The soup I could not get right

My mother makes a sour fish soup, canh chua, that I have loved all my life. When I moved to Ho Chi Minh City for work, I decided to learn how to cook it. 'It's easy,' she said on the phone. 'You just put everything in the pot.' That sentence turned out to be the beginning of a very long problem.

My first attempt was a disaster. The soup was too sour, and the fish fell apart. I asked my mother what I had done wrong, and she said, 'Add a little tamarind. Not too much.' I asked how much a little was. She laughed and said, 'Until it tastes right.' Over the next month I tried six more times. Each version was different, and none of them tasted like home.

In the end, I took the bus back to Can Tho for a weekend and stood next to her in the kitchen with a notebook. That was when I understood the problem. She never measures anything. She puts in the tamarind, tastes the soup with a small spoon, adds some sugar, and then tastes it again. Her hands know the recipe, but her mouth makes the decisions.

She also showed me a few things that no recipe would tell me. She cooks the tomatoes and pineapple first so that they give out their juice. The fish goes in near the end, because it only needs a few minutes. And the herbs must be added after turning off the heat, otherwise they lose their smell. I wrote down all of these details, though she told me I was making things too complicated.

Now my soup is much better, although it is still not exactly the same as hers. Last month I showed her a bowl on a video call, and she said, 'Not bad. A little more sugar.' From her, that is the highest praise. I have stopped looking for the perfect recipe. I think cooking, like many other things in life, is something you learn by watching someone and by making mistakes.