My husband and I have invited friends over to sample my first solo try at cha gio, but a series of mishaps leaves us with only one guest. By the end of the evening I am glad—I want the cha gio for myself. The dinner I had planned to follow—lemongrass chicken curry, jasmine rice—never happens. We simply eat cha gio after cha gio as our entire meal, something I haven’t done since I was 12 years old.
The test of cha gio is eating them plain, fresh from the fryer: the sting of black pepper, the sweetness of fish sauce, the firm bite of the mung bean noodles, the light crunch of the fried wrapper. Thankfully, mine pass.
Sometime during the night I wake up and go to the kitchen. By the light of the open refrigerator door I eat three more cha gio, cold. They are even sweeter now, the texture of each ingredient more distinct; I can feel the flavors deepening against one another and I keep eating, trying to remember the taste. I am trying to keep my grandmother with me. I want to close my eyes and know what she knows: this amount of pepper, that amount of fish sauce. A world without measurements.
Here are some of Noi’s rules about food: At every meal lay an extra serving—food for the ancestors, the family members who have died, the spirits who protect us. Eat oranges after dinner. Serve iced canned lychees in teacups on hot afternoons. Sit on the front stoop with slices of watermelon or spears of mango. Suck the juice from pomegranate seeds late at night. All those times, all that food—I don’t remember what we talked about. Language, hers Vietnamese and mine English, dwindled between us; it wasn’t that we had less to say but that we had less language with which to say it. So we ate. Side by side, Noi would work on her jigsaw puzzles while I read or did homework. In the evening she would sit cross-legged, her knee-length silver hair loosened from its daily bun, and carve crescent moons from apples and pears. I am learning from her daily, remembering all the things she taught me. I learn while she mixes ingredients together to make a hundred cha gio. Her hands are larger than mine, as large as mine will be one day if I have worked enough.
Pinterest
