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Bizarre Food of Vietnam
Món nhậu or cocktail delicacies
Meats such as snake, soft-shell turtle, and goat are enjoyed almost exclusively as "cocktail delicacies" with alcohol, and are not considered typical everyday fare. However, dog meat consumption is more widespread in the North, where it is considered a borderline mainstream meat, although not eaten nearly as often as pork or
fish. While it can be found, dog meat is harder to find in the larger cities, and tourists may not always see it.
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Hột vịt lộn is a fertilized duck egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell. It's typically served with fresh herbs (rau ram or Vietnamese coriander), salt, and pepper; lime juice is another popular additive, when available.
They are common, everyday food in Asia, especially in the Philippines, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Popularly believed to be an aphrodisiac and considered a high-protein, hearty snack, balut are mostly sold by street vendors at night in the regions where they are available. They are often served with beer. The Filipino and Malay word balut (balot) means "wrapped" – depending on pronunciation.
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Nem Nguoi (Nem Nguội):
A Hue dish and a variation of the Nem nuong meatballs, these also come from Central Vietnam. They are chilled, small and rectangular in shape, and stuffed with vermicelli. The reddish meat is covered with peppers and typically a chili. Very spicy, eaten almost exclusively as a cocktail snack.
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Bun rieu
Bún riêu is a Vietnamese crab meat noodle soup served with tomato broth and topped with crab or shrimp paste.
Various fresh-water paddy crabs are used, including the brown paddy crab or the crabs found in rice paddies in Vietnam and is placed in clean water to remove dirt and sand. It is pounded with the shell on to a fine paste. This paste is strained and the crab liquid is a base for the soup along with tomato. The crab residue is the basis for crab cakes.
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Thịt chó
Dog meat is consumed throughout Vietnam to varying degrees of acceptability, though more predominantly in the north. There are multiple dishes featuring dog meat, and they often include the head, feet and internal organs. On Nhat Tan Street, Tây Hồ District, Hanoi, many restaurants serve dog meat, often imitating each other. Dog meat restaurants can be found throughout the country. Groups of customers, usually male, seated on mats, will spend their evenings sharing plates of dog meat and drinking alcohol. Dog meat is supposed to raise the libido and is sometimes considered unsuitable for women; in other words, eating dog meat can serve as a male bonding exercise. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon for women to eat dog
meat. The consumption of dog meat can be part of a ritual usually occurring toward the end of the lunar month for reasons of astrology and luck. Restaurants which mainly exist to serve dog meat may only open for the last half of the lunar month.
Like most of the world where dogs are kept as pets, Vietnamese people
generally consider the use of dogs for food to be a social taboo.
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Tiết canh (Tiet canh) is raw blood soup
Tiết canh, or 'raw blood soup,' is a common sight throughout Vietnam.
Rich in protein, its flavor is slightly metallic and is designed to be consumed
with beer. The popularity of tiết canh, however, began to wane with the
spread of the bird flu epidemic throughout Asia.. In the north of the country, this pudding is eaten for breakfast, particularly by country people, as an alternative to the soup known as
pho. Tiết canh is made from raw blood, usually duck, and sprinkled with crushed peanuts. The government of Vietnam has been considering banning the sale of tiết canh due to the danger of the transmission of the H5N1 avian influenza virus from birds to humans.
How to make Tiết canh
- Obtain fresh, healthy livestock. Pigs (in order to make tiết canh
heo) and ducks (for
tiết canh vit) are the most common choices.
- Slit the animal's throat and drain the blood into a cup or bowl.
- Place cups into a freezer and let them sit for twenty-four hours
- Remove the bowls and let the blood thaw.
- For garnish, add chopped peanuts to the top of your semi-congealed meal
- Drink with alcohol.
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Cafe cut chon (The
Fox-Dung Coffee)
Amongst the best coffees of
Indochina
, one has to mention the infamous
"Fox-Dung" coffee of
Vietnam
. No, you read it right. In Vietnamese, it is
called "Cafe Cut Chon", and literally translated, it means Fox-Dung
coffee. This coffee is so good, so precious, that it is practically impossible
to find, nowadays. One of the stories about "Fox-Dung" coffee goes
like this:
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"At the time of the French colonies, the workers at the coffee plantations
were severely punished for taking coffee, and anybody caught having coffee beans
would be harshly dealt with, to the point where the workers did not dare possess
or even drink any coffee. However, as any coffee drinker knows, coffee is
strongly habit forming, and once a coffee drinker, a person would have a hard
time to go without. So one day, the workers told their masters: "We work
for you, harvesting all this coffee, and we are not even allowed to drink any. A
little coffee would make us wake up early and work better for you." A
French planter, thinking about it, saw some logic to their request. So he walked
between rows and rows of coffee trees, and just could not decide which part of
the coffee beans he would be willing to give to the workers. The one on top? No,
because they are the first to ripen and would be the early sellers of the
season. The one at the bottom? No, because the shade ripe beans are the very
best tasting. Looking down on the ground, he saw tracks of fox excrements, and
in the excrements, were un-digested coffee beans. He showed those to the
workers, and told them: "I would not mind that you take these."
Well, if you are a real coffee drinker and are desperate for coffee…. Anyway,
the workers picked up the un-digested coffee beans from the excrements of the
foxes, washed them well and roasted them to a dark, crisp consistence. Those
beans yielded a heavenly good coffee, with unusual aroma and body, with a "je
ne sais quoi" (French for "I don't know what") which made
it so good that people swear that you would get drunk on more than one cup.
And despite its unsavory origin, Fox-Dung coffee became a legend, and one of the
most sought after coffee by real "connoisseurs". Unfortunately, foxes
are almost extinct by now, their habitat pushed back by human expansion, and
they no longer roam the coffee plantations to eat coffee cherries, and leave
behind Fox-Dung coffee.
Note: Foxes are very smart animals, they chose the best coffee cherries to eat,
and they only pick the ripe ones to eat. The coffee cherries go through the
digestive system of the fox and lose the shell and the pulp, but the beans,
still protected by the parchment layer, remain undigested. During the time the
coffee beans reside in the body of the fox, a subtle transformation happens to
the chemical composition of the beans, which could be though of as a natural
fermentation process under warm temperature.
QY researchers are now reproducing Fox-Dung coffee by selecting the best, tree
ripe coffee beans, and submitting them to a period of fermentation under
controlled temperatures, and then drying the beans as soon as they have
completed their chemical change.
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Vịt nuôi trong ống tre (Duck
raised in a bamboo tube)
Vietnamese who made their small wooden boats home raised ducks in bamboo
tubes to keep them from getting away. As these ducks grown larger, they assumed
a tubular shape; just as veal, their flesh became very tender due to limited
mobility and was considered as a delicacy.
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