Mắm Ruốc

Mắm ruốc and what remains…

My sister brings out a glass jar while we are sitting in the kitchen. She opens it. A familiar smell rises. 

“Mắm ruốc?” The fermented shrimp paste I grew up with.

She nods. “I made it. Taste it and see if it’s like the one Mom used to make.” 

I look at the small bowl she has just spooned out. 

I still remember the two earthenware jars of mắm ruốc Mom kept along the side of the house. About knee-high, glazed in a glossy yellow-brown. Mom mixed fresh tiny shrimp with coarse salt and left them overnight. The next day she spread them out on trays under the sun. I helped her cover them with fine mesh netting. The sharp, briny smell lingered in the yard. After a day in the sun, the surface dried.

The stone mortar sat on the kitchen floor. The pestle in Mom’s hand rose and fell, steady and strong. The veins in her hands stood out. Flies circled the shrimp, drawn by the smell.

“Don’t let them land,” she warned. “The paste will get maggots.”

Sweat gathered on her forehead. I squatted beside her with a palm-leaf fan. Three strokes for the shrimp, one for Mom. As the basin of dried shrimp slowly emptied into the mortar, I fanned harder.

The finely pounded shrimp was sealed in the jar with a thick lid and left in the sun. I would wander close and sniff. In the first months, the fishy smell still lingered. Watching me sniff around the jars, Mom smiled. “Enough sun and it will be ready.”

Four months later, the sharp smell was gone. What remained was the deep, fermented scent of mắm ruốc. Whenever we needed some, Mom opened the jar. Not only for bún bò; even a simple pot of vegetable soup would come alive with a spoonful.

I look at the jar on the table. Thick glass. Clear. Boiled clean.

“I don’t make as much as Mom did,” my sister says. “Just a few kilos. Exactly two jars.”

She followed Mom’s ratio: six bowls of shrimp to one bowl of salt. But she adjusted the method. She squeezed the shrimp first, then dried them. She used a blender instead of a mortar.

“And who chases the flies away while you blend?” I ask.

She laughs. “I turn on the fan.”

Every day, except when it rained, the two jars stood in the yard under the sun. In the morning she carried them out; at night she brought them in. When the sky stayed overcast for days, she sighed, worried it would not ripen in time. The potted plants on the veranda were sometimes left unwatered for a day. The jars of mắm ruốc were never neglected.

With enough sun, the color deepened in the glass—from fresh pink to dark purple.

“Do you season soup with it?” I ask.

“I use it all the time. The kind from the market—I’m not used to that.”

I taste it. It seems slightly less salty than Mom’s. I remember the deep, lingering brine that used to settle at the back of my tongue.

My sister pushes the small bowl of mắm ruốc toward me. I try again. Salty. Full-bodied. Yet my tongue insists something is missing.

I set down my spoon. Outside, the yard is full of sunlight.

I don’t know whether mắm ruốc has changed — or I have.

mlefood – Minh Lê NT

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