In Vietnam, one never has to walk very far to find someone who will sell you food. As Vietnamese cuisine values freshness above all else, at least one trip to the market per day is necessary.

We often shopped at the famous December 19 Market. It is also known as the "Ghost Market" as it was built on the site of a war cemetery for Vietnamese who died in the 1946 uprising against the French. The souls of the unknown soldiers are thought to still haunt the place. But while many Vietnamese can be quite superstitious when it comes to the souls of the dead, this sensitivity does not necessarily apply to animals. In fact, the meat and the poultry sections of Vietnamese markets are not for the squeamish, as we found out when we took a vegetarian visitor from Australia there.

The excursion started promisingly. Vietnamese food is often described as fragrant or aromatic because of the great variety of herbs and tropical fruit used to prepare it. Vegetable stalls displayed bunches of mint, chives, basil and lemongrass. There were knobby lime-green gourds, spiky red rambutans and prehistoric-looking dragon fruit. Sellers were peeling garlic,
carving pineapples and shredding coconuts.

But it all took a turn for the worse when we entered the narrow meat aisle. It was the latter part of the lunar month, when dog is eaten as a special delicacy. Darkly roasted, skinned, whole dogs sat on butchers’ tables with their fangs exposed. It was as if they had been ready to pounce when death suddenly struck. The fish section did not provide the necessary relief. Fish were thrashing around in shallow bowls, and we watched a fishmonger deftly scale a twitching, live carp. And our last hope, the poultry section, did not work out as we hoped, either. The first thing we came across was a stallholder cutting the throat of a duck and collecting the blood in a bowl. The blood was most likely going to be mixed with crushed peanuts and fish sauce for an afternoon pick-me-up, usually taken with a shot of rice wine.

Luckily for our visitor, it was not always necessary to go to the market, as sometimes the market would come to us. The relative quiet of the mornings and mid-afternoons in Ho Giam Street were interrupted by the plaintive calls – "Banh my" and "Ai xo di’" – of the street sellers walking slowly through the area. On their heads, they carried bamboo baskets full of deliciously crusty baguettes that were still oven-warm (banh my), or sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves or newspaper (ai xo di).

Family and food

It gets dark around six o’clock, and the bia hois in residential areas like Ho Giam Street usually quieten down not long after, as drinkers make their way home for dinner. In a country where eating alone is considered unlucky and the lonely diner is pitied, the evening meal is an essential part of life. At the end of the day, history, culture and tradition boil down to two basic ingredients: family and food, the very foundations of Vietnamese society.

Family meals are as much about food as they are about getting together. Family relationships make up three of the five Confucian "pillars of society", and the customs of family meals all relate to the importance of showing respect for one’s elders. For example, the head of the family is traditionally served rice first, children are expected to ask permission to start eating, and wives often put choice pieces of food in their husband’s bowls. A typical family dinner would consist of rice plus two or three other dishes: most likely braised meat such as caramelised pork, some stir-fried water spinach (rua muong), and possibly a salad such as banana flower salad. The family gathers around communal bowls or plates filled with food and placed in the centre of the table or on a round tray on the floor. Family members then help themselves, topping the rice in their individual bowls with morsels picked up from the communal dishes. And at the end of the meal, when all the dishes have been eaten, they polish off the remaining rice with a light broth called canh.

This is an edited extract from KOTO: A Culinary Journey Through Vietnam by Tracey Lister and Andreas Pohl (Hardie Grant Books).

Recipes

• Fried rice with cuttlefish, pineapple and dill

• Squid filled with pork and noodles

• Fried sticky rice