Saigon monastry tofu and lemongrass

photo by Elaine Dunstan

In the wet season the rain in Ho Chi Minh City comes without warning. One minute the streets are their usual craze of millions of motorbikes beeping and darting like a swarm of crazy wasps, then suddenly, from nowhere, riders and passengers are covered in flimsy plastic cagoules, flapping like so many wings.

I lived in Vietnam with my husband and then two year old daughter for six months some years back. Standing at the balcony of our arrival hotel I lift my girl up to view the street below. Beep beep beep. Scooters perform a  mad dance; the small heads of babies wedged between parents as families of four cram on one bike. Dotted along the wide boulevard is stalls selling everything from noodle soup to t-shirts, cigarettes to french crepes. Women in pyjama suits of wildly patterned nylon crouch on corners peeling pineapples, cooking waffles, shouting 'manicure, pedicure, massage'.  

We have been warned about drinking tap water and the threat of bird flu hovers like some reckless fate - I decide to return to my vegetarian roots. 

We move into a typical two story concrete house with balcony opposite the local Cao Daism monastery. The street is its own kind of village, with laneways worming off from it. A hairdressers is set up in the downstairs of one house, a local kitchen sells breakfast of barbequed pork with fried egg, rice and pickles that the owners spend the rest of each day preparing. They sit outside on upturned buckets, hammering the meat on chopping boards on the path, meticulously sorting through each grain of rice. 

Our landlord and his wife - The Vans - sit in the lounge room on our first day of lease, eating plain rice from small bowls. A neat line of shoes is at the entrance. They have invited all the neighbours to come and have a peek at the newly decorated house and it's foreign tenants. Mrs Van takes me on the back of her bike to the local supermarket and picks Mickey Mouse sheets for Phoebe's bed as a house-warming gift.

The soundtrack of my life in Vietnam will be this: endless piano scales from our neighbour's son, 5 am and 5pm gongs and chants from the monastery, the schwip schwip each morning from the streets outside being swept by all the good wives, the echoing call of street sellers through the winding lanes of our village.

Each morning I share strong sweet coffee with the novice monk Ngoc, as he sits outside stirring huge pots of  beans on an open fire.

Ling, who works in the monastry kitchen, teaches me how to cook like a local; fried rice needs sugar and salt. We go to the supermarket and she chooses the right brand of soy sauce, the better rice. We are joined by Fin who sometimes lives in America and says he will interpret for us because he is my friend and "this is what friends do".

Fin is shocked at how much I buy, the careless way I have shopped. At the counter paying he remarks, "this means nothing to you, the cost of this shopping". I have spent about £15.

At home, Ling cooks tofu on a low flame, slowly turning each piece over with chopsticks, over and over until they are gold. I watch her transfixed, her every move is deliberate and measured. She pounds fat sticks of lemongrass down to a pulp and adds it to the pan with pepper and chilli and delicately places it all on a plate of finely sliced tomato and white onion.

I offer Ling some money to come over once a week and later that day a woman from down the lane comes knocking at my metal gate saying she is a much better cook than Ling and will have the job, and any spare clothes of my daughter's for her grandchild too please. Fin comes back in the evening asking for money for interpreting and gives me Ngoc's shoe size to buy him some new shoes. The Vans soon hear of my domestic industry and send around their daughter to do the ironing and cleaning. She asks for about £4 for a half day's work and yet still there is whispers I am paying too much.

Ngoc disappears. I miss his wide eyes through the gaps in my gate each morning waiting for coffee, his smooth hands reaching into the folds of his pale blue robe for a single orange to offer. I used to count this blessing like a gift from the Buddah himself. I never see him again. I never got him those shoes.

Everywhere I go I sense the subtle shift in posture, as women squatting at their open doors follow my passage through the village. I smile and say hello, rats scurry to drains below.

It's the middle of the day and the heat makes going outside unbearable. Children are being called inside from play. The piano finally ends its flow of rising and falling notes. A padlock clinks shut on our neighbours door. Smoke from the monastery incense makes a lazy arc to sun whitened sky. My daughter sleeps naked on the couch. I sit inside our little concrete house watching white lizards dart on walls. The sound of this silence like solitude, anonymity.

Ling's tofu and lemongrass

(I recently had a great version of this classic Vietnamese vegetarian dish in London, Hoxton at Cay Tre http://www.vietnamesekitchen.co.uk/  Thanks Brian!)

1 packet firm tofu, sliced into pieces about 2cm thick

2 stalks of lemongrass, outer layer peeled off, pounded

1-2 small red chillis chopped

1 tsp tumeric

generous splash of soy sauce

pinch of salt/pepper to taste

1/4 c groundnut oil for frying

2 medium tomatoes thinly sliced

1-2 white salad onions finely sliced

Asian basil leaves for garnish

Method:

Fry the tofu in hot oil, turning with chopsticks until gold on each side. You may want want to pour some oil from the pan off before making the sauce.

Add to the pan the lemongrass, chilli, tumeric, stir a few times then add the soy and sugar and let bubble and combine flavours. About 3 mintues.

Place the tomato and onoin on a flat plate and pour the hot tofu mix on top. Finish with some basil leaves and serve with rice and/or some crunchy spring rolls, iceberg leaves and Vietnamese mint.