June: Canh Chua Cá

My second iteration of canh chua cá, accompanied by a simpler version of cá kho tộ and rice. 

What do canh chua cá mean to me? Why canh chua cá?

I initially chose to make canh chua cá -- sweet and sour fish soup -- for the following reasons:

1. I was feeling nostalgic for our family gatherings at Seafood Cove, where we typically ordered canh chua as a starter dish. I was a bit of a pyro as a child, and I admired the way the neon-magenta coal emitted blue flames underneath the steel pot of canh in the center of our table.

2. Given that I am on a one-recipe-per-month deadline (that I established for myself), and that I was only a few days away from the June cutoff (and here I am posting in July), I wanted to make something that I had foundational cooking knowledge for (i.e. I made some form of canh in March for cá kho tộ).

3. In reflecting about some happy memories with my mom, I thought about the time we both met up in the Mekong Delta to travel during Vietnamese New Year. Canh chua is a famous Mekong Delta dish, and I thought this would be a good dish to talk about with my mom as we would reminisce about the trip. (One of my Fulbright friends, Jefferson, boasted that a restaurant he knew in Ben Tre — where he was teaching — had the best canh chua ever, so we took my mom there when we visited him. My mom politely declined to comment with her judgement of the dish.) Overall, my trip around Southeast Asia with my mom allowed me to do a deep-dive into who my mom was and who she has become, and I am grateful to have had that experience. 

However, what I didn’t know walking into this was how significant this dish is to my mother. When I asked her about the dish, she explained how canh chua reminded her of her grandparents, Ông Ngoại (maternal grandfather) and Bà Ngoại (maternal grandmother).

Bà Ngoại was a successful fish sauce fermenter in Đà Nẵng (my parents’ hometown), and Ông Ngoại was a traveling businessman. Together, they were a contrasting and complementary couple; Bà Ngoại was fire, and Ông Ngoại was water. While Ông Ngoại was gentle and operated with a service-oriented attitude, my mom remembered Bà Ngoại as someone who led her family with tough love, yet countered her rough edges with sharp witticism and joyful, racous laughter. (I see where the ladies in my family get it from.)

As the eldest daughter in her family of 13 children -- and now the oldest surviving sibling -- my mom holds more memories about her grandparents than her brothers and sisters do. She recalled going to grandma’s house after school everyday to eat supper and hang out. She remembered that, despite Bà Ngoại being rich, she refused to hire any housekeepers (which is common for middle-class citizens in Vietnam) and did all the cooking and cleaning herself. She recalled her grandmother asking her to pick a ripe starfruit (carambola) from the garden in order for her to make canh chua. (While starfruit is an essential ingredient, it is harder to find in American markets, thus, was omitted from the recipe.) She remembered her Bà Ngoại’s canh chua being rich with flavor and being the best she ever had.

Starfruit (Carambola)

My mom told me this story with tears of joy and nostalgia. In between the lines, I picked up themes about our family’s legacy. Given her stories about her grandparents (which this was my first time hearing about) and her parents, she seemed to have a lot of pride in the strong partnerships that both sets of parents held between each other. I also sensed that there was a theme of passing down practices explicitly and implicitly; while my grandmother did not directly teach my mom how to make canh chua, my mom said that she would go through trial-and-error processes to attempt to recreate her grandmother’s cooking. (She chuckled when she said that she was a horrible cook when she started out, which was a relief for me given my beginning stages.)

While canh chua was not initially a special dish to me and my childhood, this experience of learning about a history I have never explored and about my mother’s pride in our legacy has thus made it invaluable. Our conversation made me engage in a deeper reflection about how I can carry out my mother’s side of the legacy beyond honoring her recipes.

How did I make canh chua cá?

Linked is a Google Document with my mother’s recipe and annotations about the process.

Who tried my canh chua cá?

Andrew and Dandy (Andrew’s friend from high school, fellow Viet-Am/foodie, and dog whisperer) tried the canh.

Eggsy, our pup, did not.

This was obviously a shameless plug to show off how cute our new puppy is.

How was it?

I’ll start by calling myself out for having this pattern of being “initially disappointed.” I have to remind myself that I do not yet cook exactly like my mom. (I also love how my mom subtly reminds me about the growth mindset mentality by saying that she herself was a bad cook when she first started, though I find that unfathomable.)

Process-wise, this was one of the easier meals I have cooked. Next time, I’ll have to cook this and cá kho tộ at the same time; I’d use the meaty parts of the catfish for cá kho tộ and the less desirable parts for the canh.

The first time we consumed it, I was so hungry I forgot to add ngò ôm (rice paddy herb), which supposedly brings out the flavor of canh chua. (I even endured being berated by an elderly Vietnamese employee, who was frustrated that I couldn’t initially give him the Vietnamese name of the herb, to get the herb. But I digress…)

The second time, I took some prepared fish fillets out and fried it in sugar, water, purple and fish sauce to make a quick version of cá kho tộ to accompany the canh. I added the ngò ôm, and we had it Vietnamese lunch style -- where we each had our own rice bowl and served ourselves from the communal bowls. This version was great. I enjoyed piecing apart the catfish filet from the bones, placing pieces in my bowl of warm white rice, and then drowning the sugar-and-fish-sauce-soaked rice in canh chua after I finished some scoops of rice and fish. This time around, the ngò ôm cut through the sweet and sour palette of the soup with the right amount of bitterness. (I could say it was almost worth it being scolded by a Vietnamese elder in order to procure it.)

Word of warning to my Viet-Am peeps: Know your herbs!

The third time, we ate the canh with sautéed the remaining bean sprouts (as my mother instructed) and fried bean curd as a replacement protein.

The last two iterations of the dish were my favorite, mostly given the experience of eating communally like I used to with my family back at home.

(Edited on July 3 with some corrections from my mom:) "Hi, con, Excellent writing as always! I have tears in my eyes every single time that I read your blogs. Also, Mom’d like to edit the part ( it was my fault by not explaining clearly,) where my Grandma, my mom’s mother, ( which was your Great Grandma,) was a successful fish sauce fermenter. As for my Grandpa, my mom’s father, ( which was your Great Grandpa, ) he was a herbalist medicine man. Remember that mom told you about he had had hundreds of glass containers of herbs. My dad,( your Grandpa ) was a traveler businessman before he’s met my mom, ( your Grandma.) And my mom, she was a housewife her whole life. My grandma (your Great Grandma,) who had had short temper but always generous about giving people food. My Grandpa, ( your Great Grandpa, ) who had barely talked and always had a smile on his face, I guessed he had that gentle manner because he was a medicine man and had saved so many lives. Mom loves you! 😘😘"