Out of the Kitchen and Into the Fire

BBQ Snake that was actually marinated in syrup, nuoc mam, spring onions and then deepfried.

If you’re a male in Hanoi, Vietnam and you suddenly think “I’m hungry and in serious need of virility!” then you should make a trip over to the Le Mat Snake Village.  Calling it a “village” is a bit misleading since it is just a few restaurants in a normal town.  Apparently refers to an internal community of snake charmers and serpent cooks.  The most popular of the restaurants is made from a collection of bamboo huts connected by little bridges and sitting over a murky lagoon.  A series of cages sit by the entrance and house the possible meals.  Depending on availability, the options include iguana, hedghog, and turtle, different kinds of snakes are always available.  The second time that I went, we were seated and one of the waiters brought out a snake.    After deciding that we were ok with that snake (to be fair, I don’t really know what to look for when eating reptiles), the host pulled out a knife, held back the snake’s head and handed me the blade.  He showed me where to insert the tip of the blade into the snake’s underbelly.  After I did, they reached in to its chest(?) and produced it’s still-connected and still-beating heart.  In a move that would make PETA squirm, they encouraged one of the us to eat the snake’s heart.  I had eaten one before, so when I returned with a friend, he was the lucky cardio-consumer.  He ate the heart directly out of the snake.  I’m no ophiologist (I had to look that word up, so don’t be too impressed), but I’m pretty sure that there are nicer ways of killing this legless animal. The snake didn’t struggle nearly as much as other animals I’ve seen killed this year, so it’s possible that it wasn’t such a painful death.  Humane?  No, not really.

When people go to eat snake, the primary concern isn’t ethics.  It’s verility.  After its heart was removed, the snake’s blood and bile were drained into two glasses of rice wine.  Drinking blood and bile (regardless of the animal) is supposed to make a man strong, so my friend and I – both suckers, I suppose – drank the green and red concoctions.  The wine was followed up with a few interesting and surprisingly tasty dishes including snake bones, crushed and fried; “barbecued” snake’s ribs, also fried; sauteed liver and another meat; fried snake meat balls; snake skin served almost like a scampi; and snake spring rolls.  All in all, it was a tasty meal.  It was heavy from all of the deep-frying, but good nonetheless.

The second time that I went, I asked to watch the snake being butchered and cooked.  The pregnant lady who managed the place (I only mention her pregnancy because it surprised me to see a person carry a baby so close to a bag full of cobras…) reluctantly agreed and I made my way into the kitchen.  It was much less exciting than I expected.  The snakes skin was quickly peeled back and a few ribs sections were cut to be “grilled.”  Then, the cook stared at me for an awkward few seconds and yelled something in Vietnamese.  I soon realized that the work on the snake was done and I wasn’t supposed to see the next part.  Evidently, the rest of the dishes were already prepared, which meant that it wasn’t coming from our snake.  The lady in charge quietly ushered me out of the kitchen and I made my way back to the table to wait for the meal.

Snake is an exciting meal simply because you’re eating snake.  The only patrons that I’ve seen there have been men and the Vietnamese guests I’ve seen always seem to be clad in suits and in the middle of business lunches.  I’d like to think that they are middle-management, looking for the strength that will get them that next promotion, and eating their way to the top.

Chomping down on some snake is supposed to make you virile; drinking the blood and bile is supposed to increase fertility and strength.  I find it all the more interesting that the person running the business was a woman, since ultimately, she, like many Vietnamese women, was in control and filling a role that in many other countries would have been left to a man.  She was hardly an exception in Vietnam.  There, women dominate the service industry.  From what I’ve seen and observed, men don’t do a lot at home either.  A translator I hired echoed a sentiment that I had heard from women both in the North and in the South of Vietnam.  She said, “my husband sits at home every day and drinks.  He works sometimes, but his main job is getting drunk.  All men are like that here.”  It may seem as if I am trying to come down hard on Vietnamese men.  I’m not.  In fact, I met some incredibly hard working men and women in every Vietnamese city I went to.  I have no interest in categorizing half of Vietnam’s population as “lazy,” but there is a striking work ethic among Vietnamese women and it doesn’t seem to be equaled by their male counterparts.

