Special features about Thăng Long-Hà Nội cuisine
VGP - There are three basic modes of cooking used throughout Việt Nam: over fire, without fire, and a combination of both. In Thăng Long-Hà Nội cooking, there are strict rules about each mode depending on what dish is being cooked and what ingredients are available. Careful adherence to these rules is what turns cooking Thăng Long-Hà Nội cuisine into an art.
a. Cooking over fire
A daily
meal in Hà Nội – Illustration photo
- Boiling: Food is put directly in boiled water or into a bain-marie.
Most kinds of meat can be cooked in the first way. Whether a food is boiled
until half-done, done to a turn or well-done is conditional upon what the food
is.
- Stewing: This way of cooking is applied to the meat and bone of
livestock (such as buffaloes, cows and pigs) or old poultry with tough flesh.
Meat should be well-cooked in boiled water for a duration that is long enough
for it to turn tender and fall off the bone but still stay in its original
shape. To ensure the ingredients cook quickly and smell good, they are often
stewed with wine and unripe papayas. Besides being put directly in boiled
water, ingredients can also be stewed in a bain-marie; the latter method is
usually applied to pigeons or small chickens.
- Steaming: Food is steamed using a chõ - a cooker with two
boilers, one of which is placed tightly over the other. The lower boiler
contains water while the upper, which has holes in its base, contains the
ingredients. During cooking, steam goes up through the holes of the upper
boiler and heats the ingredients here. Food always tastes good without being
broken or loose when cooked in this way.
- Soup cooking: Soup is made by cooking ingredients with water and some fish
sauce or salt. The typical feature of soup is that it has a lot of water in it.
Some soups, like bindweed or colza, are cooked with tubes and vegetables only
and they are called canh suông (clear soup). Some others are cooked with
fruits and/or vegetables and meat, for example, crab soup cooked with dishcloth
gourds and basella alba or gourd soup cooked with dried shrimp. And some are
cooked with sour fruits and vegetables and they are called canh chua
(sour soup). There are strict rules on which fruit, vegetable and meat should
go together to make a soup. Dishcloth gourds and basella alba, for instance,
cannot go with pork or broth but can go with crab or shrimp.
- Simmering: This is the method often used to cook seafood, like fish,
eels, and loaches. Before cooking, ingredients should be mixed well with spices
like ginger, garlic, and especially crocus, which is essential for food cooked
in this way. While the food is cooking, unripe bananas or sour star-fruits are
often added to eliminate the fishy smell.
- Stir-frying: Ingredients are added to boiling fat or oil, fish sauce
and/or salt and stirred continuously over an intense fire. Some other spices
such as onion, garlic, or ginger are also added to the dish according to its
main ingredients. In preparing a dish of stir-fried beef, for example, the meat
should be stir-fried first with garlic and then with celery or leek at the end
of cooking. Stir-fried food should be slightly salty and moderately cooked.
- Roasting: Ingredients are stirred regularly over a long period in a
frying-pan over a low fire. This method is used for cereals like maize, beans,
peanuts, and sesame and for meats like chicken, pork, and seafood. When
roasting meats, some water should be poured into the pan and the final product
should be dry and salty.
- Braise-roasting: This is similar to roasting but applied to meats
only. The final product should be salty and surrounded by a thick sauce.
- Braising: Braising is similar to braise-roasting in terms of method
and the ingredients to which it is applied. However, more water is used and the
food is cooked for longer. The final product should be tender and salty.
- Grilling: Ingredients are cooked directly on charcoal and the
resulting dishes are called chả (grilled food). Common grilled dishes
are chả cá (grilled fish), chả thịt lợn (grilled pork) and chả
thịt bò (grilled beef). Each main ingredient is often mixed with a
corresponding spice before grilling to give the food a unique taste and aroma.
Examples are grilled pork mixed with fish sauce, onion and pepper or grilled
fish with salt, crocus, and ferment.
- Frying: The food is cooked in boiling oil or fat. This way of
cooking is applied mainly to meats and seafood. Ingredients should be well
coated with spices before frying. The final product should have a yellow
surface and may be slightly charred. Most dishes cooked in this way should be
served with sauce and pickles.
b. Cooking without fire
- Brining: Ingredients (mostly fruits and vegetables) are brined to be
eaten raw as an accompaniment to grilled or fried foods or sour soups. Although
this way of preparing food is quite simple, correct procedures should be
followed carefully: fruits or vegetables should be washed well in clean water
before being soaked in weak salt water. Often brined for eating raw are
vegetables and herbs such as lettuce, coriander, fennel, marjoram and perilla,
and fruits like cucumbers, unripe bananas and unripe star-fruits.
Fresh
vegetables are an essential part of a meal of Hanoian – Illustration photo
- Preparing “gỏi”: Gỏi refers to a dish made of raw fish or
shrimp and vegetables. The preparation of gỏi requires meticulous care.
Fish or shrimp for gỏi should be fresh. Fish should be gutted and all
ingredients should be washed clean, then wiped dry, and, finally, mixed with thính
(ground and roasted glutinous rice). Gỏi is often eaten with fermented
distiller’s grains cooked with cleaned fish guts and minced small fish. Gỏi
is also served with aromatic vegetables. The most important of these are
apricot leaves which help people digest more easily and may prevent digestive
diseases.
- Preparing “xổi” and “dầm”: To make these dishes, people
usually use vegetables and fruits such as cabbages, kohlrabi, carrots and
unripe papaya. Ingredients are sliced thinly, sprinkled with salt and kneaded
until they become soft. They are then placed in sugar, vinegar, chili, spices
and other herbs for 30 to 45 minutes before serving with fried or grilled meat.
- Preparing “chua”: Ingredients
for these dishes are usually fermented to have a sour taste. The most popular
dish is pickles. Pickles are made from vegetables such as cabbage, colza or
kohlrabi which are coated with salt and sugar to ferment naturally. To have
delicious pickles that last for a long time, take a whole colza or kohlrabi,
sprinkle salt or pour an appropriate salty water over the entire surface then
use something heavy, like a large rock or terra-cotta compressor, to squash it.
Egg-plant prepared in this way is usually eaten with crab soup and basella alba
in summer, while pickled cabbage, colza and salted kohlrabi are used with
braised fish and meat in winter.
c. Combination of cooking over fire with cooking without
fire
- Preparing underdone meat: The most common meats cooked this
way are beef, buffalo or goat (leg or rump). The meat is either cooked over a
fire quickly (singed) or dropped in boiling water for a moment (scalded). It’s
then sliced thinly and kneaded with lemon juice. Underdone meat is usually
served with soy sauce and sliced ginger.
- Preparing “nộm”: This salad
dish is usually called by the names of the main ingredient: papaya salad,
kohlrabi salad, banana flower salad. Ingredients are sliced as thin as thread,
then kneaded with salt or scalded in boiling water until soft, then mixed with
spices: vinegar or lemon for sour taste; sugar for sweet taste; dried sesame
and peanut for buttery and greasy taste. Immediately before serving,
supplementary spices such as boiled sliced pork skin, boiled sliced pork side
and other herbs such as coriander or basil are mixed into the nộm.