Every time I hear someone mention "frozen skin," an image of a summer in the early 2000s comes to mind. A summer of the years when my family lived in a small house with a tin roof, with days of seemingly endless sunshine. The heat radiated from the cement courtyard, from the walls, from the eaves, making it feel as if just stepping outside at midday would cause you to melt in the sunlight.
Pork jelly isn't actually a complicated dish; you just need a can of condensed milk, a few packets of fresh milk, a container of yogurt as a starter culture, and some warm water. Sometimes, those with a knack for cooking might add a little vanilla, some coconut milk, or a few drops of pandan leaf extract for fragrance.
The milk is not too sweet, then fermented like regular yogurt. Once the culture has developed, a small funnel is used to pour the milk into long plastic bags, which are then tightly sealed with rubber bands and neatly arranged in rows in the freezer. After a few hours, they can be taken out and eaten.
When frozen, the milk pouch is moderately soft, not as hard as ice blocks. When you bite into a small corner, the soft, frozen milk instantly melts on your tongue, the हल्का sourness blending with the gentle sweetness, plus the creamy richness of the milk, making you feel refreshed from the inside out.
Back then, at the edge of my village, around midday or early afternoon, there would be a street vendor with a white Styrofoam box tied to the back of his bicycle. Even before seeing him, just hearing the jingling of his bicycle bell from afar would send all the children in the village swarming out like a hive of bees.
The Styrofoam box was opened, and the cool air that wafted onto everyone's faces amidst the sweltering summer heat was a welcome relief. Inside were small bags of frozen desserts, tied with rubber bands and neatly arranged in layers. Some were milky white, some pink, and on some days even light green, fragrant with the scent of pandan leaves.
Holding the bag of frozen pork, the biting cold ran down my fingertips, feeling like I was holding a piece of summer just pulled from the ice. We never ate it right there on the street, but always ran back to the porch, sat in a row on the old bamboo bench, and waited until everyone was crowded before we all took a bite together.
Now, my kitchen has a refrigerator and all the ingredients I need to make anything I like. I also know how to make frozen pork skin, how to mix milk, how to ferment yeast, how to tie each small bag and put them in the freezer.
But strangely, no matter how skillfully it's prepared, the taste of today's pork skin jelly is never the same as it used to be. Perhaps it's because the deliciousness of a dish never lies solely in the ingredients, but in a childhood of frugality, in the lucky money saved for months, waiting for summer to arrive at the street vendor's cart. And in those impoverished years, just one bag of pork skin jelly was enough for us children to feel like we had a complete summer.
Source: https://baodanang.vn/mua-he-goi-trong-tui-bi-dong-3337819.html
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