EatingAsia

Num Banh-Chok, Rice to Noodle - Part Two

Once Madame Moul has finished teasing the fermented rice dough into a substance resembling (to the eye, not to touch) whipping cream at the stiff-peak stage, it's time to make the num banh-chok.

She starts by spooning the dough into a mold, which consists of a round cylinder covered at the bottom by a perforated piece of metal. Once the mold is filled she places its heavy wooden press on top. (Notice the playing card in the photo above- Madame Moul will use it later to scrape dough off of the press.)

By now the water is boiling vigorously, and she needs to bring it down to a manageable simmer so that the noodles don't break up - easily done by adding a few dippers of cool water to the pot.

There's a double plank suspended directly over the pot, and Madame Moul places the filled mold into an opening cut in its middle; the wooden lip of the mold catches on the planks so that the whole thing doesn't go tumbling into the water.

She then grabs a long log, places it on the 'head' of the mold's press, and sits on one end, using the weight of her body to lower push the thick rice dough through the mold's tiny holes. Even with her weight on the log 'lever' it takes quite a bit of time for all of the dense dough to be extruded.

Once the noodles are in the water Madame Moul removes the mold from its cradle, pulls out the press (the dough is sticky, so this takes a fair bit of effort), and cleans it off with that playing card. She has just enough time to refill the mold and replace the press before the num banh-chok are done,  signaled by their rise to the surface of the water.

Working quickly, she scoops them up in a basket

and carries them to a corner of the yard,

where she cools them off and rids them of any clinging starch with a plunge into a pail of water followed by several rinses.

Then it's over to a covered area where her daughter in-law waits to prepare the noodles for sale. After her mother-in-law slides the noodles into a bowl of water her partner lifts out consistently sized skeins of the by-now firm white threads,

loops them over her forefinger, and gently sluices off excess water with her other hand.

She then forms them into loose coils, which she then squeezes to remove as much water as possible.

Laid in a banana leaf-lined basket in concentric circles, the num banh-chok are ready for market and table.

Are you as awed by this process as we are?

Let's not romanticize it - there's no doubt Madame Moul and her daughter-in-law would welcome automation, or any innovation for that matter, that would lessen the effort and time required to turn rice into noodles. But there's ingenuity and hard-earned skills at play here, and we'll certainly remember this amazing sequence the next time we tuck into a bowl of num banh-chok. 

Asian Culinary Forum, San Francisco, October 10-12

In October the Asian Culinary Forum will be staging, from October 10-12 in San Francisco, its First Annual Symposium, 'Asian Food Beyond Borders' .

The Friday-evening-through-Sunday lineup comprises a series of events (such as a tasting tour of Asia's six flavors, cooking demonstrations, a how-to on deciphering Asian ingredients, and a walking tour of San Francisco's Chinatown), capped off by a full-day symposium featuring some great speakers. If this piques your interest but you're not going to be around all weekend, no problem - you can register for events individually online.

On Friday evening I'll be at the 'Asian Sweet' station offering a tasting of some of the wonderful small-batch palm sugars that Dave and I have picked up in the course of our research around Southeast Asia. Ever wondered why blond Cambodian palm sugar tastes nothing like mahogany-hued gula Melaka? Come by and find out! I'd love to see you there.

Num Banh-Chok, Rice to Noodle - Part One

About eight hours after our memorable meal of num ban-chok we return with our resourceful tuk-tuk driver Hak (you can find him hanging out with his machine in front of Siem Reap's most achingly hip hotel) to Pradok village to see just where our breakfast noodles had come from. Brief inquiries lead us to this house, the face-to-the-road of a compound of 5 or 6 similar wooden structures shared by a large extended family.

The only sign of food preparation is a huge pot on the fire, but the lady of the house and head of the family confirms that we'd come to the right place.

'After the Khmer Rouge I had nothing. No land, no rice, no food. My family needs money. So I make num banh-chok to sell,' Madame Moul tells me, with Hak translating. That was thirty years ago. Now she and her daughter-in-law work together,making the noodles each day to sell to vendors who take them to Pradok's small crossroads market.

Num banh-chok is made from rice that's boiled until soft and then ground into a liquidy dough with a heavy stone mill.

