Sapasui (Samoan Chop Suey)

Samoa's bean thread noodles braised with minced beef, a great deal of ginger, and soy sauce until every strand has drunk the pan dry

Origin: Apia, Upolu & Samoa

From the journey of Mung Bean.

Sapasui is what a Samoan gathering is measured by. It is cooked in quantities that look industrial, carried to the table in a basin rather than a bowl, and eaten at room temperature with the fingers or a fork at every fa'alavelave, every to'ona'i after Sunday church, and every funeral, wedding, and birthday in between. A Samoan household abroad in Auckland, Sydney, or Los Angeles will make it for the same occasions and in the same quantity. The strands are the dish. Bean thread vermicelli is made from mung bean starch rather than from wheat or rice, which is why it turns from opaque white to glassy translucent as it hydrates and why it behaves as it does in the pan: it absorbs a very great deal of liquid without going to paste, so a properly made sapasui is not a noodle in a sauce but a noodle that has drunk the sauce entirely and holds it. Substituting rice vermicelli produces something that collapses, and substituting wheat noodles produces a stir-fry. The route it took is a specific and quite short one. The first shipment of three hundred indentured Chinese labourers reached Apia in April 1903, recruited through the southern Chinese ports to work the German colonial administration's copra and cacao plantations, and 3,868 men had been contracted by the time the First World War ended German rule, with rather more than two thousand in the colony at any one time. The New Zealand administration that followed continued the scheme and then wound it down, repatriating most of the men between the wars; a minority stayed, married into Samoan families, and their descendants are part of Samoan society. What those cooks left behind is not a Chinese restaurant tradition, which never took root, but a single dish that became wholly Samoan. The name is the American-Chinese chop suey rendered into Samoan phonology, and it is worth saying that the dish does not resemble American chop suey in any meaningful way beyond the ancestry of its name. What Samoa did to it is mostly ginger. The quantity is startling to anyone raised on a Cantonese hand, three or four tablespoons of it grated into a pan for six people, and it is the ginger against the soy and the sweetness of the browned onion that makes the dish taste Samoan rather than Chinese.

Ingredients

Noodles

  • 250 g bean thread vermicelli (mung bean glass noodles)

Braise

  • 3 tbsp neutral oil
  • 2 onions, finely sliced
  • 5 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • 4 tbsp fresh ginger, finely grated
  • 600 g minced beef, or minced chicken
  • 120 ml light soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp dark soy sauce, for colour
  • 500 ml water or beef stock
  • 2 tsp caster sugar
  • 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 carrot, cut into fine matchsticks (optional)

To finish

  • 6 spring onions, sliced on the diagonal

Method

  1. Soak the vermicelli in a large bowl of hot but not boiling water for ten minutes, until the strands are pliable and translucent but still have some resistance. They will finish cooking in the pan.
  2. Drain them and cut through the mass several times with kitchen scissors. Uncut bean thread comes out of the pan in a single impossible tangle, and every Samoan cook does this.
  3. Heat the oil in a wide deep pan and fry the onions over a medium heat for eight or nine minutes until soft and browning at the edges.
  4. Add the garlic and the ginger and fry for two minutes. The pan should smell overwhelmingly of ginger at this point; that is correct.
  5. Add the minced beef, break it up, and fry it until it has browned properly rather than merely turned grey, about eight minutes.
  6. Pour in both soy sauces, the water, the sugar, and the pepper, and bring to a simmer. Add the carrot if using.
  7. Tip in the drained noodles and turn them through the liquid with two forks or a pair of tongs until they are evenly coated.
  8. Simmer uncovered over a low heat for ten to twelve minutes, turning every couple of minutes, until the noodles have absorbed almost all of the liquid and the pan is nearly dry.
  9. Taste and adjust with soy rather than salt. The finished dish should be well seasoned, since it is eaten cool and cooling flattens it.
  10. Take it off the heat, scatter the spring onions over, and let it stand for at least twenty minutes. Sapasui is served warm or at room temperature, never straight from the stove.

Notes

Buy bean thread vermicelli, sold as glass noodles, cellophane noodles, or mung bean thread, and check the packet says mung bean rather than sweet potato or rice. The sweet potato ones are chewier and Korean in style; the rice ones fall apart. Do not oversoak: strands left in water until fully soft will turn to mush during the braise, and they should still be slightly firm going into the pan. The dish is deliberately made in bulk, keeps for three days in the refrigerator, and is generally reckoned better on the second day. If you scale it up for a crowd, keep the ginger in proportion, since it is the first thing that gets lost.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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