"Ladder" soft noodle soup

VGP - Bún thang ("Ladder" soft noodle soup) must be ranked highly among the culinary specialties of Việt Nam. Part of the attraction of this dish is that it is not so easy to find and so one doesn’t get to taste it everyday. Moreover, bún thang might taste delicious in one place but not necessarily be as good somewhere else.

Bún, of course, is the Vietnamese word for round rice noodles; thang is a word of Chinese origin that literally means “a soup”, but the word also means “ladder” in Vietnamese. People say that eating bún thang is like climbing a ladder – just as you go up a ladder one step at a time, you eat one bowl after another of this delicious soup. Bún thang, then, has little to do with any ordinary soup or potage such as snake-headed mullet soup and water dropwort soup, or with the soup made of crab paste, nep-tunia and water morning-glory.

In some families, there are old women who know how to make a mouth-watering bún thang – what a pity they show their skill only once or twice a year, after the first three days of Tết.

People often have a party serving bún thang on the 4^th or 5^th day of the Tết holiday. When one feels tired of the square sticky rice cake or greasy food like pork pie, spring roll, trotter stew, meat pie, bún thang is the ideal dish. This delicacy satisfies all the requirements for an interesting soup full of sour, hot, and tasty flavors without being heavy or greasy. Of the persons who have mastered the art of cooking bún thang, Mrs. Sam in Hàng Bạc Street and Mrs. Mai Phương in Lê Văn Hưu Street are the most famous.

Like other kinds of noodle soup, this delicacy uses similar ingredients: round rice noodles blanched briefly in boiling water, broth, some protein, spices, etc. However, to make it perfect requires particularly strict and rigorous cooking techniques. A savory bowl of bún thang depends first and foremost on thang or broth.

The sweetness of the broth should not come from monosodium glutamate and should be free from the strong flavor of boiled ox or buffalo bones. Therefore, the broth has to be prepared form chicken broth cooked with prawns, shelled shrimp or sá sùng (sea leech), and the aforementioned bones. These ingredients together bring about the required sweetness, which is neither fatty nor smelly and result in a clear broth. The broth should be incessantly boiled right up to the time of serving. One has to disperse the heat by blowing at the bowl before tasting the soup.

On top of a bowl of bún thang lies a layer of different ingredients, not mixed randomly together, but arranged so each element occupies a corner of the bowl: shreds of pork pie and thin-fried egg, soft chicken fillets cut into shreds, fluffy shredded sea shrimp, each in its place, each set off from the other ingredients. Most of these have a yellow color, though with different nuances: the ivory yellow of pork pie, the bright yellow of fried egg, the plain yellow shredded sea shrimp, and the shiny yellow of chicken fillet – all situated against the background of very white rice noodles. Several kinds of herbs can also add color to a bowl of bún thang: the fresh green of coriander, the dark green of basil, the plain green of flagrant knotweed, the jet-black of pepper, and the bright red of chilly.

Bún thang, obviously, must be served in big bowls. Small bowls cannot keep the heat of the broth for a long time, thus reducing the deliciousness of the dish. The bowl of bún thang should also be filled up to the top with the broth, which is as clear and ivory-yellow as honey. The essence of this specialty, the quintessence which bún thang cannot stand without, is belostomatid, an essence squeezed from a particular kind of beetle. Just a little of belostomatid and a spoonful of shrimp paste perfectly highlight the rich flavor of the dish. The hot savour of belostomatid and the strong smell of shrimp paste, though they may be considered as two opposite musical notes, harmonize with each other to form a wonderful chord.

No one knows the exact birthday of bún thang. Decades ago, Mrs. Am’s was the most famous of numerous restaurants in Đồng Xuân Market. Since the first day of their marriage until their old age, many a couple went to Mrs. Am’s restaurant to taste bún thang every Sunday./.