We missed this part of the process but a few of Madame Moul's grandkids are more than happy to whip themselves into a frenzy demonstrating how the mill works. It's turned round and round with a lever that attaches to the upper stone piece.

After the rice is ground the wet batter is placed in a cloth bag and heavy weights - mill parts, in fact - are placed on top to squeeze as much water out as possible. During this time the rice begins to ferment.

The result is a sort of very firm, dryish-but-sticky flour that needs to be softened in boiling water before it can be transformed into the smooth dough - or batter, if you wish - from which the num banh-chok are formed.

Before placing the dough into boiling water Madame Moul's daughter-in-law compacts it by opening the bag and sprinkling a little water on its contents,

and then repeatedly slamming the it onto a tree stump, rotating it the bag a bit each time.

When she's finished the dough resembles a huge ball of fresh cheese.

A banana leaf-lined bamboo tray with long handles is used to lower the dough ball into the pot of boiling water,

and after about 30 minutes it emerges rock-hard and a starchy-slick to the touch. Now it's ready to be pounded in a large, deep rock mortar with a pestle that's worked with leg power.

This is where Madame Moul comes in. First she places the dough ball into the mortar.

With a few light taps of the pestle the dough lump splits in two. Only one half will be pounded at a time, so Madame Moul transfers the other back to the bowl. Assisted on occasion by her husband and/or son, Madame Moul's daughter-in-law pumps the lever attached to the pestle as Madame Moul constantly turns the dough in the mortar, exposing all sides to the pestle's force. As it's being beaten the dough gives off a strong, sour, yeasty smell (a result of the mild fermentation that, we suspect, gives num banh-chok its special chewy elasticity).

More distracting than the smell of fermented rice is the way Madame Moul's fingers lightly dance about the dough ball, perilously close to that heavy pestle. Sometimes she takes her eyes away from the mortar and talks and laughs with observers who are observing us observing, which makes me shudder. I don't want to imagine the sort of damage that the heavy wooden rod could do to a hand that strays where it shouldn't. I suppose I needn't have worried; thirty years of experience has no doubt taught Madame Moul where in the mortar her fingers should and shouldn't be

Over the course of about fifteen minutes the dough is transformed from a rock-hard, floury ball to a smooth, elastic dough. Toward the very end Madame Moul softens it by sprinkling on water.

Back by the pot on the fire, she kneads it further by hand, adding still more water. When she's done its snow white soft peaks remind me of vanilla Tastee-Freeze twirled in a cone.

And then it's time to make some noodles...

Read the rest of the story in Num Banh-Chok, Rice to Noodle Part Two, here.

 

Num Banh-Chok at the Crossroad

About a half hour outside of Siem Reap by tuk-tuk, at a four-way intersection from which one road leads to Banteay Srei, another to Banteay Samre, still another back to the main Angkor temples, and the last to, well, nowhere in particular,

sits a row of eateries serving num banh-chok, a dish of fermented rice noodles topped with 'curry' that's nearly identical to Thai kanom jeen (note the similarity between the words 'kanom' and 'num').  They're all but empty when we whiz by at 630am on our way to watch a family make palm sugar, but the big metal pots stuffed with all sorts of interesting edible greens sitting on each table immediately catch our eye.

Ever since we first sampled kanom jeen in Bangkok we've been obsessed with the dish. In our estimation it makes for the perfect tropical-weather meal: cool noodles topped with a warm but not-steaming-hot gravy, served with all sorts of fresh (and, in Thailand, cooked) vegetables on the side that one can add at will to tailor the dish to his or her own liking. We tend to add so many veggies to our kanom jeen that we end up with something resembling a wet noodle salad.

When we return to the intersection at 9:30 the num banh-chok huts are doing a brisk business. The one we choose offers a selection of two gravies, one soupy, made with fish and lots of coconut milk (up top) and the other a thicker spicy-sweet-salty sauce made with chilies and dried prawns. (Actually all seem to offer the same thing.)

