"Delicious" with spicy eel dish from Nghe An on a monsoon day

Eel seems to be a freshwater aquatic species found in all the rice fields and coastal areas of Vietnam. Delicious dishes made from eel are also very diverse: in the South there is salt-baked eel, sour soup with eel, crispy fried eel rolls, eel stewed in coconut water...; in the North there is eel stewed with banana, eel vermicelli, eel steamed with salt and lemongrass... Each region has a different cooking style, but in Nghe An, just a few rustic ways of cooking are enough to make the brand "Nghe eel" famous far and wide.

Nghe An eel porridge. Photo: Provincial Tourism Promotion Center

Nghe An is a sunny and windy Central region. Due to the harsh terrain and climate, the products of the fields are not as fertile and rich as those of other provinces and cities. However, with skillful hands and a delicate taste, women in the poor rural areas of Nghe An still find ways to take advantage of and create many delicious dishes from simple ingredients available around their home gardens.

First of all, eel porridge. The brown, slim, firm-fleshed eel has just been taken out of the trap after a night of “sleeping in the field”. Clean the slime with coarse salt or ash, then quickly strip off a pair of bamboo ribs at the end of the alley to slit the meat. The eel meat is left in long pieces, marinated thoroughly, then quickly stir-fried with shallots, shallots, turmeric, red chili… The onions and turmeric have just been quickly pulled from the garden and are still fresh. After a moment of stirring with chopsticks, the rich, sweet aroma will rise. Stir-fried over a fire, the eel meat must still be soft and chewy, shimmering with the golden color of turmeric, and the tingling spiciness of chili… only then will it be “passable”.

A skillful woman in the kitchen must adjust the time to be just right, which means that before cooking the eel, the porridge must be put on the stove. The porridge is made from regular rice, mixed with a little sticky rice to make it thick and fragrant. The eel bones are not wasted either, the secret is to grind and filter the backbone to get the broth to cook with the porridge.

When the porridge blooms, not too thick nor too thin, season it and scoop it into a bowl, pick up the eel chopsticks, drizzle some golden fried water, sprinkle in some shallots, Vietnamese coriander, green onions, pepper... "Adding" a warm flavor to a bowl of porridge on a cold day is the atmosphere of gathering and gathering of the whole family and friends, bowing their heads to sniff and enjoy each small spoonful of porridge, until the last spoon is reached!

Eel soup can be eaten with rice paper, bread, wet rice cake... Photo: Provincial Tourism Promotion Center

People who are not into porridge can enjoy eel soup. A friend from far away came to Vinh and was treated to Cong Thanh eel soup and exclaimed, “It is truly the best dish in the world.”

Nghe An people often add a few pork bones to the broth for eel soup. The marrow in the bone marrow and the backbone of the eel are simmered until soft, carefully filtered to form foam, the remaining clear broth is the essence of sweet, fatty, and fragrant flavor. Eel meat is also prepared similarly to when stir-fried to make porridge, except that eel soup needs to be spicier, so the red color in this dish is a bit richer. Nghe An eel soup is served with bread, wet rice paper, rice paper..., while eating, you will be sobbing, making you crave for more, like "not far away but already missing".

Attractive eel vermicelli dish. Photo: Provincial Tourism Promotion Center

People in the countryside of Nghe An also prepare eel vermicelli, eel stewed with banana, eel stir-fried with lemongrass and chili... for daily meals. Many visitors wonder why eel is available everywhere, how to prepare eel porridge, eel soup, eel stewed with banana, eel stir-fried with lemongrass and chili... are posted all over the internet, easy to learn, but why is it that wherever you eat it, it is not as good as authentic Nghe eel? Nghe people far from home, or visitors from far away, as soon as they set foot in this land, they rush to find an eel restaurant to soothe their taste buds?

It is difficult to explain this, or is it that everywhere there are eels but they are not eels from the fields of Nghe An; everywhere there is sticky rice and rice but they do not grow in the Lao wind; everywhere there are Vietnamese coriander, shallots, green onions, purple onions… but home-grown spices are still more fragrant?