At risk of sounding overly-grandiose, cooking is a lot like language. What I mean by that is a little goes a long way—until it doesn’t.
As preposterous a reality as this is, for the last two-odd years I’ve found myself in a position where going out to eat (which is to say, most often, taking to the Saigon streets) is far more economical than cooking at home. There’s just no way, I reasoned, that one could ever conjure up something as life-affirming as the rice plate found for a dollar fifty situated 200 meters in every direction. I could go on, but suffice to say where dining is concerned, I’ve been lucky enough to justify a setup that, in most geographies, would leave me totally broke.
Recent events, however, have turned such a reality on its head and left me huddling over my apartment’s single electric burner in a perplexed state. It’s not that I have any particular disdain for the activity of cooking per se. In fact, I have great memories of pinching pennies in Berlin and spending lazy evenings stewing lentils and canned fish with a smile on my face. There and then, it just felt like the right thing to do. But It’s a little different these days, in part due to the fact that I’ve been spoiled, and because the stakes of being back in the kitchen feel high. Amid Vietnam’s strictest COVID lockdown to date, every restaurant is shuttered and grocery stores sometimes feature queues down the block.
It must be said that I’m lucky for a lot of reasons—I can work from home and my neighborhood has plenty of produce aisles to browse; even if they’re sparse, I can make time to stop by later on when the next shipment arrives. It would be a drastic understatement to note that, for tens of thousands in this city alone, these times are unthinkably difficult.
The early days, when renewed panic swept the air, a trip to the store left little room for error. I stocked up on eggs, chewy baguettes, and breakfast cereal, feeling certain that, though COVID was here to stay, the restrictions would ease up. Forecasting was never my strong suit, though, and this easing appeared to be off the table for a while. Cooking it would be.
Back to the language thing. For me, at least, there comes a point in learning a language when one’s confidence balloons and, with the basics in line, you begin to think, “Hey, maybe I can get by after all.” This false sense of accomplishment, inevitably, is flattened by a single, humbling phone call with a fast speaker or with an attempt to do something technical—say, fixing an air conditioner or explaining a medical ailment that, to be sure, does not merit a trip to the clinic. In returning to the kitchen, I’ve experienced an eerily similar phenomenon.
Omelettes for dinner, a simple pasta here and there, far too many carbs, not much meat to speak of, an oatmeal phase gone stale, fried egg on top of everything. There is work to be done. The first days were good, the next few alright, and later on the realization of profound gaps in my culinary education. So it’s back to the drawing board in the hopes that another few weeks left to my own devices will bring an epiphany. Or, at the very least, a little variety.