Crab Spring Rolls (Nem cua bể)

If you fall in love with “nem rán” (Vietnamese spring rolls), nem cua bể, is bound not to let you down for the first try. Known as a specialty of Hai Phong, a beautiful coastal province, nem cua be seems not only to satisfy your taste but also bring you a little sunshine, a little sea breeze and even a little hardship of coastal locals. With the same cooking method as “nem ran”, nem cua be, however, distinguishes itself by its materials.

The main ingredients include ground crab meat, ground crab tile, lean pork, egg white, kohlrabi, carrot, ear mushrooms, bean sprout, rice paper and vermicelli. First, mix most ingredients together, apart from crab meat and egg white; add pepper, fish sauce, and then combine all things to make a sticky paste for stuffing. While other Vietnamese rolls are of tube shape, nem cua be is wrapped into square shape; thus, the wrapping process entitles special rice paper, leathery and soft plus a lot of culinary skills. Additionally, a little beer sprayed on rice papers is a secret for soft wrappers. Next, drop spring rolls into boiled oil, and wait until they turns golden brown and particularly appetizing.

This dish is served with rice vermicelli, lettuce, chopped cucumber, and a sour spicy sweet sauce. Minced carrot and kohlrabi tenderized by salty water, soaked into vinegar, also are eaten with nem cua be. Crab meat flavor is so special, sweet, fragrant but not too greasy. Savoring the dish gradually, you are certain to feel that the name nem cua bể is step by step embedded in your mind, gastronomists.

“Bun goi da” in Soc Trang

“Bun goi da” is a special noodle soup which is one of the most appreciated by visitors to Soc Trang Province.

The strange dish is originated in My Xuyen Town, Soc Trang Province. Leaving the city of Soc Trang some 5 km to My Xuyen Town, you can see a board "bun goi da" suspended before the small stall. While waiting for the dilicious dish moved out, you can view the cool green trees, smelling the fragrance of delicious dishes.

The best “bun goi da” is served at a small and shady stall in a quiet street at old Bai Xau, a site which used to be buoyant port serving the 6 Southern provinces. The shop-owner Trinh Thi Nu, is a retired school teacher in Can Tho City. She takes a very good care to ensure the best quality of the dish which requires a number of ingredients including rice noodles, pork, prawns, soybean paste, sliced red chilli and some herbs. Having put these things into a decoratively presented bowl, a flavoured hot broth, the most important thing to decide the taste of the dish, is added to the mixture.

“Bun goi da” is even more appealing with some fresh vegetables. It has been one of the favourite dishes for both locals and visitors in Soc Trang Province. Each bowl is a mere 12,000 to 15,000 VND. For many years, “bun goi da” have made the journey to Ninh Kieu District, Can Tho City, help to improve people’s living standard. Moreover, “bun goi da” is also served in Hoang Cung Restaurant of Saigon - Can Tho Hotel. Although the price is 20,000 to 25,000 VND for a bowl of “bun goi da”, the luxurious seat will help you delight in watching the street and the bowl of “bun goi da” is much more delicious.

Not only the favourite for many visitors, “bun goi da” is one of traditional dishes in Soc Trang Province. Once enjoying and you can feel the typical fragrance of the dish.

Snake wine in Vietnam

What is it? Bottles of "medicinal" rice wine with dead cobras preserved inside. You got a problem with that? Sometimes you'll see a pickled gecko or sea horse instead of the standard coiled reptile. One container I found was packed with bees.

Where can you buy it, and how much? Available nearly everywhere in Vietnam, snake wine is often made by villagers filling up leftover brandy or Perrier bottles. The jug I bought at the Hanoi airport contained three lizards and cost 335,000 dong, or almost $21. (Okay, I admit, this tempting item cost slightly more than my souvenir price ceiling. But I couldn't resist.)

Why would you want it? Scary for drinking, great for display. The snakes are preserved in action poses; the wine is as pink as a nice rosé. "That," someone told me, "is because of all the blood in there."

Reminds you of Vietnam because: In a country known for old-world superstitions, this is the perfect elixir. "Makes man strong!" said my guide, Tuan, when I asked why you would drink this. But when I downed a glass, there was no Viagra effect. I felt sleepy, not strong. The taste was mysteriously bland, like licking envelope flaps or stamps.

Downside: Might leak in your suitcase. Also, the bottle I bought listed "ethanol" as its main ingredient

Banh Phu The- Vietnamese Conjugal Cakes

Stories that when King Ly Anh Tong went to war, the wife of the husband's love him to the kitchen manually making cakes for her husband. King find delicious food, to think of a couple named cake is Phu The cake(husband and wife cake).

Phu The cake pack in the phrynium, not garish colors, restrained in style but take off cake bringing white porcelain disk that will enjoy to make astonished. The black sesame as a suspension of the gold shell cakes throughout, the delicious cake circle, square shape with coconut leaves as the square of the circle of Yin and Yang philosophy

This is reflected in the form of bread made of the box is based in two parts: in the box, also called sound box - small, low case and the cake outside the box, also called positive list, larger a little box up on the sound, making the cover. In addition, positive-negative philosophy also shows quite clearly how the cake.

To create a Phu The cake, people settle thin powder on campus, located on the top, emtank remaining flour onto the show as cherish, protection as conjugal affection. Not the case, Phu The cake also include it in the philosophy the team recreate a fine last year's color wheel: white powder by filtration and coconut rice, yellow of gardenia use for skin cake and green bean fine grinding of kernel cake, black of seseam, green leaves and red of bamboo string .

It is the harmony between people with land, with heaven, the harmony between the people, between the husband and wife.

The meaning of harmony Yin and Yang with delicious taste sweeter make that cake mate also requires many wonder. Flour used as a cake is made from sticky rice milling, and then get to the filter, the pressure to drain and then dried. When processing, it is not using water mixed with food color water that use water of gardenia dedicated knead flour to keep bread with gold colors throughout nature.

The processing kernel of cake take care. We use green beans ripe steam it, then add white sugar, coconut rice, lotus seeds and the five tastes . To add to the delicious cake, the processing of any hillock green papaya, soaked alum and minced with flour and bread to more brittle for cake.

When you should enjoy the Phu The cake, addition of sticky plastic, brittle of papaya, the rich green beans also have more fat in the coconut rice, the fragrant lotus seeds , and the sweetness of sand white sugar... all right together create a very own taste of Phu The cake, has once tasted will not forget, feedback will remember, remember forever, such as emotional mate sustainable sweeter.

Today, many pre- wedding and wedding cake still choose Phu The cake as offering the meaning of Yin and Yang of it. Instead of coconut leaves used as a cake box as before, it is replaced by the glazed paper, forced by color ribbon.

Fresh air between pleased joyful wedding day, sweeter flavors, delicious cake and the meaning of "square circle" heaven and earth as harmony, one hundred year durable forever that gifts are meaningful that Phu The cake gives bride and bridegroom in the most important of life's