Before
the wells were dug, people used river water (which was not so polluted as it is
today) to make starch and vermicelli. Vermicelli workshops, mostly in the form
of tents and huts, were set up right on the sand bar, worked only during the
dry season and were removed when the rainy season came.
Drying vermicelli at the An Thai Village, Binh Dinh Province, 2017. Photos: Phan Minh Tho
An
Thai Village, Nhon Phuc Commune, Binh Dinh Province, is famous for double
thread vermicelli (or double spirit vermicelli). Unlike other kinds of dry
vermicelli, it is not made of rice, but of green bean and arrowroot starch,
following a special formula.
It
is called ‘double thread’ because the vermicelli threads always come in a pair,
as they were made that way. There are two packaging units: 30cm x 30cm square
waffle-like package and a figure-8 braided package.
It
takes time, skills, dedication and a lot of work to make dry vermicelli.
Basically, the stages of vermicelli making include flour milling, dough
kneading, thread pressing and drying. First, choice green bean is sundried.
Then, it is soaked for several hours to inflate and soften. The bean is then
milled finely, put in cloth bags to press out water, and subsequently sun dried
to get flour.
As
it gets completely dry, the flour is mixed with water and kneaded into soft
dough, not too dry (vermicelli threads would break easily) and not too wet (the
vermicelli threads would melt into dough again on the other side of the press).
Well-kneaded
dough is put into a bronze cylinder with small round holes gouged at the other
end, and pressed to push the starch out in beautiful threads that fall into a
pot of boiling water.
This
part of the work must be done repeatedly at a constant speed that requires
meditative patience of the worker.
When
the vermicelli threads become translucent and float in the pot, they are taken
out and put immediately into cold water and shaken repeatedly.
After
the cold cleansing, the vermicelli is put on a grid to dry. This is not simple
because it has to be laid to form eye-catching equal-sized squares.
The
vermicelli gets dried within a day, but it is not packaged right away. Instead,
it is left overnight to soften, and only then picked up and put together into
waffles, which will be wrapped in dried banana leaves.
(No.4, Vol.8, Aug-Sep
Vietnam Heritage Magazine)