Each ethnic group has its own cultural nuances expressed through language, costumes, customs, practices… creating the cultural identity of their nation. And perhaps among those cultural nuances, it is impossible not to mention culinary culture. The food and drinks introduced in the recent Cultural Festival of the Northeast Ethnic Groups in Thai Nguyen in 2000 had a lot of "delicious things", but "strange things" were not. Because we still enjoy many dishes every day such as: Van wine and Ke rice paper from Bac Giang. plum jam from Bac Kan. Grilled squid from Quang Ninh. Lang Son's roasted pig, etc., but not everyone knows how they are processed and how they are eaten.
Plums are found in many localities, but only Bac Kan, with its large yellow plum variety and processed by the skillful hands of the girls, creates a specialty that cannot be found anywhere else. Looking at the dark brown plum jam, clear, chewy and sweet to the bite, no one would think that it is made from plums that are both sour and astringent, and even the best sour eater cannot eat more than three servings. Whether the jam is delicious or not depends on the concentration of lime when soaking (when the plum is cut into a scallop shape, soak it in clear lime water to remove the sourness). If there is too much lime, the jam will be hard and crispy, but if there is too little lime, the jam will fall apart. Normally, every 10 pounds of plums are soaked with 1 ounce of dissolved lime. The same goes for sugar. If there's too much sugar, the jam will be too sweet and you'll soon get tired of eating it. If there's too little sugar, the jam will be sour, which is also unsatisfactory. When cooking, simmer over low heat and stir well until the sugar is absorbed evenly. Just dry is fine. If you put it on too early, the jam will be wet, if you put it on too late it will burn. Bac Kan's plum jam can be kept from year to year without fear of getting moldy or watery, and you can still feel its flavor when eaten. When Bac Kan people go on trips far away, in addition to a dozen banh xeo and banh day, they also bring a pound of plum jam as gifts for relatives.
Roasted pig is not strange to us, in any cooked food stall or market there is none?!. But when it comes to Lang Son's roasted pig, everyone admires it: Lang Son's roasted meat is delicious. But it's amazing, looking at the golden, greasy pig on the tray, surrounded by cakes, sli, taro… it's so attractive. To make roasted pork, you must first color it: use honey mixed with water and apply it evenly all over the pig's skin. The more thoroughly you apply it, the more golden, spongy and crispy the skin will be. How to mix honey depends only on feeling, because good honey is mixed in a different concentration, bad honey is mixed in a different concentration. For each bottle of honey, he has to roast two to three pigs to find the right way to mix it.
Choosing honey leaves – one of the spices is not simple, any honey plant has one side of the leaf that is bitter, so when picking it you have to taste it to see if it is not bitter. The leaves used to roast the pig are banh chung leaves. If there are no leaves, use the dried fruit and grind it into powder. The procedure is as follows: After hair removal, the pig is slaughtered (the incision is only 15 cm wide in the abdomen), washed of all fat, then stuffed with spices including honey spear leaves, choong choong, pho phu chi, salt, MSG, etc. into the pig's belly and then sewn up. After fanning the embers (charcoal), put the pig in the oven to roast for about 5 minutes until the pig skin is dry, then remove and color. After beating, put it back in the oven and roast for another hour and a half to two hours. If you want to know whether a pig is cooked, you have to look at the shape of the pig, not based on the color and crispness of the skin. When the pig's shoulders are tight and the butt is plump, the pig is done. The dipping sauce for this roasted meat dish is not anchovy fish sauce sprinkled with spicy pepper, or genuine Indonesian soy sauce, but rather the steam that has gathered in the pig's belly mixed with spices, requiring skill when chopping so as not to melt this dipping sauce. When eating, each piece of meat is accompanied by a cooked honey spear leaf, dipped in the available fish sauce, you will feel the crispiness of the skin, the greasiness of the fat, the sweetness of the pork, the seductive aroma of the honey spear leaf and spices, it is not easy to forget.
As long as it's "real", it must also be "moist"; lest you get the reputation of being "the most important…". Bac Giang's Van Village Wine is not only famous throughout the country but is also present abroad. Wine originated a long time ago in Van Village, Viet Yen district, Bac Giang province. Van Village is located next to the poetic Cau River and the people of Van Village used Cau River water to brew this excellent wine. Van fermentation starter is made from some special herbs, so it creates a wine with high concentration, fragrant flavor and low toxicity, so even if you get drunk, you won't get a headache. This has helped Van wine stand firm for many generations, especially now when foreign wine is widespread, Van wine is still popular with consumers. The people of Van Village live and die with their traditional profession. There are bone-chilling winter nights when the blankets are not warm enough for people, but they are willing to "give up" their blankets to warm the newly fermented rice in the afternoon to enough fermentation temperature, ensuring the quality of Van wine. It is true that "life and death for the profession". Perhaps the most eye-catching is the "feast tray" of the Tuyen Quang group with grilled chicken marinated with lemongrass, salad with spinach and Na Hang corn wine. It's true that Tuyen Quang's daughter not only likes beauty but is also smart. Grilled chicken dish originates from Ham Yen. The chicken is cleaned, marinated with spices and then grilled over charcoal. The chicken still looks like boiled chicken but tastes more fragrant and flavorful because it does not lose its quality during processing. Grilled chicken is delicious on its own, but sipping it with a sip of Na Hang corn wine is even more enjoyable. The strong sweetness of fragrant-spicy chicken of lemongrass mixed with the bitter-spicy-sweet-hot-aromatic taste of corn wine makes both things even more delicious, truly impressive.