Take it easy with chives

Chives are a leafy vegetable that is easy to grow. Many families grow them in pots and have vegetables to eat all year round. The good thing about chives is that they can be used as a spice to replace green onions or garlic, and are also a vegetable used in fried, stir-fried, and soup dishes. In the countryside market, you can often find chives for sale, with thin stalks, about 1mm wide on average, a little longer than an inch, and fragrant; eaten raw, they are crispy, soft, and fresh, very delicious. Once, when I went to Dien An market (Dien Khanh district), I saw 2 baskets of chives placed next to each other. The seller pointed to the basket of small, short bundles of chives and said they were chives, and the bundles of slightly longer stalks were buffalo chives. She explained that buffalo chives are grown from seeds, while sparrow chives are more elaborate, grown from roots and planted like rice.

Like other common raw vegetables, chives are mainly present in spring rolls. Spring rolls cannot lack chives, the effect of chives is not only to create delicious taste but also to decorate and arrange aesthetically. A few sprigs of chives sticking out at one end of the roll create an attractive, unique feature for this dish. In particular, the pungent taste of chives combined with the sour taste of star fruit, the astringency of green banana and some other aromatic flavors of herbs create a delicious and unique spring roll, very enjoyable to eat. In the spring roll of Nha Trang spring rolls, there are enough salty, sour, sweet, spicy, and spicy flavors...

In addition to being mixed with raw vegetables such as dipping sauce for braised fish, braised meat..., chives also create a variety of colors in bean sprouts: white bean sprouts, jicama, orange carrot, red chili, green chives. It is also the mild pungent taste of chives that makes bean sprouts more delicious. In coastal areas, during the hot season or fish season, the dinner tray often has a bowl of sweet fish soup, a plate of braised fish and a plate of bean sprouts, easy to eat and delicious.

In Khanh Hoa , from Ninh Hoa town to Phu Yen and Binh Dinh provinces, there is a dish of chives noodle soup as a regional specialty. Looking at the bowl of green noodles with chives floating on the surface dotted with pepper, with a piece of fish cake, and some places adding a quail egg, it is already delicious before eating. The mild spiciness of chives blends with the noodles, the broth is sweet from the fresh fish, and the strong smell of pepper. Of course, in the wonton noodle dish, chives must be used as a seasoning. If the onion is chopped, the chives are cut into short pieces. In a slightly chewy state, chives give the wonton a distinct, elegant flavor, completely different from seasoning with green onions! In addition, chives are also used as a seasoning in fish soups, especially fish soup with sour bamboo shoots. More commonly, chives are chopped, stir-fried with oil (fat) to make chives fat, spread on the surface of rice vermicelli, wet rice paper...

In hot weather, I often buy tofu and lean meat to cook chive soup. There are many ways to cook this soup, depending on how your family likes to eat it. Some people finely chop the lean meat and mix it with crushed tofu, roll it into balls and cook it with chives. Some families like to eat soup with just tofu and chives, while others cook soup with finely chopped lean meat, small pieces of tofu and short pieces of chives... No matter how you cook it, chives still have a delicious taste that is different from other vegetables! Speaking of stir-fried dishes, chives can be stir-fried with shrimp, lean meat, beef or eel.

When I was a child, in my hometown Dien Khanh, there was a dish of stir-fried bean curd with chives. Bean curd is the fibrous part left over when people make tofu. The bean curd is stir-fried with oil, then chives are added and cooked, seasoned, and eaten with grilled rice paper. It was a dish for poor families in the past, perhaps now only in the memories of many people because bean curd is rarely sold in the market these days!

KIM DUY

Source: https://baokhanhhoa.vn/doi-song/202405/nhan-nha-voi-he-e9e5d11/