Remembering the taste of Nam Dan soy sauce

(Baonghean) - Every time I go back to my hometown, my mother often tells me to remember to buy a few cans of soy sauce when I go to Nam Dan. Because when she was young, she studied at Nam Thanh Pedagogical School and was "addicted" to this specialty of Nam Dan. Now that she has left the teaching platform, she is busy all day coaxing her little grandchildren, but she still cannot forget the taste of soy sauce. Every time I remember to bring soy sauce back, that day the whole family will enjoy braised fish with soy sauce, boiled sweet potato leaves or morning glory with soy sauce. Those cans of soy sauce are shared by my mother with relatives and neighbors, then carefully stored and preserved.

On these sunny summer days in June, I visited a friend's house in Nam Dan - a famous place for making soy sauce. Entering Phan Boi Chau block (town), which is recognized as a Soy Sauce Making Village, I could smell the fragrant aroma emanating from jars of soy sauce placed around the gardens of households. Luckily, I met Mrs. Nguyen Thi Ho (nearly 90 years old), a famous soy sauce maker at one time. She said that she knew how to make soy sauce since she was a girl, before she got married. Since she was a child, her mother taught her the secret of making mold and soy sauce. Now, one of her great-grandchildren has entered 10th grade, and she still holds the secret of making delicious soy sauce.

A step in making soy sauce. Photo: Mai Hoa

The main ingredients for making soy sauce are all familiar and familiar things in daily life: soybeans, sticky rice or corn, salt and water. If you accidentally or intentionally add anything, the jar of soy sauce will be spoiled. To have a jar of delicious soy sauce, the soy sauce maker must be meticulous and meticulous. The first step in the soy sauce making process is making mold. Mold is made from corn or sticky rice, in the past it was often made from corn but now it is mainly made from sticky rice. You must choose the right type of sticky rice, the grains are firm and fragrant. The sticky rice is kneaded carefully and dried into sticky rice, then spread evenly on a tray. When the sticky rice cools, the maker sprinkles in a little strong tea and covers it with longan leaves. After more than 10 days, if the mold is the color of mustard flowers or black like molasses, it meets the requirements. This is considered the most difficult step in the soy sauce making process, basically deciding the success or failure of the product.

The next step is to process soybeans. You must choose the right type of beans, the beans are even, then knead them thoroughly, dry them and roast them. If you want the soy sauce to be delicious, you must roast them evenly, so when roasting, you must do it over low heat, it is best to roast them in a clay pot so that the beans will cook evenly. When they cool, the beans are crushed and broken in half, then mixed with clean water and put on the stove, cooked for about 10-12 hours. After cooking, the bean water is transferred to a jar and left to dry in the sun for about a week. When the bean water gives off a fragrant aroma, it is time to soak the soy sauce. The soaking process is usually done late at night. The person making the soy sauce mixes mold and salt into the jar of dried bean water and stirs it with a bamboo stick, then covers the jar of soy sauce carefully. Note that you must choose good salt, dry it in the sun for a few days to let the impurities fly away and dissolve before using it to soak the soy sauce.

The ingredients for making soy sauce are mixed in a certain ratio, depending on the secret and experience of each family. After fermenting the soy sauce, every morning, the soy sauce maker opens the jar and uses a bamboo stick to stir evenly so that the water, beans and mold are always dissolved together. Like that, about 1.5 to 2 months later, when opening the jar, the fragrant aroma rises and spreads, that is when the soy sauce jar is ready to use. The standard soy sauce is when the aroma is fragrant and the color is straw yellow or cockroach brown when taken out. At this time, if you measure it into a bottle and let it settle, you will see that the bottle of soy sauce has 3 layers. The top is beans, the middle is water and the bottom is mold. When scooping or pouring soy sauce to use, you must shake or stir evenly. If the quality is guaranteed and the process is correct, the soy sauce jar can be used for 2-3 years.

