I have food on my mind.
McThag put up a post over at his place about bagna cauda. This is something I’d like to try as well. And actually, I think I first heard about it from reading about “Babylon 5”.
(I have never seen a complete episode of “B5”. I feel like SF on TV has been dumbed down and mostly hasn’t been good since the first incarnation of “Twilight Zone” went off the air (though the second incarnation was a bright spot in some ways). I’ve never been a fan of that minor SF TV series from the 1960s or any of the followup products (though I would like to watch the adaptation of a Larry Niven story they did on the animated series). However, the more I read about “B5” and the more clips I watch on the ‘Tube, the stronger my impression gets that it was an actual thoughtful intelligent SF series with many of the right people involved, and it might be something that’s worth my time. Perhaps next time I see a box set at Half-Price.)
But I digress. I’m also kind of craving Swedish meatballs. A supper of bagna cauda and Swedish meatballs doesn’t sound too bad. Perhaps not really healthy, but not too bad…
Anyway, I don’t know where I’m going to get bagna cauda or Swedish meatballs. I could make them myself, but I’m kind of hesitant about stinking up the kitchen with the former. As for the latter, I guess I could schlep out to Ikea and get some frozen ones, but that doesn’t seem like an optimal experience. And I don’t know any place in Austin that serves either one. If you do, please feel free to leave a comment.
(Also, while I can cook, the kitchen is really someone else’s territory, and I’m hesitant about treading in there. Especially if I’m cooking things they might find disgusting, like bagna cauda or anything with onions.)
(Something else I have a craving for, not related to anchovies: Vincent Price’s cocktail franks.)
(There! Vincent Price! There’s your Halloween content! Are you not entertained?!)
Something else I’ve been interested in for quite a while that is (semi-) related to anchovies, and prompted by “The Delicious Legacy” and food anthropology in general: the lost Roman condiment garum.
It's took a long time—4 months of fermentation, in fact—but I made my own garum (or more accurately, liquamen), under the supervision of the world's leading archaeological authority on the subject. (Looking at you, Sally!) Here's how I did it…
(thread) pic.twitter.com/9HcXuaEPht— Ötzi's Last Meal 🐌 (@lostsupper) October 26, 2021
See also: “Culinary Detectives Try to Recover the Formula for a Deliciously Fishy Roman Condiment” by the same guy, Taras Grescoe. (I’ve read his book, The Devil’s Picnic (affiliate link), and based on that, I’d be willing to give Lost Supper a chance when it comes out.)
I’m also intrigued by The Story of Garum, but damn! $158! $37 for the Kindle edition! At those prices, it had better come with a case of garum! Or at least a six-pack.
(I’ve heard that this is the closest you can get today to garum. Amazon has the 40°N, but not the 50°N. I might have to order a bottle directly. And the Vincent Price cookbook.)
(This food anthropology thing rapidly gets expensive. And I haven’t even bought any imported anchovies yet.)
Anyway, McThag’s probably peeved at me by now for wandering all over the place. And I’m hungry. Time to rummage up something to eat. Then maybe order some fish sauce.
Never shop when you’re hungry.
The foundry I worked at hired a Vietnamese guy, who seemed to be older than Methuselah, yet no one ever knew just how old he really was, including himself. His name was Vien Van Le.
A group of guys from our shop was preparing to go bear hunting in the upper peninsula of our state, Michigan. We had a lot of rivers that in the late summer and fall, had a run of Coho Salmon run up them. So there were always a bunch of us that caught fish. With fish that large, over 20 pounds usually, and we would fillet them, and throw the carcass away.
The bear hunters needed bait, and the more smelly the better. So we were giving them the carcasses of the fish and they were putting them into 25 gallon drums, and putting sealed lids on them. Once in the woods, they were going to shoot holes in them, allowing smell and liquid to release, drawing the bears to the bait.
When we informed Vien of what we were doing, he told us that they did the same thing in Vietnam, only they used the spoiled fish to eat as a condiment, that he called Fish Sauce.
He was a very short, old looking man, who left South Vietnam just a year or so before the United States left. He was an expert auto mechanic, working on friends cars to make a few extra dollars. A trade that I believe he picked up before he left S.E. Asia.
We also had another man from Vietnam, by the name of Thu Van Le. No relation to Vien, he actually escaped from North Vietnam. He was a conscript, but he had an education, and was in training to be a helicopter pilot for the NVA. Somehow, right when America was leaving Saigon, he and a fellow pilot, along with the friends wife and 2 of their kids stole a helicopter and escaped the north and somehow were able to join in the escape from Vietnam and made it to the United States. He joined a sponsor family here in the States, got a job where I worked, just a year before I did, back in 1978, and worked his way up, eventually landing in the lab, a job that takes quite a bit of intellect.
He married and had children, here in the United States, to an American woman. They ran a story in our local paper on him, calling him an All American Boy, etc.
Both Thu and Vien spoke fairly good English, although Thu, a younger man, was more outgoing and spoke better English. Vien Van Le managed to escape Vietnam with his family, his wife and I am not sure how many kids, although it was at least several. And even though I met them at a company picnic, and there were at least 4-5 kids, I do know that they were devoted to both parents, but especially doted on their dad, as if it were an old school type of reverence. And at Christmas time, we shop guys would have a pot luck, and Vien would bring in spring rolls his wife made, which were made just like she had made them in her home in Vietnam. They were simply fantastic and I don’t think you could get any better this side of the globe.
Your post reminded me of food, and then of Vien Van Le, and his wife, and how she was such a fantastic cook, and then of how both families were so hardworking and devoted to each other.
Funny, isn’t it, how once started, the mind simply wanders around from one subject to another?
I’ve never had homemade Vietnamese spring rolls, but at one point when I was doing the citizen’s police academy thing in Austin, someone brought in homemade lumpia (Philippine spring rolls). Those were some of the best things I’ve ever put in my mouth.
And you reminded me of a guy I worked with at Dell. He was a helicopter pilot for our side during the Vietnam war and came over here afterwards. I don’t know anybody who didn’t have a ton of respect for him: he kept his head down and did his work, and I never heard him say an unkind word about anyone.