Hanoi Cuisine - Vietnam Travel Journey ⋆ travellingto.asia

“There is a popular gift in Hanoi that people can eat anywhere, anytime at any time in the morning, noon, afternoon, evening to suit everyone’s taste: it’s vermicelli….”

Hanoi has more than a dozen different noodle dishes; some are very rustic, some have become specialities and are available all year round. Only vermicelli cooked with crab eggs and fish will come in season. At the end of the lunar month of March, the tree laden with ripe red fruits in the garden is also the season of field crabs about to give birth. The pot of rice-crab soup with crab’s eggs is poured into the bowl of vermicelli, bringing out a brilliant colour but different from the taste of crab vermicelli which has no mushy but is not as sweet as fish vermicelli.

If you want to eat fish noodles, you have to wait until the season of celery in December, the end of the year; we still have to wait until January and early spring. Vegetables need to marry with fish vermicelli, evoking the aroma of hometown dishes. “The fish vermicelli without celery is like an ungrateful girl “sitting” alone, in a bowl that neither shows off its color nor gives off any scent, the bowl of vermicelli is still wobbly, pale, and can’t smell the fish.”

Fish used to cook vermicelli is usually about 3 ounces to half a pound. Flake the fish, cut the fins, filter the ribs, slice thinly, and then put in the pan to deep-fry and burn the edges.

The bones and head of the fish are put in another pot, filled with simmering water, seasoned with spices, add some fresh onion, chopped dill, put in the pot to boil again, make the water to chan. Vegetables need to pick up the roots, wash the mud and cut it into pieces, then stir-fry it with pieces of tomato and areca pieces. When eating, each bowl picks up a sufficient amount of vermicelli. Picks up 2/3 of the need for stir-frying, 1/3 of the need for raw, covers the top of the vermicelli, and finally sprinkles fried pieces of fish sprinkled with pepper powder on top and scoop up the boiling broth. Bowl, eat while it’s hot. Noodles with celery or crab vermicelli in Hanoi are really different from fish vermicelli and crab noodles in other parts of the country.

Coming to Hanoi, it is impossible not to visit 36 streets as crowded as an ancient maze, even more, impossible not to enjoy the traditional dishes here. Hanoi; a city for peace, a city of love.

Eating fish noodles can’t forget the finely chopped water spinach; the basket of raw vegetables is best in the winter with full salads, marjoram, basil. Especially, no matter the season, you can’t miss thinly sliced banana flowers with a medium taste. Bui just acrid. A bowl of fish vermicelli is also indispensable for a little sour water (cooked with tamarind, vertical fruit ..) and chilli sauce. One can hardly forget the impression of a bowl of fish noodle soup with the yellow colour of fish cakes, fried fish, the flickering green of the bamboo nettles, the red colour of chilli sauce on the pure white of the vermicelli submerged in a clear, steaming broth. .

The fish noodle dish is great in that it does not bring the feeling of fullness to the eater. Therefore, after a few days of Tet, fish noodles are sold in all the streets. It is considered as a dish to mask the fatty meat of the Tet holidays.

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