Thuong Village Rice Vermicelli

(Baonghean) - Thuong village, Phu Ich commune, formerly known as Phong Hai hamlet, Nghi Phong commune, Nghi Loc district, is famous for its hundreds of years of making vermicelli noodles. Through many years, through many generations, through many hands, vermicelli noodles still retain the delicious flavor typical of the old Thuong village...

Mr. Tran Viet Thao (71 years old), a native of Thuong village, is the third generation to make vermicelli. He said he learned how to make vermicelli when he was only 7 years old. In his old Thuong village, the sound of pestles pounding rice flour filled the night. In those days, making vermicelli by hand was very hard. Three or four people could only make a few bowls of vermicelli to bring to the markets the next morning: Son market, Dau market, Moc market... to sell. "I'm old now, mainly my children and grandchildren do it, I do it occasionally to ease my longing for the job."

In Mr. Thao’s memory, the small kitchen of his house always had a flickering fire every night. His father bent over to boil the flour, while his mother sat fixing the white rice vermicelli in the bamboo mold that his father had just taken out of the pot of boiling water. His mother fanned his father to reduce the sweat that soaked his shirt. The two of them worked and talked while working. Some stories about going to the market, some stories about the boy who went to the buffalo farm to play and let the buffalo slip off its nose and run all the way to the field of the next village.

To make vermicelli sheets, the people of the ancient Thuong village had to go through many steps. The first step was to soak the rice, choosing a type of rice with a lot of starch, soaking it for 1 to 2 hours, taking it out and washing it, putting the rice in a closed basket, covering it with a layer of green banana leaves, and storing it in a very closed place for 48 hours until the rice softened. Then take the fermented rice and pound it with a stone mortar. When it was fine and smooth, the rice flour was sifted through water to get the starch. Rough, clean cloths were used to sift the flour. After sifting, the dough was compressed into pieces (only 3 kg of compressed dough could be made each night) and then put the compressed dough into a pot and boiled for 5 minutes. If a family made 6 kg of dough, it would be boiled for about 10 minutes. When boiling the noodles for 5 minutes, use a bamboo chopstick to poke the outside of the dough and see if the dough is wet and cooked on the outside, then scoop out the dough, continue to put it in a mortar and pound until the cooked dough on the outside and the raw dough on the inside are smooth together, rub it on your finger and it feels smooth, put the dough on an aluminum tray, at this time the dough is pure white and very elastic. When the dough is put on the tray, the noodle maker puts all his strength into his hands to knead the dough, kneading the dough and adding water to make the dough smooth, then put the dough in a basket (the basket is sewn with a tulle curtain).

Mr. Thao and his grandchildren make vermicelli noodles.

It must also be said that at that time, tulle curtains were rare so it was very difficult to buy, and if they could be bought, they were very expensive. The people of Thuong village had to go to Do Luong district to ask people to weave silk fabric to make a net. The net was very important, it had the function of filtering the powder so that it was smooth and soft, and the large particles remained on the net. After the tapioca flour was smooth and soft, put the powder into a small cloth mold, in the middle of the cloth attached a round copper piece with tiny holes like the tip of a toothpick, take about 4 ladles of powder and pour it onto the cloth with the copper piece attached, tie it tightly, use your hands to press the powder so that the water goes through the copper hole into the pot of water boiling on the stove. After a few minutes, the vermicelli noodles began to float to the surface of the water, use a net to scoop the noodles out and put them into bamboo molds arranged in rows on a bamboo bed, adjust each vermicelli leaf in the mold so that it is even and beautiful, then arrange it on fresh banana leaves and put it in a basket, only then is the vermicelli dish completed. When the basket of vermicelli noodles was full, it was also the time the rooster crowed, everyone took the opportunity to take a nap for a few dozen minutes.

The people of Thuong village spread out to sell vermicelli everywhere. They sell to people in the commune, Son market, Dau market, Thinh Truong market, Moc market in Nghi Loc district, then go down to Cua Lo, row boats to Ha Tinh. Thuong village vermicelli is not only delicious but also has the aroma of rice, of cool well water, making the vermicelli chewy and elastic, so everyone likes to eat it.

