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Gỏi Cuốn

Writer's picture: Julianne TranJulianne Tran

When I moved into my first college apartment, I came armed with a list of my favorite meals that I was determined to cook on my own. Gỏi cuốn — Vietnamese spring rolls filled with vermicelli noodles, some kind of protein, fresh vegetables, and herbs wrapped in bánh tráng, or rice paper — sat at the very top of this list. One assignment-less night, I followed my mom’s salmon recipe via text message, “If I were to guess it would be ½ cup soy sauce, 2-3 tbsp oyster sauce” along with a few “dashes” of spices and olive oil. Of course, her measurements were for a fish big enough to feed six hungry mouths, a long filet cooked on a well-loved baking sheet that’d go straight from oven to table. I was cooking for one with my mini spotless 9x6 inch baking dish.


After roasting my salmon in the oven, I boiled my rice noodles, growing impatient as I waited for the noodles to lose their stubborn stiffness and become soft and wriggly. At home, I paid little attention to the preparation of these noodles. They just always appeared bouncy and sticky at the table in tall, mountainous piles.


Rinsing the vegetables was a more familiar task: fan-like leaves of lettuce, fresh mint, basil, and cilantro from my mom’s backyard garden, fuzzy tía tô leaves, and striped cucumber. This was my task at home, while my mom boiled water for the noodles on the stove. With my back to her as I faced the sink, we’d share little stories about our week — the student in her class who made a sweet comment, how my long-time friend was doing. After shaking off fistfuls of vegetables, I’d methodically assemble them into two pans with the leaves hugging the curved edges flanked by slim cucumber spears and finished with a good stack of herbs. We made two separate portions because no one at our six person table wanted to reach more than an arm’s length to get what they needed.


Now, in my empty apartment, I placed four lonesome lettuce leaves on a plate with a small handful of herbs and a quarter of a cucumber.


Gỏi cuốn for one!

I brought my dinner plate, a bowl of slightly undercooked noodles, rice paper, a limited portion of salmon, and my pitious little plate of vegetables to my empty bistro table. I snapped a picture of my table setting and sent it in my family group chat with the text “Cuốn for one!” Despite this exclamation, as I sat down to roll my cuốn, I was filled with a growing sense of loneliness. I don’t eat this meal solely for the taste of it. Eating gỏi cuốn is more than a meal that satisfies your need to eat; it is a sustained conversation, a still moment in time, a family ordeal.


Growing up, my three brothers and I were consumed by the busyness of extracurricular activities. My parents juggled our endless practices, my mom writing lesson plans in the front seat as the sun set over a soccer practice and my dad on the opposite side of town dropping someone off at the dance studio. We rarely had sit-down meals, our dinner table used more as a large desk with eraser shavings in the crevices and papers splayed across the surface. We'd heat ourselves dinner from large Tupperware containers that dominated our refrigerator shelves — pastas, dồ xào, or soups — that my mom had prepared in bulk at the beginning of the week. Standing at the counter or spooning portions from our laps in the car, we’d have dinner as we needed it, when we needed it.


But when it came to gỏi cuốn, we always sat down together at the table to eat. It is the singular meal that we never ate alone. In my family, we eat gỏi cuốn slowly and lazily. Unlike the many meals I had at odd hours of the weekday, this meal was one for the weekends, whenever the busyness subsided and we had the space in the day to gather together.


We each had a role in the preparation of this meal. My brothers set the table while my mom and I prepared food from pan to serving dish. My dad sat at the head of the table with a pie pan filled with water at his side and dipped bánh tráng into the perfectly shallow dish for us.


Having done our part, we sat down at the table, the smell of ginger and soy sauce wafting through the house. Surrounded by mountains of vegetables and noodles, we assembled our rolls with perfected ratios of fish to noodles to herbs. Silence lapsed as we chewed our carefully (or not-so-thoughtfully) constructed rolls until someone proclaimed a random thought and question. Conversation ebbed and flowed throughout the meal.



Gỏi cuốn for the family

Gỏi cuốn accommodates these family conversations and my family dynamic. The chewiness of each gỏi cuốn roll allows for lulls in conversation and the assembly of the rolls draws out the time for us to simply be together. We are not the family that endlessly chatters over the personal details of our lives. We share our lives with each other as the details meander into our minds and on occasion, fervently relay stories when they were worth the theatrics. Intermittent conversations would drift off as we rolled another gỏi cuốn roll or passed noodles across the table. By merely being at the same table together, we silently expressed our appreciation for each other.


Back in my apartment, I glanced around my empty table and breathed in the stillness of the early evening. The quiet did not come with the warmth of sitting at a full table. Instead, this quietness was hollow. I imagined my family at home readying the table twice as wide as my own, my mom calling my brothers to come eat. Maybe they talked about the picture I sent them. Maybe my brothers told a story worth telling.


Meanwhile, I rolled myself a gỏi cuốn roll, draping a slim row of noodles atop a lettuce leaf and stacking the rest of the fillings. After tightly rolling it up, I took my first bite. Not too bad, I thought, as my chewing grew loud amidst the silence of my apartment. Next time, I’ll need to add more soy sauce to the fish. And maybe gather some friends around the table, too.


I finished my dinner, cleared off the table, and washed my few dishes. Plates stacked neatly on the drying rack, I grabbed my phone and slumped down on the couch, gathering the details of my week to relay to my mom.


My mom and I in 2017, pre-college


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