We first started traveling (and eating) in Southeast Asia years ago, in the seventies. For a long time, because of the war in Vietnam and changes brought about by the war, we could travel only in Thailand and for short stays in Burma. In the mid-1980s, travel restrictions in China loosened up, and parts of China’s Yunnan Province became open to outsiders. In the late 1980s, restrictions on travel to Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia also loosened; we first went to Laos in 1989, and to Vietnam a few months later. By the mid-1990s, we were able to travel by land from mountainous northern Vietnam into China, and from China into remote northern Laos, crossing land borders that had been closed to outsiders for decades.
The more we traveled, the more we became aware of close relationships within the region in terms of food and culture. Our culinary map of Southeast Asia slowly changed, no longer grouping Thailand together with Malaysia and Indonesia, as is traditionally done, but seeing it as a close cousin to parts of southwest China (Yunnan) and to the Shan State in Burma, as well as to Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Just as we think of the Mediterranean as having a common palate, we began to see mainland Southeast Asia in the same way. That uniquely wonderful food, the food we’d originally been introduced to in Thailand, we came to realize, was unique to an entire region, not to just one country.
In 1997, confident that Southeast Asia would continue to open its doors, we eagerly began work on this cookbook. Our goal was to eat our way from village to village, town to town, sometimes returning to places where we’d been before, sometimes crossing borders into regions new to us. Would there, we wondered, be fish sauce in southern Yunnan? Would cooks in Cambodia brown their garlic the way Thais do, and would they rub grilled meats with black pepper and ground coriander root? If there were indeed a shared palate throughout the region, what would be its essential characteristics? In the Mediterranean, there is a common approach to food, but Moroccan and Greek are hardly close cousins. In mainland Southeast Asia, what would be the similarities among the cuisines, and the differences?
When we first began, eating and traveling, taking photographs, we felt as if we were working on a giant jigsaw puzzle, tracking ingredients, methods, dishes, names, and so on. But as time went by, we found ourselves gravitating toward the Mekong river, as if the river were a well-worn trail through the forest. The Mekong (Mae Khong, or River Khong, in Thai) flows south through China from its source in Tibet, draws the border between Burma and Laos, and then between Laos and Thailand. It flows on down through Cambodia before reaching its massive delta in the southern part of Vietnam. Along the way, tributaries flow into it, swelling it with water from distant hills.
The Mekong watershed doesn’t define the food and cooking of Southeast Asia, but, like the Mediterranean Sea, the Mekong and its tributaries are an integral part of the region’s food. They carry and deposit fertile soil for dry-season gardens. They irrigate rice fields and support an abundant fish and plant life. They help transport goods and people, and at times are the only roads around. And in the heat of the day, the river is always there for a cool swim.…
The Mekong became our thread, our compass. Whenever possible, we tried to travel down the river, from Huay Xai in Laos to Luang Prabang, from Cantho to Tra Vinh, getting lost in the massive Delta’s tangle of waterways. When river travel wasn’t possible, we took small nearby roads. Always we searched for key locations along the river to settle into, places that had been important historically, or places simply too beautiful, or too interesting, to pass by.
And just as the river became our road, village life became our point of reference. Traveling in Southeast Asia, we have always been happier eating in small towns and villages than in big cities. It seems that it should be the opposite, because in the city there is so much more food to choose from, and so many more ingredients for cooks to cook with. Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, and Kunming are all incredible places to eat, places where we have enjoyed some of the best meals we’ve ever had. But give us a choice, and we will almost always choose to eat, and to spend time, in smaller towns and villages.
Perhaps it is because we are foreigners and have so much to learn. In a village, we can see how rice grows and how it is harvested. We can watch as noodles are made by hand, first by pounding soaked rice into a paste, then by pushing the paste through a sieve into boiling water. We can observe how a household fish pond works, and how river fish are fermented to make padek and prahok. A family pig is fattened with scraps and leftovers from the kitchen, paper-thin slices of beef are set out in the hot sun to dry, and cracklings are made from scratch in a huge wok full of hot oil, set over a charcoal fire in the backyard. In villages we feel we see the foundations of the cuisine, the building blocks. They are more visible, more accessible.
It is also true that our home is in Toronto, a big North American city, and for us, time spent in rural areas in Southeast Asia is very different from our life in the city. The pace of life, the sounds and smells, the daily rhythms, the night sky, the sense of scale: Everything is different. Whenever we settle into a small town or village having come directly from home, it takes us time to find our feet, to get acclimated, to adjust our expectations for what each individual day will bring. Time genuinely slows down, and it affects everything. It affects our feelings about the food we eat, and how the food tastes.
So, our initial goal of eating our way through Southeast Asia evolved into the somewhat specific goal of exploring the food of the Mekong region by eating our way along the river, from Yunnan to Vietnam. Like students in a life drawing course, instead of drawing the entire model, we found ourselves drawing only an arm, an elbow, a hand.
Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia is, as a result, a cookbook, a photo essay, a journey down a river, and an introduction to one of the world’s great culinary regions. It is also, because so much of the research and travel and recipe work was done with our two sons, Dominic and Tashi, a family tale, a diary. Food and life, we rationalize to ourselves, reflect forever in each other.