September: Mì Quảng

What does mì Quảng mean to me? Why mì Quảng?

I intentionally scheduled to make mì Quảng during my birthday month. Why?

1. Mì Quảng is my favorite dish in the entire world. If you asked me what I could eat every single day, for every single meal, I would answer “mì Quảng” consistently. 
2. I am a Virgo, and Virgos are known to be perfectionists. I figured, why not aim to make my favorite dish during my birthday month to raise the stakes regarding my desire to make the perfect dish? (Horrible reason? Yes.)
3. My parents are from Đà Nẵng, which is the major metropolitan city of Quảng Nam province. Mì Quảng literally translates to “noodles of Quảng Nam,” thus, this dish reps my parents’ hometown. That, on top of it being my favorite dish and it being my birthday month -- everything’s going to turn out fine, right?

There has been no restaurant that makes mì Quảng the way my mother does. I actually never experienced mì Quảng outside of my mother’s house until I went home to Việt Nam. That was when I discovered that many of my aunties were eager to show me their love by making their own version of mì Quảng. As an adult living apart from my parents, when I have missed my mother’s cooking, I have taken the liberty of ordering mì Quảng at Vietnamese restaurants that claim to be well-known for their central Vietnamese cuisine. However, the dish always looks so clumsily put together in comparison to the way my mom makes it. No one can hold a candle to my mother’s mì Quảng.

My mother grew up with a nascent version of mì Quảng. She experienced it when it was first a dish with a red rice base. She recalled it being a popular dish in Hội An, and it was often topped with pork belly -- during a time that pork belly was considered scrap meat rather than a delicacy -- and a splash of dense, reddish sauce. The vegetables, including the quintessential banana blossom, rested underneath the rice, awaiting to be soaked in the savory broth. 

Eventually, the carbohydrate of the dish evolved to wide, turmeric-soaked noodles. Also, as more people perceived that mì Quảng was meant to be a wet noodle dish, cooks started to make the broth thinner to accommodate that perspective; according to my mom, the broth is supposed to be thick and used sparingly, like nước mắm on bún thịt nướng. My mom recalled a point in time where I continued to request more broth on my mì Quảng, without even trying it first. (Blasphemous, I know.) So she decided to prepare the dish with a thinner broth to cater to my archetype of mì Quảng being a wet noodle dish. Another adjustment she made was to use fresh rice noodles, which is a beautiful touch. 

So why do I love mì Quảng so much? It has EVERYTHING. Shrimp. Meat (pork or chicken). Peanuts. Bánh tráng mè đen (Vietnamese rice cracker with black sesame seeds.) Fresh veggies. Fresh, wide, flat noodles. Tasty fish-sauce based broth. Quail eggs. It’s essentially a combination of breakfast, lunch, and dinner in one meal. One can survive and thrive off of this dish. And it’s one of those dishes where you can remove one component of it, and the meal is still amazing. For example, I planned to make a serving without peanuts for a guest who is allergic to them, and I anticipated that it would still be a satisfying meal. (Spoiler alert: I was right.)

The mì Quảng prior to peanut and bánh tráng toppings.

How did I make mì Quảng?

Linked is a Google Document with my mother’s recipe, along with my annotations.

I dedicated approximately eight hours to the preparation of this dish. Two-thirds of this time was spent driving from store to store to find the right ingredients. I made a bulk of my purchases at Ranch 99. However, Ranch 99 was missing some essential items of my mother’s dish: the fresh, flat rice noodles and bánh tráng mè đen. I asked an employee of a Vietnamese restaurant nearby if they knew where to find these noodles, and they gave me the answer I expected: I had to drive down to San Jose to get them.

So, much like I did when I was a kid road-tripping to Westminster with my parents, I made an excursion out of it. I blasted oldies in the car (ABBA and Stevie Wonder) and used it as an opportunity to get goodies that I typically don’t get in my neighborhood, including Academic Coffee’s Pandan Cold Brew and Kinako Milk Jam. (SO GOOD). 

Once I returned home, I got to work. Surprisingly, after making eight Vietnamese dishes this year, the ninth one felt much easier than I expected. This worried me, because I wasn’t sure if I was missing anything regarding the process or the product.

