Mainland Southeast Asia · Volume 61, The Dry Bowl, the Ash Noodle and the Jar Drunk Through a Reed · Cooked by cue
Cơm lam and gà nướng
The Central Highlands: Buôn Đôn in Đắk Lắk, and the Gia Rai, Ba Na and Xơ Đăng villages
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 50 sources in the brief
The highland pairing, which "local people" told VnExpress came from the Ê Đê at Buôn Đôn, a claim with no named cook behind it. The Gia Rai call the tube broong or đinh and the rice in it sơi broong, as one of their speakers gave it to a Vietnamese paper. It is cooked by cue: the rice soaked four to six hours, washed, packed into a green tube, sealed with leaf, laid at an angle on charcoal and turned for thirty to forty five minutes until the bamboo chars and the rice inside is done.
As tradition built it
Serves a fire. The rice soaks first and the tube cooks by cue.
Ingredients
Cơm lam is made by cue: the tube laid at an angle on the embers and turned for thirty to forty five minutes until the bamboo chars and the rice inside is done, as the Gia Lai paper gives it. No source gives a tube's measure of rice.
- mountain sticky rice, soaked 4 to 6 hours
- green bamboo tubes
- to cover banana leaf, to seal
- 1 chicken, jointed
- to taste lemon leaf
- to taste salt
- to taste chilli
- as available stream fish, to serve
- as available forest vegetables, to serve
- to serve rượu cần, the jar wine
Method
- Wash and drain the soaked rice and pack it into the tubes, not tight, with a little water, and seal the ends with banana leaf.
- Lay the tubes at an angle on charcoal and turn them for 30 to 45 minutes until the outside chars and the rice is cooked through.
- Rub the chicken with salt, chilli and lemon leaf and grill it over the same embers, turning, until the skin is dark and the juices run clear.
- Split the tubes, peel back the bamboo, and eat the rice with the chicken, the stream fish and forest vegetables, and the jar wine.
What a modern chef changes
The tube replaced, the fire kept
Rung 5
Method
- Green bamboo is the vessel and nothing replaces it; where none can be had, a banana leaf parcel of soaked sticky rice on the Egg at 180 degrees for 40 minutes, turned once, gives the leaf and the smoke and not the bamboo's sap.
- Spatchcock the chicken and grill it skin down over lump charcoal with the lid down, then finish it on the open fire with lemon leaf on the coals.
- Season with the Gia Rai ant salt from the bench, where it can be made; nothing else in a British kitchen is highland.
- Pour the jar wine at the table, through a reed, as it is drunk.