackling. That roast pork is what the ethnic Chinese brought to the bowl. The mắm bò hóc in the pot belongs to the Khmer. For anyone who likes it, she adds a few pieces of pork blood. Last of all, she ladles hot broth over everything.

Beside the bowl she sets a heaping plate of greens. There is banana blossom shaved as fine as silk thread, and water spinach shaved into thin strands. Then come white bean sprouts, green garlic chives and a few sprigs of herbs. Sometimes there are water lily stems as well. In cashew season, some people add a few slices of cashew fruit. It is only one plate of greens, yet it already looks cool and fresh.

In the old days, the noodle table in Trà Vinh had ways of eating all its own. The Khmer of the south had their own way of making noodles, gathering them into small bundles. Each bundle, about the size of a hand, was called a con bún. At the table, people tear the con bún loose right over the bowl.

Back then, nobody squeezed lime into their noodles. In place of lime there was chili vinegar, made from coconut water and ripe bananas. To spoon out the vinegar, people used a ladle made from the dried shell of a mù u fruit. Beside it sat chili salt and a few fresh green chilies. The chopsticks for noodles were bamboo, about two hand spans long. The grown-ups of those days did not drink the broth with a spoon. They lifted the whole bowl and drank straight from its rim.

Around her noodle table, people fall to talking once more about which place makes the better noodles, and the talk never quite ends. Many say the noodles of Trà Vinh are the best and the most famous, because cooks there usually use mắm bò hóc. Just as many call Sóc Trăng the long-standing home and capital of this dish. Around the noodle tables of today, the talk of Trà Vinh or Sóc Trăng murmurs on, from one bowl to the next.