December: Bún Chả Cá
What does bún chả cá mean to me? Why bún chả cá? Many of my favorite childhood experiences involve me assisting my mom in the kitchen, especially when it came to her frying up chả cá. Chả cá, which is a Vietnamese fish cake that is usually a ground-up mixture of tilapia, shallots, garlic, and green onion, was one of my favorite Vietnamese foods. My mom would buy chả cá at the nearest Vietnamese supermarket, where the mixture is typically sold by the pound in the seafood section and is the equivalent of a sausage blend prior to being cased. When she got home, she would fill a skillet up to ⅓” with olive oil, heat it up, and flatten the fish cake mixture across the base of the pan. I enjoyed watching the sides of the chả cá brown in the oil, and I was pleased to see my mom flip the fish cake over to reveal that the bottom half of it had successfully picked up a golden-brown hue. The part that brought me utter joy was when my mom asked me to taste-test the chả ca. (Looking back at this, I
