For thousands of years through the history, each region in Vietnam preserves its own cultural and culinary values. Come to Quang Nam province in The Central of Vietnam, visitors can enjoy specialty dishes with a very special and featured taste that they will remember forever after tasting once.
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Porridge with eel and green mustard in Quang Nam
Come to the village of Binh Dinh, Thang Binh (Quang Nam); visitors will definitely find and try the rustic specialties which have existed for a long time: porridge with eel and green mustard (eaten with green mustard) or another name of this dish is porridge from eel and “Si” rice. “Si” rice (from ancient rice seeds of the local) cooked and diluted with green peas flour in a specific small pot. Eels are also cleaned, chopped into small pieces, mixed well with spices and stewed in a clay pot which is covered by banana leaves.
When the delicious bowl of hot porridge stewed with eel are laid out table, Quang Nam people can add in the same time green mustard, other vegetables, and small pieces of
Vietnamese Rice Paper to porridge bowl, blowing to cool down and enjoy. Or they can slowly add some green mustard into spoonfuls of porridge to taste the spicy of green mustard, the fatty aroma of the eel, and the soft sweet smell of the local rice.
A bowl of eel porridge from “Si” rice has price only 15,000 VND – 20,000 VND. The most delicious place of Porridge with eel and green mustard in Binh Dinh village is Truong Thi Cam eatery in alley 4, about 5km from Phuoc Ha dam.
To cakes – special flavor of Quang Nam for Tet holiday
To cake can has dark white color, or the color of white coffee, or dark black depending on the type and amount of sugar used as raw materials for processing. People cover a layer of sesame on the cake. When you hold the cake up, you still smell the scent of ginger in the cake flavor.
The good thing of To cake is you can preserve the cake in the long time and it is be able to eat for a month. The cake is both flexible and sweet, so it is not only put on the offering plate on the first day of the Lunar New Year, but also in the ritual tray to help Kitchen Gods back to heaven. Put To Cake in the pan and fry with peanut oil will bring you another featured flavor. It is not only sweet, flexible, having ginger smell and sesame fragrant but also slightly fatty, just make you feel crave, do not cause boredom.
Going to the markets in Quang Nam on the New Year occasion, you will see To cakes are sold a lot everywhere.
Vietnamese tapioca dumplings (Rice dumpling cake)
Vietnamese tapioca dumpling is a rustic but tasty cake. Who has been to Tam Ky – Quang Nam really could not forget the wonderful taste of this cake.
Vietnamese tapioca dumpling is a kind of Vietnamese cake made from cassava flour is filtered to get starch, and then boiled a small amount of flour, or use boiled water to knead flour. Inside stuffed thing are shrimp mixed with spices, or lean pork, or mixed shrimp – pork – fungus – bamboo shoot. The cake is wrapped with banana leaves and steamed or cooked by boiling water and then dipped in cold water.
Mi Quang
Mi Quang is a kind of special Vietnamese noodle in Quang Nam province. This dish is made from rice paper pieces which are sliced to rice noodles. The stuffing of noodles is made from a variety of ingredients: shrimp, chicken, pork, beef, crab, and snakehead fish…. The indispensable things are grilled rice paper, the green chili, slices of lemon, some peanuts and raw vegetables. The good way to eat Mi Quang is eating when the food still hot.
In Quang Nam, you can easily see many Mi Quang restaurants located along National Highway 1A: Binh Nguyen shop with Mi Quang and chicken (Thang Binh district), Ky Ly chicken Mi Quang shop (Tam Ky town), Cay Tram shop has Mi Quang cooked with shrimp and crab (Nui Thanh district), Cam Ha shop with beef Mi Quang (Hoi An town)…. A bowl of Mi Quang is not too expensive, about 20,000 VND.
Good Mi Quang shops in Hoi An ancient town: Mi Quang shops in Ly Thuong Kiet Street (opened morning and noon); Mi Quang with chicken, pork and eggs in Cam Ha on the way to Thanh Ha pottery village (opened in the afternoon); in the evening, after 7 o’clock, you should eat at Mr Hai’s shop with chicken Mi Quang, previously shop at cloth market, after that he moved to Nguyen Duy Hieu Street.
Flying fish in Nui Thanh
Flying fish in Nui Thanh has many delicious dishes: grilled flying fish, crispy fried flying fish, flying fish cooked in sweet and sour soup with green vegetables, flying fish with rice porridge, stewed flying fish, steamed flying fish…. but all dishes cannot be missed the taste of chives root.
Between March and May of the lunar calendar, if you have a chance to go to Rang beach (Nui Thanh – Quang Nam) in the midst of flying fish season, you can enjoy this fish. But the rare, expensive and the best flying fish is still blue flying fish. Grilled blue flying fish has a distinctive flavor that cannot be confused with other kind of fish. The way of eating grilled blue flying fish is not picky; just hold the fish on hand, break it in a half and dip into pure fish sauce or green chili salt. That is wonderful way of feeling sweet taste of fish and salty taste of the ocean. But it would be better if grilled blue flying fish is wrapped in rice paper roll with raw vegetables and chili fish sauce.
Grilled blue flying fish has price of 15,000 VND / 2 or 3 fish, served in restaurants or in eateries along the coast.
