Uoc Le Pork Roll Village

A pork roll maker from Ước Lễ works with his ears, as well as his eyes and hands.

He works in the city, far from his village, making giò, the Vietnamese pork roll. The people of Ước Lễ have carried their craft to all three regions of the country, and even to faraway lands. That is why, people in the village say, very few kitchens there still make giò.

In the last weeks of the year, Tết is on its way. Tết is the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam. Every household needs giò for the holiday feast, so the makers from Ước Lễ are busier than anyone.

He begins with a piece of pork. Meat for giò must be perfectly fresh. On the board, the meat is still a little warm, its surface faintly sticky. His knife glides along, trimming away each strand of sinew, each patch of fat. Only the rosy red lean is left on the board.

He puts the lean meat into the grinder, along with a handful of ice. The ice keeps the meat cool as the machine heats it.

In the old days, before there were machines, the villagers pounded the meat by hand. Pairs of heavy wooden pestles came down into the mortar, beat after beat. The pounding went on until the meat was smooth, dense and supple, and no longer clung to the pestles.

An old craftsman of Ước Lễ, with 60 years in the trade, once said that pounding was a vital task in making giò. A maker had to give it his whole heart. The strokes did not need to be strong, only steady and lasting. Just from the sound of the pestle, a maker knew whether the batch would be good.

Starting in the 1990s, the villagers switched to grinding by machine. His kitchen today has no sound of pestles, only the low hum of the grinder. He watches the color of the meat change to know when to season it. At just the right moment, he pours pure fish sauce over the meat.

On the table, banana leaves lie ready. He dips each leaf in hot water, then spreads it out flat.

The young leaves go on the inside, right against the meat. Next comes a layer of leaves neither young nor old. On the very outside, he wraps the old leaves. Layer after layer, the leaves hug the meat. Then he rolls, presses and wraps it tight. Before him, a pork roll slowly takes shape, round and firm.

The makers of Ước Lễ still wrap their giò in banana leaves like this, not in the aluminum tubes of factory rolls. The leaves give the roll a gentle fragrance.

He lowers the rolls into a pot of boiling water. The pot bubbles hard for about an hour.

While he waits, he thinks of home. His village of Ước Lễ lies in the old Thanh Oai area, about 30 kilometers southwest of central Hanoi. At the head of the village stands a gate two stories high. The lower story is bare brick, with a wide arched doorway in the middle for people to pass through. Above it sits a watchtower, its roof curving upward like an old pagoda roof. That gate has stood there through many generations. Around the village run a moat and thick hedges of bamboo, which have kept thieves out since long ago.

On the upper story of the gate hangs a board with four words, Mỹ tục khả phong. Long ago, the court of the Nguyễn dynasty granted those four words to praise the fine customs of the village, worthy of being followed. The Nguyễn dynasty was Vietnam's last royal dynasty.

The pot keeps boiling. Back home, the village elders still tell an old story. In the time of the Mạc dynasty, someone from the village had lived in the capital. One day this villager came home, built the village a gate, and taught everyone how to make giò and chả.

Some of the oldest people in the commune tell it another way. They say the people of Tri Lễ hamlet, in the same commune, made giò first. From there, the craft spread to Phúc Thụy and to Ước Lễ.

Others say no one knows for sure how long the village has had the craft, and no official record of it was ever written.

When the time is up, he lifts out one roll and sets it on the table. Fresh from the pot, the roll is scalding hot, and no one new to the trade would dare to touch it. His practiced hands give the roll a light pat.

Bồm bộp, bồm bộp.

His ears have been waiting for that sound ever since the rolls went into the pot. A pat that answers with that hollow bồm bộp means the giò is cooked. He lifts out the rest and lines them up.

Then he turns to the glowing charcoal stove. He mixes cinnamon into finely ground meat, then presses it layer by layer onto a bamboo tube brushed with fat. In his hands, the bamboo tube turns slowly over the coals. Over and over, he brushes the surface with a liquid made from daylily flowers, mixed with honey. Little by little the chả quế, the cinnamon pork, cooks to a glossy, fragrant gold.

He keeps working like this until the very last day of the old year. The rolls he wraps will end up on the New Year tables of many homes, beside bánh chưng and a dish of pickled shallots.

In Ước Lễ, every year has two Tết holidays. The second falls on the full moon of the first lunar month, and it is celebrated no less grandly than the New Year. That is when the sons and daughters who work far away come home and sit together again.

On that full moon, his family back home lays out a feast of many dishes. In the middle lies a roll of giò lụa, the smooth pork roll, still wrapped in its leaves. An adult in the family peels off the outer layer of old leaves, then the middle layer, then the young leaves pressed close to the roll. The knife slides down. Inside is a slice of pale pink giò, dotted with many tiny holes, carrying a faint breath of banana leaf.

Someone in the family picks up that pink slice and lays it in his bowl.