Because there was no firewood to cook noodles because it was expensive, so they used straw to cook noodles. Every house built large piles of straw to cook noodles. Anyone who passed through Thuong village could smell the distinctive smell of straw smoke, the smell of remaining broken rice grains mixed with the strong aroma of rice flour... In those poor days, having a piece of rice noodles with shrimp paste was extremely delicious. Mr. Thao's family, like the people of Thuong village, each house salted shrimp paste, at mealtime they scooped it into a ladle, squeezed lemon, added a little sugar, in those days it was mainly brown sugar, beat it until it foamed, tore each piece of noodles and dipped it with shrimp paste, everyone praised it as delicious. Thuong village was poor but warm and loving. Neighbors loved each other. This house helped another house pounding flour, kneading dough, and cooking noodles was a common thing. I remember the year when the storm came, collapsing Mr. Tu's roof, the whole neighborhood gathered to help him re-tile the roof. The mortar used to pound flour to make noodles in Mr. Tu's house was also destroyed by the storm, and the neighbors helped him make a new mortar.

After telling the old story, Mr. Thao talked about the present. He enthusiastically took me to his cousin's house, who is also "inheriting" the career of his father in making vermicelli. Mr. Thao's niece is Ms. Tran Thi Thuan, 38 years old this year but has 28 years of "seniority" in making vermicelli. Ms. Thuan said: Compared to the time of my grandfather like Mr. Thao, the vermicelli making process today is much less difficult, most people use machines, only the secret to making delicious vermicelli is still the same as before, still having to choose rice, soak rice... to keep the characteristic flavor of Thuong village. The most important thing is that the vermicelli is filtered and boiled with water from Thuong village well.

Ms. Thuan said, that's why the Thuong village's leaf vermicelli has been able to survive until today. Pointing at the bowl of flour, she said: "I have to get up at 1am to make this flour." I wondered: "Why do you still wake up at 1am or 2am when you make it by machine?" Ms. Thuan explained that making leaf vermicelli is not like making vermicelli (or what people still call vermicelli), it requires an additional rolling step, which takes a lot of time, rolling the vermicelli cannot be done in a hurry, the hands are gentle, skillful, picking up a little bit of vermicelli and slowly rolling it round by round until the vermicelli is as big as the mouth of a rice bowl. The vermicelli must be rolled while hot to follow the folds, when it cools down, it sticks to your hands and is very difficult to bend, so when rolling the leaf vermicelli, all ten fingers get burned even though you wear plastic gloves. The quality of leaf vermicelli and vermicelli is the same, leaf vermicelli is more beautiful so a kilo is 5,000 VND more expensive (currently, leaf vermicelli is about 12,000 VND/kg). She also explained to me that the reason why I used to see rice vermicelli noodles as brown instead of smooth white like now is because in the past, when it was made by hand, the fermented rice often burned, so the noodles were brown.

Phong Hai hamlet now has nearly 20 households making vermicelli. However, the main type of vermicelli is no longer leaf vermicelli, but has switched to vermicelli. Vermicelli is simpler, quicker and more popular. “People make vermicelli to avoid forgetting their job!” said Ms. Thuan, “but they don’t rely on much profit because making vermicelli is very hard work.” There are many households that have become well-off because of this job, such as Ms. Oanh’s family, Mr. Chien’s family… As for Ms. Thuan, she makes up to 500kg of rice every day. Every day, the whole family of 5 gets up at 1am, each person doing a different job. Sometimes, during holidays, death anniversaries or when the commune reports a power outage, Ms. Thuan has to borrow 2 more people to make it all. Her family mainly imports vermicelli for markets. Many other households have also reached out to supply restaurants, hotels… in the city. People’s demand for food has increased, and now, in addition to the traditional sticky rice dish, people also display vermicelli dishes on the table for diners to choose from. "That is also good news for the vermicelli making profession in Thuong village" - Ms. Thuan excitedly said.

Nowadays, vermicelli with leaves is not only eaten with shrimp paste or more luxuriously with “vermicelli with fish sauce and shrimp paste”, but it is also eaten with duck stew, chicken stew, raw vegetables, spring rolls, spring rolls… Some people simply need a bowl of skillfully prepared fish sauce and chili to have a delicious meal. Many people choose vermicelli with leaves as a gift to send to people who have been away from home for a long time but their hearts are still in the countryside, or to students who miss a gift from home…

Occasionally, walking through the market, I see white rice noodles rolled up on green banana leaves. I miss and love the burning fingers of the people of the Upper Village!

Thu Huong