Pa Pinh Top, Folded Grilled Fish

Icy stream water wraps around a pair of legs, rushes past and flows on, never stopping.

The water is so clear that every pebble on the bottom shows. It is cold enough to numb the legs for a while before they get used to it.

The man standing in the current is a Thái man. The water reaches his knees. A cast net hangs over his shoulder. He stands very still, his eyes on the surface. Suddenly he turns and swings his arm. The net opens into a circle, lands on the stream and slowly sinks.

On the bank lies his village, still quiet in the early sun. In northwestern Vietnam, the Thái people usually live near rivers, streams and ponds, and fish is part of their everyday meals. In the villages along the streams, Thái men are long practiced at casting and setting nets. They weave their own fish baskets and fish traps, too.

The man hauls the net in slowly, one arm's length at a time. Inside, a few fish thrash, their silver scales flashing in the sun. He frees them one by one from the mesh. The Thái have a saying: whoever goes down into the water to search may find nothing to dip, but will still find something to grill. He picks one fish, not too small and not too big, and drops it into the basket at his hip.

He looks at the stream fish in his basket. Some families use carp, mud carp or grass carp instead, as long as the fish comes from river or stream water. Carp made this way is considered the best. With the right fish, the flesh stays firm after grilling.

An old Thái saying goes: rice in the fields, fish in the water. There is water in the fields, in the ponds and in the streams, and wherever there is water, there are fish. That is why fish is the food the Thái eat most often. In Quỳnh Nhai, in Sơn La province, the Thái can cook more than 30 dishes from fish. To them, fish is a very wholesome food.

As the sun climbs, he carries the basket home. In the kitchen, the woman of the house has already laid out a cutting board and a knife. She reaches up to the rack above the hearth and takes down a handful of dried mắc khén. The Thái gather this wild pepper in the forest and dry it above the hearth to use all year round.

Mắc khén is fragrant and leaves the tip of the tongue slightly numb, yet it is milder than ordinary pepper. Almost every dish of the highland Thái contains these seeds.

Next to the mắc khén she sets out a little hạt dổi, a second kind of seed. These two seeds matter more than anything else. With them, the fish loses its fishy smell. The Thái consider fish a cold food. So it needs warm spices alongside, such as chili, ginger, galangal and mắc khén.

She picks up the sharp knife and slits the fish along its backbone, from head to tail. She leaves the belly whole. The mouth, too, must not tear. She cleans the inside of the fish thoroughly.

On the board she chops herbs, scallions, dill and mint very fine. Then come lemongrass and ginger, garlic and chili, with mắc khén and hạt dổi. Some families also slice in young sa nhân shoots. She mixes everything with the cleaned innards of the fish and stuffs it all inside. She rubs the rest of the spice mix all over the fish.

She lifts the fish, bends its body round and tucks the tail into its mouth. Head and tail now touch. The slit along the back closes, holding the herbs and spices inside.

In the Thái language, this fish folded into a ring has a name: pa pỉnh tộp. Pa means fish, pỉnh means grilled, and tộp means folded. Together the three words make folded grilled fish. Today the dish is found in Sơn La and Điện Biên. It is found in Lai Châu and Lào Cai as well.

Out in the yard, the man has just cut a length of fresh bương bamboo. He splits one end in two, making the two arms of a clamp. The clamp must be fresh bamboo. Dry bamboo catches fire easily, and it can snap before the fish has time to cook.

She lays the folded fish between the two arms of bamboo. He ties the end of the clamp tight with a bamboo strip. The Thái call this bamboo clamp híp pỉnh.

The hearth glows red with forest charcoal, the kind people prefer for grilling fish. She props the clamp above it, not too far from the coals and not too near. Too close, and the skin scorches while the flesh inside stays raw. She rakes away coals here, heaps more there, then turns the fish over.

The fish on the fire is a familiar dish at everyday meals in Thái homes. On days spent in the forest or up in the hillside fields, people wrap it with sticky rice to take along. When they visit relatives, a folded grilled fish becomes a gift. When the groom's family comes to ask for a bride, they bring a pair of boiled chickens and a pair of grilled fish.

Then comes Tết, the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam. Every family places a folded grilled fish on the ancestral altar, as the fruit of a year of work. For the White Thái of Quỳnh Nhai, the fish also belongs on another festival tray. That festival is Xíp xí, which falls on the 14th day of the seventh lunar month. On that day, children are let off herding buffalo and doing chores, free to play as much as they like.

On the fire, the skin tightens and fat seeps out drop by drop. The smell of grilling fish rises, mixed with lemongrass and mắc khén. She turns the fish once more, then moves the clamp a little farther from the flames.

Past noon, a greeting sounds at the door. Guests have come. The fish is golden outside and just cooked through inside. She lifts the bamboo clamp from the fire and sets out the meal tray.

When the Thái set a tray for guests, they put down the bowl of chẩm chéo, the dipping sauce, before any other dish. She brings out sticky rice, still hot. He unties the strip, opens the bamboo clamp and sets the round folded fish in the middle of the tray.

By serving folded grilled fish, the hosts want their guests to know how highly they are honored. The Thái of Điện Biên put it this way: a stewed chicken brought along is not worth a pa pỉnh tộp brought as a gift.

The guest pinches off a ball of sticky rice, picks up a piece of fish and dips it in the chẩm chéo. The flesh is firm, rich, fragrant and a little spicy. A light numbness from the mắc khén lingers on the tip of the tongue.

The small child of the house sits close beside the mother, holding a ball of warm sticky rice and eating it in small bites.

Late in the afternoon, the guests have gone. The man goes back to the stream and sets a fish trap of his own weaving in the current. The stream is still crystal clear, still icy cold.

Rice in the fields, fish in the water. Under that cold water, silver fish still swim against the current, their tails stretched out straight.