-^-for posterity-^-

today we ate lau mam at one of vietnam's finest restaurants.

we sat in a cool place and ordered. the food arrived and we spent twenty minutes cooking at our table.

a large pot was brought to the table. it was placed on top of some sort of burning chemical which was small and burned forever. something you'd put under a large pot of food at a buffet.

inside the pot, there were 8 different kinds of river fare. there were shrimps, squids and various kinds of fish. it was all simmering in a purplish goop. the purplish goop is called 'mam' and it is made from a certain kind of fish (linh). the linh fish are found at the end of the flooding season when all the fields are covered with water. the water recedes and the fish are trapped in the fields. the fish are small and are loved by all.

the linh fish is then taken and placed in a gigantic pot. one will place about 90 kilos of fish and about 30 kilos of salt in one pot. the pots then must be left for about three months to ferment. they are not sealed completely and the end product is nothing more than the run-off from disintegrating fish. the mixture is then strained for bones and heads and what not and one of two things can happen. it can be boiled down into fish sauce (eaten with most dishes here. it has a very distinct taste and smell.) or it can be left in its crude state and used as 'mam' for dishes such as the one that was in front of me this afternoon.

so, our dish of fish parts and fermented fish juice was boiling and the waiter brought out a giant pile of vegetables. i kid you not, it looked like he was bringing a bush to the table. it stood about three feet high and was set on a separate table. it was a large basket that was overflowing with, as our waiter kindly informed us, 16 different kinds of vegetables all freshly cut from somewhere. the vegetables are put into the pot and are stirred around and eaten with rice.

all in all, the bush of vegetables and our fermented fish stew boiling on the table were wonderfully tasty. we sat and ate for over an hour and it felt like a fishy thanksgiving meal.