When it comes to Ninh Binh specialties, in addition to familiar names such as goat meat, burnt rice… there is also an equally famous dish, loved by many diners. That is eel salad.
As the name suggests, this salad is made from the main ingredient of eel. This is a catfish, legless and finless, strong and quite fierce. At first glance, they look quite similar to eels but are larger in size, have slippery skin, and a light brown back and belly.
Eels live in saltwater, fresh water and brackish water environments, especially appearing in coastal lagoons and estuaries.
Ms. Nguyen Quynh - owner of a restaurant specializing in serving specialties in Ninh Binh city said that to make delicious eel salad requires a sophisticated processing procedure.
First, you have to choose eels that have just been caught, still fresh, weighing about 3-4 ounces. Then, people clean the eel slime with diluted lime water or ash, using a warm towel to peel off the skin, intestines, head, and tail. The bones and meat are carefully filtered and kept separately.
“The meat filtering step is very important. The worker must work quickly but skillfully so that the fish meat does not get crushed and the bones do not stick to the meat. Next, wipe the filtered meat with a dry towel or paper so that the fish meat does not retain water, then use a sharp knife to slice it into thin, long, bite-sized pieces,” said Quynh.
In the past, locals used to squeeze the eel with lime juice, then squeeze it dry and mix it with rice bran to make a salad. Later, the eel salad was mixed with spices, adding finely ground galangal, thinly sliced lemongrass and rice bran separately.
When eating, depending on your preference, you can mix in the rice bran later. This method of preparation helps the eel retain its freshness and natural sweetness, making the dish more flavorful and flavorful.
In addition to the carefully prepared ingredients, the eel salad also attracts customers with its thick dipping sauce with a mouth-twisting name. That is cheo.
The dipping sauce for the eel salad must be made from crushed fish bones, mixed with pork belly, sour rice, chicken eggs and some spices, then boiled. The resulting dipping sauce has a deep yellow color, is thick, fatty and fragrant.
In addition to the dipping sauce, the ingredients to eat with the eel salad are also elaborately prepared, including dozens of different types of aromatic leaves. Depending on each person's taste and the culture of each region, people can eat the salad with leaves such as: fig leaves, guava leaves, Indian laurel leaves, perilla leaves, basil, coriander, ginseng, pennywort, mint, green banana, and chrysanthemum.
When eating, visitors take fig leaves (or guava leaves) and roll them into a funnel shape, then put the aromatic leaves and the eel salad in the middle, then pour the dipping sauce on top. If anyone likes, they can add galangal, shallots, and chili and enjoy.
Some diners commented that although eel salad is a "raw" dish, it has not gone through any cooking process, but the taste is not fishy, on the contrary, it is very attractive.
Enjoying a piece of eel salad, visitors will feel the chewy and crispy eel meat, mixed with the astringent taste of aromatic leaves, followed by the rich fatty taste of the dipping sauce. All the flavors blend together, creating a famous delicious specialty of Ninh Binh.
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