At Thuy Nga restaurant in Hanoi Duc Hanh discovers some wonderful dishes that come straight from the countryside Crack!
I jolt at the sound of the terra-cotta splitting wide open. All it took was one quick strike and the pot broke in half. The waiter smiles as he pulls away the It’s definitely a novel way of serving up the rice, though I’m not broken pot. sure my mother would approve .
She certainly would smack her lips at the enticing fragrance which wafts across the table after the pot has been removed. This, by the way, is com nieu, a classic rural dish that has suddenly become quite hip in the big smoke as Hanoians look for a taste of home cooking. Perhaps its part of a backlash against the rise of fast food in the city or perhaps com nieu is simply the plat du jour.
Either way, I’m a happy camper if trendy restaurateurs across town decide to add it to the menu. Cooking com nieu is said to be a tricky affair and the waiter simply smiles when I ask how it’s prepared as if to say, don’t ask me.
Restaurants will normally offer com nieu in three different ways: Medium, slow-cooked (yellowish brown colour) or extremely well-cooked (which means it’s so well cooked it is nearly burnt). This last way is perhaps the most popular, though first timers might settle for medium. A true connoisseur would possibly scoff at all of the above as restaurants don’t actually cook com nieu in the most authentic fashion.
To do this you would need to fire up some straw to cook the claypot on! Obviously this tends to be a tad smoky for your average restaurant. But to get back to my ball of rice, well, after I break it in half, I can see that inside the rice is white and fluffy while the outside retains a thick yellow crust which is wonderfully crispy. I manage to coax the manager over to ask why it has to be a terracotta pot.
“The terracotta nurtures the food through the cooking process and keeps it warm for a long period of time,” says Thuy Nga, the owner of Thuy Nga restaurant. But I digress with this description of how it cooks and how it looks — what of the taste? Well a spoonful of the rice with either smidgen of ruoc thit (dried shredded pork) and muoi vung (crushed roasted sesames and peanuts with salt) is simply divine.
But on a hot summer’s night, it is a scrumptious accompaniment with boiled spinach, a bowl of crab soup cooked with vegetables and a small bowl of pickled egg-plants. At Thuy Nga, which has been open for 20 years now, you can find a whole host of vegetable soups and salads prepared in true countryside fashion. One absolute winner of a dish is the green cabbage cooked with fish, ginger and banana flower mixed salad. You can also find roasted frogs, fried eels, clam soup, tofu and plenty of fresh fish dishes.
This large restaurant found near Hanoi’s Daewoo hotel is a real old fashioned Vietnamese establishment. The warm, welcoming atmosphere is sincere and dining there amongst crowds of friends and families always seems to make for a wonderful evening out.
Com Nieu Thuy Nga restaurant 110 B2, Nguyen Chi Thanh, Hanoi 04 831 8528
(Source: Timeout)
Tag: Vietnam , Vietnamese , Hanoi , Hotel , Cuisine Vietnam Countryside bowls
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