Men Men Corn of Dong Van

A Hmong mother tilts a wooden steamer and tips a whole batch of cornmeal onto a flat bamboo tray. Steam rises in a white cloud and blurs one corner of the kitchen. Yet the dish on the tray is only half made.

The cornmeal is still steaming hard, so she waits a while for it to cool. Only when the steam thins does she put both hands in and rub gently, breaking the sticky clumps apart into loose grains.

It has been steamed only once, and it must go back into the steamer one more time. She sprinkles a little water over the tray, just enough, and works it through evenly with her hands so the meal does not form lumps.

At the far end of the kitchen, away from the fire and the tray, her small daughter sits watching, hands resting still on her knees. She follows every flick of her mother's hand.

The mèn mén on that tray needs just one ingredient: corn, the plain, non-sticky kind grown on this very land. That batch of meal began one spring, in the rock pockets of the Đồng Văn Karst Plateau.

The plateau is mostly limestone mountains. Its slopes of gray, sharp-edged rock rise up, row after row. Farmland here is very scarce. Growing rice is almost impossible.

Most of the people who live on the plateau are Hmong. For a long time, corn has been the plant that feeds the Hmong, more important than any other food crop. One corn grower here says that only corn suits this stony ground, and only corn can bear the thirst of the plateau.

When spring comes and the weather warms, people begin to clear their fields. Before sowing, the grown-ups of the village read the soil from the plants on it. Where the cơm xôi plant grows thick, the soil is good. Where rose myrtle grows thick, the soil is poor. Good soil is kept for corn and flax. Poor soil is sown with buckwheat.

On wide, gently sloping patches of land, the villagers gather stones and stack them into banks. Big slabs and small ones fit tightly together into stone walls. The walls keep the soil from washing away, above all when the rainy season comes. For the Hmong on the plateau, these stone walls are as familiar as the field and the kitchen.

Where the rock is jagged and cannot be leveled at all, they wall the stones into closed pockets, like large stone pots. Men and women alike carry baskets on their backs down to the foot of the mountain to shovel up soil. With the baskets full, they climb back up the slope and empty them into each rock pocket. After the baskets of soil come the baskets of manure.

They carry the seed as well, halfway up into the clouds, to sow it in tiny pockets of soil. There, they press handfuls of earth into the cracks of the rock, drop in the corn seed, and wait.

In some places, the man goes first, digging the holes. The woman follows behind, a tube of seed corn hanging at her hip. Some families also bury a few squash seeds, beans and flax seeds beneath the corn.

In 2014, the knowledge of how the people of the plateau farm in rock pockets was entered on the national list of intangible cultural heritage.

Once the corn grows green, the thirst of the plateau returns. The growers gather water one bucket at a time and carry it to the plants. For many months, they patiently tend each stalk rising out of the stone.

In autumn, the corn ripens. People snap off the ears and bring them home, drying them on the porch or on the rack above the kitchen fire until they are completely dry. Only then does the mother take the corn down to shell. She sits and strips the kernels from the cob row by row, and they patter as they fall.

Before milling, she picks through the kernels again, one handful at a time. She throws out any kernel with worms or mold. She keeps only the plump, round ones.

In the past, most Hmong households ground their corn on a stone mill made of two stacked stones. The upper stone turned round and round, pressing on the lower one. Stone grated against stone with a crunching sound, and the kernels slowly broke down into meal. Grinding this way took a very long time. In those days, the people turning the mill were mostly the women of the house. Of all the work that goes into mèn mén, grinding the corn may be the hardest.

With the meal ready, she winnows it so the thin flakes of husk blow away. Then she sifts out the tiny bits of grit.

The cornmeal is never kneaded. She pours it into a round winnowing basket, wide and shallow, sprinkles in water a little at a time, and mixes it by hand. Every grain must be damp yet still loose, with no lumps. If it is too dry, it will be hard to cook through later. If it is too lumpy, the dish will turn mushy.

On the stove sits a large pan of water. In the middle of the pan she sets the tall wooden steamer, pours in the meal and puts on the lid. The water boils, and the heat seeps up through every layer. After a while, steam hisses out around the lid. If the corn is young, she only needs to wait until white steam puffs from the top of the steamer. With older corn, she has to wait longer.

When the first round is done, she lifts the steamer and tips the meal onto the tray. The white cloud blurs the corner of the kitchen again. Once the meal has cooled a little, she rubs it loose and sprinkles in more water. That meal now carries a whole year on the rocky mountains.

She pours it back into the steamer for the second steaming, which is also the last. Mèn mén is always steamed twice like this. This time the fire is kept moderate, neither too high nor too low. She puts on the lid, and waits.

On ordinary days, mèn mén like the batch in that steamer is the familiar meal at home, and the grown-ups take it along when they go out to the fields. On holidays and at Tết, the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam, it can never be left out. It is served at betrothals and weddings, and it is set on the ancestral altar too.

The Hmong hold an old belief, told in different ways. Every version shares one idea. In the old days, a Hmong woman had to know how to make mèn mén.

Almost every Hmong woman knows how to make this dish. Girls are taught by their grandmothers and mothers from a young age. The little daughter still sits quietly at the far end of the kitchen, her eyes never leaving her mother's hands.

The meal is done when its fragrance rises and the grains have turned soft. If it is not steamed long enough, the meal stays dry and hard. A cook of many years can tell just by its color, by the feel of it in the hand, or by its smell.

On the stove, the steamer hisses again. The mother lifts the lid. Hot steam rushes out, carrying a soft scent of corn through the whole kitchen. The meal in the steamer is now soft and golden, loose but not dry.

She scoops the mèn mén into bowls and sets them beside bowls of hot soup. There is mustard green soup, squash soup, chayote soup and bone broth. Some days, the bowl beside it holds thắng cố instead.

The mother sets a bowl in front of her little daughter, who is sitting at the meal tray. The girl waits for it to cool a little before she eats, and she eats slowly. The slower the mèn mén is eaten and the longer it is chewed, the more the sweet, nutty taste of the corn comes through.

A thin white plume of steam drifts out of the kitchen door, fades, and melts away over the stone wall.