Why 'Fish Sauce in Honey Jars?'


"Trời ơi, tại sao con lại ném ra? Thật là lãng phí!" 
Translation from Vietnamese to English: Oh my god, why would you throw that away, child? You are wasting!"

My beloved Bà Noi can put those on the show Hoarders to shame. She stubbornly insists that there are multiple uses to anything and everything, so almost nothing can be justifiably tossed out; that's why opening a kitchen cupboard or pantry in my house was, and still very much remains, a task not intended for the faint of heart.  From the overwhelming waft of a durian's creamy interior to rows and rows of clementine peels, arranged neatly on pages of Thòi Báo (the Toronto-Vietnamese newspaper), just waiting to be dried and then preserved for thuoc bac (Vietnamese herbal medicine), our kitchen cupboards are stocked full of Southeast Asian herbs and delicacies, but also surprises.  Only unknowing guests would unassumingly reach for a bottle or a bag and expect to find what's labelled on the outside, inside. That's probably how most households operate- but not mine.

I learned this the hard way when I was ten.

It had been a long day of school. I'd proudly presented my Lord of the Rings trilogy set for show-and-tell, and it had taken a lot out of me.  Arriving home, I shrugged off my backpack and silently congratulated myself on a job well done. I deserved a treat for being such a grown-up today! And what did grown-ups drink..? Easy: coffee or tea.

Tea seemed much easier to prepare. As I waited impatiently for the water to boil, I recalled watching my Bà Noi drizzling honey in her tea on sleepy mornings, and decided that honey was exactly what my grown-up cup of tea needed.  Rummaging through my kitchen cupboards, I was ecstatic when I finally found it: the perfect little jar of honey, just waiting to be used.  I eagerly loosened the lid and scooped several dallops into my drink before greedily gulping it down, savouring the taste of sweet, sweet grown-up life.

And immediately spat it back out with gusto.

What I'd poured into my cup of tea wasn't honey at all. It was something else- something not sweet, but savoury. Too savoury.  “Ba Noi!" I called out to my grandmama. "What is this?”



It didn't take more than a sniff of my Hercules mug to deduce what the substance really was: a Vietnamese kitchen staple known as nuoc mam, or fish sauce. Nuoc mam is a popular ingredient in Vietnamese dishes; we eat it with spring rolls, with fish, with meats, with noodles, with rice, with just about everything. One does not simply try and appreciate fish sauce, though. Oh, no. It is incredibly offensive to the nose, and definitely an acquired taste. One either grows up with it and consumes it without a second thought, or, bravely tastes it for the first time, and, intrigued, tries again. If curiosity killed the cat, then the unmistakable smell of nuoc mam brought it back.

The beauty behind nuoc mam is that those who do enjoy nuoc mam don’t just 'like' it- they love it. As one of my cousins often and candidly jokes, “Nuoc mam is a way of life.” Nuoc mam isn't for the faint of heart, or the mild of appetites and tastebuds. It is strong. It is stringent. It is flavourful, it is assertive. And all unapologetically so.


During a job interview, I was once asked to describe myself in less than ten words. Stumped, I found myself replying, "I am fish sauce in a honey jar." (Interviewer: I'm sorry...I beg your pardon?) I named this blog ‘Fish Sauce in Honey Jars’ because the memory has long stayed with me, and because the image of fish sauce in honey jars instantly brings to mind the melding of tradition with postmodernity, of a Canadian lifestyle with Vietnamese roots, of something that is completely different from what meets the eye or what one might come to expect. Fish Sauce in Honey Jars is an ode to transnationalism, to traversing borders and boundaries.  It is a tribute to playing with, and then bending, expectations and challenging them while serving homage to tradition.

This blog is a place for me to explore the elements above as they merge together - my Vietnamese roots, or the 'refugee experience' of the generations before me, and the fascinatingly unexpected, the unusual, the beautiful, in the seemingly mundane and every day.

I don't know if a honey jar is the best place to store fish sauce in a kitchen cupboard. I certainly don't know what it's like to live in a household where everything is neatly (and fittingly) labelled. But what I do know is that fish sauce is delicious, even when it does come out of a honey jar, and it has the capacity to brighten up a dish like nothing else.

Fish Sauce in Honey Jars is a meditation of my life and research, both a work in progress, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it.

Cheers to innovative research, to good food, to living the 'grown-up' life, and to never knowing what to expect when opening a door to one of my Ba Noi's kitchen cupboards,

Grace




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