Việt food came from survival #viet #vietnamese — Transcript

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1. 0:00So, recently I had the extreme privilege
2. 0:02of tagging along on a history of
3. 0:03Vietnamese food course. So, with
4. 0:06everything I learned, I'm going to boil
5. 0:07it down to three themes: colonization,
6. 0:09survival, and cultural exchange. Let's
7. 0:11go through some examples. Cafe sua da,
8. 0:14which is like a quintessential
9. 0:15Vietnamese drink. It always uses
10. 0:16condensed milk. It was because of the
11. 0:19restrictions of the environment.
12. 0:20Southeast Asia already doesn't have a
13. 0:22culture of consuming fresh dairy, and on
14. 0:24top of that, the tropical climate meant
15. 0:26that you couldn't really keep fresh
16. 0:28dairy in the first place. So, the
17. 0:30solution to that was condensed milk.
18. 0:31Condensed milk you can store in tropical
19. 0:32heat, and the high amounts of sugar acts
20. 0:35as a preservative. And of course, both
21. 0:37condensed milk and coffee are products
22. 0:39of French colonization. Fish sauce, nuoc
23. 0:42mam, which you think of as like the soul
24. 0:44of Vietnamese food. A lot of sources say
25. 0:46that it doesn't come from Vietnamese
26. 0:47people to begin with. It was originally
27. 0:49developed by Cham people in Central
28. 0:51Vietnam. Vietnamese, or Kinh, adopted it
29. 0:54as they moved into Central Vietnam, and
30. 0:56nuoc mam itself is a product of the
31. 0:58environment. Because of the harsh
32. 0:59conditions in Central Vietnam, you
33. 1:00needed a form of fermentation to really,
34. 1:02really preserve fresh foods there. And
35. 1:05on top of that, even the current recipes
36. 1:07of fish sauce might have been influenced
37. 1:08by colonization. Because during colonial
38. 1:11times, the French had a monopoly on
39. 1:13salt. The original recipe for fish sauce
40. 1:15required massive amounts of salt, so
41. 1:17when it became way too expensive for
42. 1:19people to make fish sauce using the
43. 1:21traditional methods, they diluted it.
44. 1:23So, it leads to what today is considered
45. 1:26like commercialized fish sauce. Although
46. 1:28there are places where they still
47. 1:30maintain the old practices, such as Phu
48. 1:32Quoc, which is now still the gold
49. 1:34standard of fish sauce. Rice paper. When
50. 1:36you think about Vietnamese foods, a lot
51. 1:37of it is kind of wrapping and rolling
52. 1:39rice paper. As migrants moved from the
53. 1:42north into Cham territory in Central
54. 1:44Vietnam, they needed something that was
55. 1:46convenient to take on the go. They
56. 1:48brought rice paper, which you could
57. 1:49store for up to a year. They could just
58. 1:51go out, gather some herbs and some meat,
59. 1:54and then wrap it up and eat it on the
60. 1:55fly. Another one is banh mis, also an
61. 1:58accidental recipe because during World
62. 2:00War I, the French were unable to import
63. 2:02massive amounts of wheat. There was a
64. 2:04wheat shortage and so local bakers used
65. 2:07rice. So that gives you that kind of
66. 2:09perfect, light, fluffy on the inside
67. 2:11bread that is perfect for Vietnamese
68. 2:13ingredients. Bun rieu, also a dish that
69. 2:16came out of extreme poverty because back
70. 2:18in the day farmers didn't have much to
71. 2:21eat. They would go out and gather tiny
72. 2:22little crabs and then they would pound
73. 2:24it, mince it up just so they can get
74. 2:26every single piece of protein. So all of
75. 2:28this kind of blows my mind because these
76. 2:29are all dishes that you know, you can
77. 2:31pay like $25 for in a restaurant now in
78. 2:34California and they're dishes that we
79. 2:36think of as kind of like this pure,
80. 2:38continuous cuisine of the Vietnamese
81. 2:40people that have been passed down for
82. 2:42generations and generations. It is
83. 2:44traditional and authentic, but a lot of
84. 2:46it was born out of necessity, survival,
85. 2:48colonization, migration, cultural
86. 2:51exchange. They were making the most of
87. 2:52what they had. I'm going to keep deep
88. 2:54diving into the history of Vietnamese
89. 2:55food. Follow us for more