I have originally written this post for Serious Sandwiches in Autumn 2022.
I was 5 years old in the early ’80s, living with my mum in Sài Gòn. It’s hard to remember much from that time, but some parts have stuck. If I catch the smell of a crispy, golden Vietnamese baguette - bánh mì - it triggers a flash memory of my mum, standing outside our home on a busy road called August Revolution, under a blue sign painted with the number 171.
The street is the main road - full of commuting cyclos (xích lô), bicycles, and Hondas, ringing bells and honking their horns; theatrical songs blaring out from someone’s gramophone. Among this sonic scape were the sounds of daily government propaganda blaring from speakers installed on lampposts heavily tangled with electricity cables and chirping black birds. If I hear the crackling noise of someone splitting a bánh mì, I know it is my mum, ripping out the fluffy inside, the crust spilling and spraying around her; it always makes me crave a big smear of Laughing Cow spread thickly over its spongy surface.
She still has the same fervent expression as her twenty-something self when she fills a bánh mì. Her posture is one of eagerness - she can’t wait to stuff it but she’s going to do it properly and slowly and lovingly because to her it is a challenge to make the perfect bite. She is devout to creating the perfect balance; hers was lemongrass beef patties, sizzled on skewers over a charcoal barbecue neatly tucked into her stall at waist level. The sweet treacly smoke rose and filled the surrounding air. She wore a yellow t-shirt with a green crocodile on the front, often obscured by the foggy smoke so that I could only see her legs as I sat on my plastic rocking horse on the nearby pavement.
Image: My mum, my grandmother, her mother and my brother and me (with kitten), 171 August Revolution Street, Saigon, 1982
The bread was slathered with luxurious ghee, the fragrant patties accompanied by perfumed stems of tiny young coriander leaves, batons of thinly sliced cucumber, shreds of pickled carrot and daikon, curls of spring onion and diagonals of Birdseye chilies dotted evenly around. Even the timing was observed, the sandwiches were made to order, which meant a long queue snaked down the road. The final touch was a couple of spurts from a brown bottle of Maggi Seasoning, its distinctive sound followed by a crepitate press of the sandwich. She tied it together with a square of paper and a couple of pings of an elastic band and handed it to the ravenous customer. They were mostly students wearing their traditional white áo dài on their way to school, or government official workers in white shirts and freshly pressed flare trousers. At the street corner, an armed communist policeman in his olive green uniform often looked on, captured by the wafts of meaty lemongrass smoke whirling in the vicinity.
Today, every time my mum stuffs a bánh mì she explains that balance is key. Too much filling and you can cripple the baguette, failing to remove the inner crumb will make a chewy mouthful, too much chilli and it will spoil the other flavours, not enough pickles will make it boring, too much would overcrowd it, filling too soon will make it soggy from the heat, too much cucumber and it will become watery and so on. The right amount of every element makes the most perfect bite: crunchy and soft textures, cool and warm temperatures, refreshing and hot flavours, sweet, sour, umami, and spicy. So how do you know how much to put in? She would say, ‘experience.’
With a bánh mì in her hand today, she chuckles to herself about how she only ever made a tiny profit from her stall, because she wanted to be able to afford them too if she were a customer. It would sell out every morning, then she would go to help with prep for my grandmother’s bún bò Huế noodle soup shop. People had to open food businesses in order to survive the new communist regime. Everyone had to eat. Afterwards, she would take a bus to the market and buy the exact amount of ingredients again from her takings for the next day: SMA powdered milk for us and food for the family meals. In the evenings, she sat outside on the pavement with a large wooden chopping board, grinding down scented lemongrass that dispersed the propaganda in the air with its zing. She minced the beef with a cleaver; seasoning with garlic, fish sauce, sugar, and pepper; shaping the patties onto skewers ready for the morning fire.
When we came to the UK, it was impossible to find a good bánh mì and the closest thing to a Vietnamese baguette was a cheap roll from an industrial bakery like Greggs or whatever the equivalent was in the ‘80s. On a refugee budget, she made excellent crusty rolls of bánh mì sandwiches with omelette (my favourite), always pulling out the inners and saving them for a banana bread pudding.
When she saved enough money for a culinary trip to Paris with her bestie, dressed in her second-hand Burberry-like coat, her hair in big curls, and a tremendous pair of sunglasses on her face, she would return with a bagful of ready-made Parisian-Vietnamese bánh mì - one for each of us for the next five days. Different flavours: barbecue pork, lemongrass steak, Vietnamese sausage. ‘I know they are supposed to be freshly made to order but they are nearly as good after a flash bake in the oven,’ she would tell us. They were. The perfect bite; equilibrium.
Thank you to Helen Graves and Holly Catford for commissioning this piece for Serious Sandwiches.
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Such a lovely insight in to the wonderful values and care your mother has
I guess you learned a lot of your soul food from her. Cherish her passion for food and write down your recipes for your child...very soon they are grown up and leaving home for studies or work and family dishes are comfort when you are away from home bringing back family memories. Smelling and tasting reminds us where we have our roots. For this reason I started my recipe collection on Facebook in 2011 for our son so that he will be able to remember me and his comfort food when I am gone. ❤️