Before ladeling sauce onto noodles the vendor adds bean sprouts and a mix of chopped herbs; fresh chilies, coarse salt, and lime slices are offered alongside. The selection of add-ins displayed in the veg-herb pot is amazing: lotus stems, long beans, and wild herbs such as the flat-leaf parsley-like Oenanthe javanica (rau can or can ong in Vietnamese), sourish Garcinia oliveri Pierre (bua nui in Vietnamese), and strangely drying Lagerstroemia speciosa (bang lang nuoc in Vietnamese).*

A bit of this and a bit of that, leaves torn and long beans and lotus stems snapped, a spritz of lime and a pinch of salt ... soon enough we're feasting on what must be one of the tastiest items on offer in and around Siem Reap. It's so good we consider returning the next morning before our flight to Saigon. Now I wish that we had.

After breakfast we wander up to the tiny market - just a couple of rows of streetside vendors, really - across the road. Many are selling num banh-chok, and we ask our tuk-tuk driver why.

'Because many families in this village make num banh-chok,' he replies.

Ah!! Well, can we come back later today and watch? we ask. Which leads us here ....

Num banh-chok, morning to evening at the Angkor Wat-Banteay Srei-Banteay Samre crossroads.

* For lack of a source of info on wild herbs and vegetables in Cambodia I'm relying here on the excellent Edible Wild Plants of Vietnam, which I discovered via Andrea Nguyen's site.

Saigon Market Noodles

Not-quite six days in Saigon reaffirms my belief in the goodness of street food.

On this trip, for a project we'll be working on over the next couple of months, we ate many meals off the street. Most were decent, and some were close to very good. But few matched in downright deliciousness what we ate in and around the wet markets we visited every morning.

In Saigon most every market save the smallest has a central 'food court' comprised of squares of tiled counters surrounding cooking areas. These stalls are where market workers and shoppers eat their breakfasts and lunches (food vendors also deliver in and around the market) and it's where we started our mornings, with a glass or two of cafe sua da (iced coffee) and fresh-squeezed orange juice, followed by something solid sourced at whichever stall was doing the best business. Sated - for the moment, anyway - we'd then cruise the market's indoor aisles, eventually moving outside (most markets overflow their official market buildings, vendors and their wares seeping into the streets and alleys around), in search of chatty sellers and residents and shopkeepers, interesting produce, and, eventually, second and third breakfasts.

Pham Van Hai Market sits in a Saigon district heavily populated by northern Vietnamese and, we surmised by the number of Korean shops and restaurants advertising Northern Korean dishes, North Koreans. Here you'll find - among the items ubiquitous to any Vietnamese market, such as more grades of dried shrimp than I ever thought possible - northern Vietnamese foods like small round white eggplants, pickled. You'll also find lots of small paddy crabs waiting to be ground up for northern dishes such as bun rieu cua, rice noodles in tomato and crab broth.

Near the end of the street pictured above we spied a butcher eating a dish that included flat wide noodles, a type we've not seen used much in Vietnam. At first she thought we were shopping for pork, but finally understood that we were more interested in her noodles than in her chops. What is it? we asked. 'Bánh đa,' she answered, gesturing with her chopsticks down the street. 'It's good! 7,000 dong!'  she told us. We eventually found our way to a vendor seated on a tiny plastic baby stool (is there any other kind, in Vietnam?) in front of a glass display case packed with wide noodles, deep-fried tofu, leaf-wrapped sausage, blanched water spinach, and spring onions.

To her left sat a cauldron filled with burbling broth the carroty color of a South Seas sunset, an island of fluffy paddy crab fat 'floater' bobbing gently on its surface.

If the soup was a beauty to behold, it proved even better to taste: intensely crabby, a wee bit spicy (but not too much - its hue is courtesy of annato seeds, not chilies), its richness a perfect foil to the still-crunchy, very vegetal water spinach. Before adding black pepper-studded pork sausage and deep-fried tofu (flecked with green onion and boasting a wonderful moist-crumbly texture) to the bowl the vendor heated both in the broth.

We loved the half-fresh al dente noodles, neither too thick nor too thin, with their pleasing chewiness that didn't dissipate in the heat of the broth.

 Bánh đa  - not the first, or last, market food find of the trip.

Nguyễn Truong, 130/71 Dinh Dien, Tan Binh District, tel. 991-2456.