This is a story about canh chua, a bittersweet soup as conveyed in a fish song that my father sings to his grandson. The story was passed on to me with the recipe from my mother – all the way from Vietnam that she has recreated in The Colony, Texas to Melbourne, Australia. Listen to it like a lullaby because writing, like cooking, is about creating love and giving it to others. And just as a recipe is better eaten, this song is better sung.
Chiều nay em đi câu cá về cho má nấu canh chua.
Ô kìa con cua.ô kìa con cua.
Đừng la lối nó chui xuống hầm.
Đừng la lối nó chui xuống hầm.
Translation?
This afternoon, I will go fishing for my mother to cook canh chua.
Oh, there's the crab! Oh, there's the crab!
Don't screech with delight else you will scare it as it scurries down the hole/home.
Don't screech with delight else you will scare it as it scurries down the hole/home
My father sings this song to Rowan as they waltz down the silt path with their fishing poles, their wading boots tapping in syncopation against their empty white paint buckets. They sit and sing on the shores of Lake Lewisville, Texas, an artificial lake filled with trout. You can also hear motorboats whizzing by the boutique golf course and gated communities along the shores. Sometimes, the fish they pull out has a gnarled face and murky eyes, like it's ingested too much motor oil. My mother laughs and tells me not to worry. She always has fish already bought from the store to replace it, just in case, there is no good catch for the day.
My mother teaches me the song and recipe on the phone so I can learn more Vietnamese. Canh chua has cá but not cua (even though it is in the song for children’s delight). Cá is the word for fish, and cua is for a crab. Canh is the word for soothing soup and chua means sour in the way you must pucker your lips to pronounce it. The Vietnamese language is both monosyllabic and poetic, allowing you to taste the words and feel the textures. This is what Vietnamese cuisine is all about: creating as many sensations as possible within a single bite or word.
Canh chua translates as sour soup. Source: The Chefs' Line S2
“When you buy the fish, it has to be a catfish,” my mother says.
“They don’t have that here, ma,” I reply.
“That’s alright, any white fish will do,” she assures me.
A world away, this song and recipe become bittersweet, as I make it for my son in our Melbourne kitchen. We eat outside, on a balcony looking at the big sunset skies that remind me of the Lone Star State. I make a wish on the early evening star - that I could have a chance to be with my parents again before they die. We each live with romantic regret for times lost and memories never created together.
My father never took me fishing. I did not grow up in that house by the lake. I left Texas when I turned 18. We never had time alone on our own. It’s not that he did not love me, it was because I was a girl. He could not be alone or display his deep affection for me once I was no longer a child. Fathers and daughters cannot bond on their own in our version of Vietnamese culture.
I knew this from the age of six, when we first arrived in America. It was not the poverty and neglect that came between us, but how we share affections. In my mother’s home, cooking and eating are the only love languages.
The Vietnamese language is both monosyllabic and poetic, allowing you to taste the words and feel the textures.
My son tastes a spoonful of my mother’s canh chua recipe.
“You didn’t follow her recipe, eh?” he says with a smile.
I close my eyes and ladle a spoonful of the smooth flake, an Australian white fish, with a sip of the tamarind broth. I taste the elephant ear stem with bits of pineapple, the skin of tomatoes and the smell of rau om, a rice paddy herb that cuts through my nostrils to block out the fishiness of the flake. Tears start brimming at the corner of my eyes as the chilli and bean sprouts get caught in my throat.
“You alright, ma?” my son asks.
“I am fine, con. I was just remembering the childhood I never had.” I reply in jest.
He laughs. We eat. This is love.
This story was 'highly commended' in the SBS and Diversity In Food Media 'Journey Through Food' competition. You can find more shortlisted and winning entries and details about the competition here.