It is easy to see that, similar to pickled vegetables, eggplants, and pickled cucumbers, soy sauce was prepared by ancient people to be stored as food for a long time. Because in the past, there was poverty and food was not as readily available as it is today, so people had to think of ways to prepare dishes that could be used for months, even years. But unlike the dishes mentioned above, soy sauce is prepared more elaborately, can be used for a longer time, and is of course more nutritious.

From a rustic dish, today Nam Dan soy sauce has become a specialty, present in luxury restaurants, following people to the South and the North. Perhaps, the first purpose of the ancients when preparing soy sauce was to use it to pour over rice, because at that time life was poor, there was rarely any fish or meat to eat. Soy sauce became a source of nutritious food every day, helping people have the strength to produce and regenerate their labor. When eating a bowl of rice with soy sauce, we can feel the cool taste of alluvial soil in each bean, the aroma of rice fields in sticky rice, the salty taste of the ocean in salt grains and the warm taste of the homeland through each drop of water. Soy sauce is also used to braise fish. Fresh fish are cleaned and braised with soy sauce in a clay pot, giving off a fragrant aroma.

After a long time returning to the countryside, eating fish braised in soy sauce, many people certainly want to stay longer, the day they leave, that flavor must still linger. Soy sauce is also a dipping sauce. On hot summer days, coming home to a plate of boiled sweet potato leaves or water spinach, suddenly the feeling of stuffiness and fatigue disappears, the stomach cries out for food. Those rustic dishes used to be present every day in every rural family. Now, in luxury restaurants, they are the dishes that diners prioritize after drinking beer, wine, and foods rich in fat and protein. They are the "cooling" and "catalyst" to make the lavish feasts more delicious. And we cannot fail to mention the dishes of rare boiled meat (beef, goat, pork) dipped in soy sauce, with a few spices such as ginger and garlic. Enjoying this dish, sometimes we think that there is nothing more delicious in this world. In particular, Nam Dan currently has two quite famous specialties: Cau Don goat and Nam Nghia roasted veal. Without the flavor of soy sauce, these two specialties would hardly have the flavor they have.

Let me say more about soybeans - the main ingredient for making soy sauce. According to the experience of long-time soy sauce makers in Nam Dan, only soybeans grown here and grown on the alluvial land along the Lam River in this area can make delicious soy sauce. If beans are taken from other regions or grown here, the soybeans will definitely not have the characteristic flavor when making soy sauce. It is similar to Luc Ngan litchi and Hung Yen longan, which are only familiar with the climate and soil where they were born.

This brings us to the question: Why is it that only Nam Dan soybeans grown on Nam Dan alluvial soil can give the soy sauce its distinctive flavor? Is it because it is received and nurtured by the sacred air of the mountains and rivers of this land, considered a sacred land of talented people? That is the reason why people affirm that the decisive factor in creating the distinctive flavor of Nam Dan soy sauce is the local soybeans. Some people believe that the water source of this land plays a decisive role. Others argue that the decisive factor belongs to the “secret” of the soy sauce maker, passed down from generation to generation in a family. Perhaps all three explanations are correct, which is a manifestation of the concept of the air of heaven, the earth’s veins and people converging in one product (heaven-earth-human).

It is said that, after being away from home for decades, Uncle Ho never forgot the taste of soy sauce. Every time the delegation of Nghe An province visited Uncle Ho, they could not help but bring some soy sauce as a gift. It is interesting that the old song expressed the feelings of the children of Nghe An far from home in a very profound, specific and humane way: "When I go, I miss my homeland/ I miss the morning glory soup, I miss the eggplants with soy sauce/ I miss the person who braved the sun and dew/ I miss the person who splashed water on the roadside that day".

Leaving Nam Dan, the flavor of the soy sauce still seems to linger somewhere. Surely, anyone who has ever enjoyed that soy sauce will have the same thoughts and feelings as the writer of this article?!

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