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Vietnam is a country that is criss-crossed
with rivers and streams, tributaries and deltas as well as being bounded
by the South China Sea. Fish and shellfish, both freshwater and saltwater,
are abundant. Fish are also dried, which is an excellent way of preserving
them in a country where ordinary people do not have refrigerators, and
where the electricity supply can be eccentric. Nuoc mam, the ever-present
fish sauce, is the highly nutritious result of thousand of tiny, fermented
fish, and certainly there have been times in Vietnam's not too distant
past when the whole families have survived on not much more than a little
rice with nuoc mam and a few wild edible plants. |