The LAST packet of fresh mì Quảng noodles

Some essential mì Quảng ingredients: quail eggs, roasted peanuts, and shrimp

Now you see the skins...

Now you don't!

The act of hammering away at these peanuts was surprisingly therapeutic. 

After my mother told me the story of how mì Quảng unintentionally evolved into a wet noodle dish -- and how I blasphemously asked for more mì Quảng broth before trying it -- I took on the challenge of making the mì Quảng the way my mother intended for it to be; I made the broth very condensed with flavor to the extent that only a ladleful was required to consume the dish.

The savory broth

Hella fresh veggies -- trynna sneak a salad into this dish

Blanketing the greens with noodles and shrimp

Here, the dish has been topped off with a ladleful of broth, then a ladleful of chicken, and quail eggs.

After adding green onion, cilantro, peanuts, bánh tráng, and a slice a lime, the mì Quảng is complete! 

Who tried my mì Quảng?

 

Beaming at the end of an extraordinary wedding ceremony and celebration: Huy, Vince, me, and Andrew
(Photo credit: May Iosotaluno)

During the summer, I had the wonderful privilege and pleasure of MC’ing my beautiful friends’ outdor wedding. (You can read more about their story here.) I figured that I could continue showering them with love the way that most Vietnamese people do it best -- through acts of service. Also, Vince is now absorbed into a Vietnamese family, so he must learn about Vietnamese culture through a variety of regional cuisine!

How was it?

How do I say this with no ego?... It was AMAZING. I mean, I credit its deliciousness to my mother, obviously, and also, to the last packet of fresh mì Quảng noodles that remained in the downtown Vietnamese market. ( I almost left it because my mother taught me to always question the last item on the shelf in a grocery store). It was everything I remembered the dish to be, minus the diluted broth that my mom gave me due to my ill-informed insistence. 

A couple of insights and reflections from our dinner:

• Huy also never experienced mì Quảng outside of home cooking as he was growing up. He said that his paternal grandmother was the first person to introduce it to him when he visited the homeland. She was also from a rural part of central Vietnam.
• Last year, a Vietnamese parent of a student I work with gifted me with three large bánh tráng dừa (coconut Vietnamese rice crackers). I had one left, so I decided to prepare it for this dish. The bánh tráng dừa ended up being the accidental star of the dish. The coconut flavor was an unexpectedly beautiful contrast to the saltiness of the dish. We kept munching on it longer after we were done with our bowls of food.
• We discovered to what extent Huy was allergic to peanuts, and Huy and I laughed about how some Vietnamese people and restaurants don’t take peanut allergies seriously. (Well, it is only appropriate to laugh about it in retrospect, knowing that Huy is alive and well.)

We ended the night with Vince and Huy’s Vietnamese contribution for the evening: Sinh tố bơ (Avocado smoothie). It’s probably worth noting that “bơ” means “butter” in Vietnamese, so you can understand texture-wise what it’s supposed to taste like. 

Reflecting about the experience post-Vince and Huy visit, I am reminded that this cooking project has been personally sustaining in multiple ways:

• The overachiever/Enneagram Type 3/Integrator-Guardian side of me is satiated every time I wrap up this monthly cooking project. I thrive from engaging in processes that allow me to connect and deepen my relationships with others, and I appreciate how much I’ve been learning about my mom, my partner, and my guests.
• The pandemic has made it challenging for me to stay in touch with others outside of Zoom calls and outside of work, but I am glad this project is allowing me to approach inviting others over with intentionality. I often coordinate the visit with appropriate background information to maximize everyone’s safety. Because of this, we are able to engage safely and in a stress-free manner with one another.
• Staying rooted in Vietnamese culture takes effort, especially when I did not grow up in and do not live in a Vietnamese-American community. Whenever I visited Vietnam, my relatives cautioned me to not “mất gốc” -- to not lose my identity. Making these dishes allows me to hold onto my Vietnamese-American identity the best I can. I am honored and privileged that I have a Vietnamese mother who is loving, patient, and willing to quantify ingredients in her recipes to ensure that her daughter is able to retain her culture.