I am the type of person who doesn't like meat but likes all kinds of country dishes like eel, crab, snail, fish... But my favorite is boiled snail.

Snacking is usually a female habit. Maybe because I played with girls when I was little, I got this habit. Whatever money my mother gave me for breakfast, I would skip it and go to the snail shop after school.

Most snail stalls in the past were snail poles on market corners or sidewalks. This rustic gift was rarely served in a row or in a shop. Just a pole, one side was a sealed pot of snails, the other side was a basket for dipping sauce, a few small plates and bowls of Bat Trang ceramic, and a dozen pieces of metal cut into sharp triangles and it was done.

Eating snails is most enjoyable in winter or in the chilly late autumn. As soon as she sits down on a low wooden chair, the vendor opens the pot of snails kept in a pile of burlap sacks and a stream of hot, steaming snail steam, fragrant with the scent of lemon leaves, rushes into the nose.

When the hot snail dish was scooped out and placed on a small tray in front of her, the vendor used a ladle to stir the dipping sauce, scooping out into a small bowl a dark yellow sauce the color of crushed ginger, bright red the color of chopped chili, and a few thin slices of green lemongrass leaves floating on top. Just looking at it made her mouth water.

A good batch of snails, cooked properly, will have the shells peel off and the snail meat will be full, revealing the opening of the shell. Just use the tip of the aluminum to gently poke and rotate it once, and the whole fat, ivory-white snail will pop out of the shell.

Dip the snail deep into the fish sauce with ginger and bring it to your mouth, you will feel the fatty, spicy, and aromatic taste melt on the tip of your tongue. After leisurely finishing the snail dish, sweat is already dripping down your temples. Ask for another ladle of hot snail sauce to add to the half-eaten dipping sauce bowl, stir well, and slurp each mouthful, your whole body will be hot, all the cold of winter will disappear.

Every time I return home, I take the opportunity to enjoy boiled snails in Hanoi .

During the war, when I was evacuated to my hometown in Hung Yen , after school I often followed the buffalo herders to the ponds to catch crabs and snails. I brought all the products to the dike to watch the buffaloes and light a fire. Just a few dry branches and a bunch of longan leaves were enough to light the fire. Wait until the coals were red hot before placing the snails on them. When the snails were boiling, their scales were open, and their shells were charred, we had a very fragrant and delicious grilled snail dish, delicious throughout our childhood, and I still remember it now.

Sometimes my mother also buys snails to boil at home. My mother told me to buy rock snails because the meat will be full and the snails will be fat. Rock snails have smooth shells like rocks in streams and are as green as a whetstone. Clean the snails, but wash them gently and do not shake them. If you put them in a basket and shake them hard, the snail's intestines will break. When eating, you can only pick out a tiny bit of the tongue.

After cleaning the snails, soak them in rice water overnight. The rice water allows the snails to absorb nutrients and quickly excrete mud, so they are clean, fatty, and white.

Choosing delicious snails but not knowing how to boil them is also a failure. Boiling snails requires a lot of lemon leaves, adding lemongrass leaves or lemongrass stalks will make them more fragrant. Just enough water to cover the snails, add a little salt, cover the pot, and boil on high heat. Boiling snails requires constant vigilance, after only ten minutes the pot of snails boils and they are done.

The most elaborate thing about boiled snails is the dipping sauce. Not just boiled snails. Each Vietnamese dish has its own dipping sauce. The dipping sauce is the soul of the dish, the magical liquid that tricks the tongue. Take the dish of cow hooves, for example. The cow hooves themselves are not delicious. The deliciousness comes from the soy sauce, the way the sauce is mixed, and the spices served with it.

To make the snail dipping sauce delicious and thick, you need to pound ginger, garlic, and chili in a mortar until smooth. Then scoop it into a bowl, add a little boiled water to cool, fish sauce, sugar, vinegar, stir well, sprinkle in shredded green lemongrass leaves. The snail dipping sauce must be mixed with vinegar to have a sour taste but still be soft. Mixing it with lemon or kumquat will make the dipping sauce sour and harsh, and reduce the aroma of ginger.

Again, usually every type of dipping sauce nowadays has a recipe that you can look up online. But try mixing it according to the recipe. You will get a product that no one will complain about but cannot praise as delicious. Like a beautiful girl without charm.

The sauce must be mixed with intuition. Therefore, the more sensitive the intuition and the more vivid the intuition, the more delicious the sauce will be. Superficial people should not mix the sauce, but if they have to mix it, they should find a recipe.

Eating snails should also be seasonal. In winter, snails are fat and delicious from October to around March. “October snails are like Hanoians”. Summer is the breeding season of snails. Snails in this season are both skinny and have baby snails, eating them is like eating sand. That is why the folk saying is exaggerated: “Eating snail scales is better than eating snails in May”. As humans, if you want something but can’t have it, you crave it. In the West, in America, everything is available now. European and Asian delicacies are plentiful. Only boiled fresh snails are not available. Because I craved them so much, I once went to an Asian store and bought frozen snails.

When I came home to cook or boil the snails, they no longer had the taste and were tough like rubber. I have avoided them since then. So every time I come home on leave, I always call my family in advance to tell them to prepare a pot of boiled snails. When I get home, I immediately slurp next to the hot pot of snails. After eating, I forget all the fatigue of a long flight.

Yet the next day, I was already wandering around the snail stalls on the street. At night, after singing, I stopped by Kim Lien market for a hot plate of snails. In the leisurely afternoon, I rode my motorbike with my friends to eat snails at the Nam Dong apartment complex. But the most interesting thing is that every time I come back, I go to the temple with my mother and sister and conveniently eat snails right at Tay Ho Palace. I know that the snails here are mostly brought from other places, but I still feel that the snails are as fresh as if they had just been pulled out of the lake right in front of me.

Sitting at the table next to my mother and sister, I ordered a mixed snail dish, which had both types, rock snails and jackfruit snails, and added a glass of beer or a glass of wine. While enjoying the hot, fragrant snail dish in the immense wind of West Lake, the sound of bells and wooden fish echoing in the air, I could slowly feel the deliciousness of the snail dish that I craved; I could feel that life was so gentle and peaceful, making up for the days of jostling, hard work, and hustle and bustle in a foreign land.

There are simple, rustic dishes that always make Vietnamese people nostalgic. When away from home, just mentioning the name of the dish brings back so many memories that make people's hearts flutter, missing the taste of their homeland. VietNamNet has started publishing a series of articles called Dishes that remind us of our homeland . The series of articles are notes from VietNamNet readers across the country and abroad about delicious, attractive Vietnamese dishes. Readers' articles should be sent to the email address: [email protected]

Hung Ly (from Berlin, Germany)

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