Tiet Lieu’s Secret
They say that it is thanks to rice that Vietnamese people won war with France, and then with America. Rice is the principal type of crop and the main ingredient for most local dishes.
Rice is boiled, fried, steamed and stewed. It is prepared with various spices or without them. Typical Vietnamese scene is: girls planting rice in the marshland. Another joyful scene is harvest. If the harvest is good, the country will be replete and satisfied; year off is a “black” year for every Vietnam inhabitant.
Different sorts of rice demand different preparation. As a rule, boiled rice should be dry and crumbly. In Vietnam it is prepared in the following way: first, it is thoroughly washed in several waters, until water turns completely transparent. Then you should dry it, add water and salt and boil it for about five minutes. Water should seethe all the time. After that you should add an onion (don’t cut it!) and keep on boiling it to the moment when water boils away. This will take approximately 15 minutes. Then the pan is tightly covered with lid, wrapped into paper and left for 15-20 minutes. After that you can serve it with nutmeg and butter.
According to one Vietnamese fairy tale, two thousand years ago the country was ruled by Chan Von VI, who had 20 sons, and only one of them, Tiet Lieu, was modest and hard working. He spent night and day with his wife planting his own sort of rice that was very popular with local people. Before his death, Chan Von said that he will pass the throne and all his riches only to the person who finds a meal that tastes like sky and like earth. Sons started to offer him various exotic dishes: pheasants stuffed with fruit, stewed poisonous snakes, huge shrimps and lobsters. However, the king preferred Tiet Lieu’s moderate dish – round rice and square haricot cookies, stuffed with minced pork. Nowadays these cookies are the most traditional Vietnamese dish that you will see on every celebration. All in all, Vietnamese love various rice cakes. For instance, numerous Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh and Haiphong restaurants and snackbars offer banh chung – cakes with rice paste and eggs. Banh ran – cake stuffed with sweet pea slush is the dish that first evokes astonishment, and then – real rapture.
But it is not only rice that Vietnamese eat. Local people really like exotic fruit and vegetables, pork and, of course, fish. Which is understandable, as Vietnam, like the whole Indo-China peninsula, is washed by the South China Sea. Not far from Haiphong they prepare amazingly tasty fish sauce – nuoc mam – which supplements many Vietnamese dishes. Soldiers of the Liberation Army eat this sauce concentrated. It is also used when smoking pork, to make it smell even better. There are even special sauces that are aged for several years, which makes their taste more delicious. One soldier said that they drank nuoc mam in case they had to spend much time in water. The sauce contains various amino acids, phosphorus, iodine and calcium. In Vietnam, fish is often dried in the sun and pickled. Definite sorts of sardines are turned into powder. Or they cook special paste with typical spicy smell. Then this powder is used to prepare seasoning or garnishes for many dishes. You can also try exotic Vietnamese dishes like tortoise soup with snake liver and monkey brains.
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