For a country where so many foods promote virility, I’ve had trouble figuring out exactly what social roles these food traditions reinforce.  Yes, the snake is supposedly an aphrodisiac, so it has an obvious link to sex.  Yet in other countries, sexual virility seemed linked with a paternalistic control over public affairs (a phenomenon that sometimes bordered on oppressive).  In Vietnam, I don’t think I witnessed such a link.  Aside from its supposed sexual significance and snake simply being a “masculine food,” I struggled to figure out how snake made men more manly.  I suppose my failure to observe such a significance encourages a question with an undoubtedly serpentine answer: In Vietnam, what does it mean to be a man?

To be fair, I ate one of these taboo foods on multiple occasions, so I too was in search of increasing my manliness.  After that snake’s heart, you’d at least expect me able to grow a proper beard…

Snake Bite!

Picture courtesy of the Whelan's

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At nine in the morning, I reluctantly sealed the deal with a shot of rice wine.  I was officially the owner of a 38 kilo Vietnamese sow.  There were three of us around the table and I wasn’t quite sure who I had purchased the pig from, but everyone was pleased.  I was happy with my purchase, and the other two were laughing since the rice wine had almost brought up my breakfast.  Surveying my surroundings, I briefly remembered how surreal my life is at times during this fellowship.  In the distance, I could see Mountains leading to Laos, a few farm houses, and fields loaded with peanut and yucca plants; in the background, I could hear Thwat wrestling with my pig in its sty.  I made my way over to the enclosure and looked over my purchase.  She was a decent sized pig and looked healthy.

Thwat was on the balls of his feet in one corner preparing to make another attempt at the pig.  He grabbed one foot and got a hold of the other on the same side.  I stepped into the pen and grabbed the legs on the other side.  The pig flopped onto its side and after a quick attempt at getting up, gave up.  Having subdued the day’s meal, we hog-tied it, wrapped it in paper and strapped it onto the back of an old, soviet Minsk.  That’s when I realized that I was supposed to drive my pig back to Phong Nha farmstay.  Nervous that the bungee cords holding her down would snap, I reluctantly hopped on and kick-started the old bike.  For a moment, I felt like a carnivorous Che Guevara (Soviet bike and a chubby passenger on the back as I rolled through the countryside.  Like in Motorcycle Diaries – get it?!).

I drove down the muddy, rut filled road and thought this is assimilation.  I passed some school girls and some farmers carrying greens.  Some laughed and some looked at me as if I was out of my mind.  On the one hand, I was just another guy driving through town with his pig on the back of his bike.  On the other hand, I was a big, awkward foreigner.  Though nearly brakeless, the Minsk made it to the farm fine.  Thwat was close behind on a second bike and helped me tether the pig to the fence in the backyard.  The pig had a few hours to itself as water was boiled and knives were sharpened.

Then its time came.  As I held the pig down, Twah pierced it’s throat with a sharp knife to bleed it.  As it bled out, Thwat collected its blood in a bowl and mixed it with salt.  The men teaching me worked mechanically.  Within an hour, the pig was shaved, dispatched and butchered.  Everything was turned into a dish, except for the head, which was presented as a gift to the family’s ancestors.  The oxygenated blood was combined with the kidneys, some cartilage, fat and

Cleaning out the intestines in a nearby irrigation system

fresh herbs and made into a boiled sausage, while the unoxygenated blood was made into a congealed raw “soup” with herbs, lime and peanuts.  The small intestine was boiled with the liver and the left-over stock was made into a light soup; the hams and shoulders were spit-roasted; the belly was braised with sugar and fermented fish sauce (nuoc mam); the hocks were charred and boiled; and the ribs were barbecued in a sweet garlic sauce.  We even used the pig’s bile!  It was combined with rice wine to make a harsh drink that supposedly has aphrodisiacal powers.  I didn’t love the wine (closer to a whiskey), but the food was incredible.

Blood soup with homemade sausage and steamed organs and liver

The entire experience was terrific.  It was great to work alongside such a warm family at Phong Nha farmstay.  I owe them a huge thanks for helping me set up the pig-roast.  I also owe them big time for humoring my American nostalgia – they let me blast Lynyrd Skynyrd on their sound system.  It was a pig roast after all.

Caramelized ribs