Special food in the North (Part 2)

Cha ca La Vong (La Vong grilled fish pies)

                                            

Cha ca La Vong is a unique specialty of Hanoi people, therefore one street in Hanoi was named as Cha Ca Street.

Cha ca is made from mud-fish, snake-headed fish, but the best one is Hemibagrus (Ca lang). Fish bone is left away to keep fish meat only, then seasoning, clipping by pieces of bamboo, and frying by coal heat. An oven of coal heat is needed when serving to keep Cha ca always hot. Cha cais served with roasted peanuts, dry pancakes, soft noodle soup, spice vegetables and shrimps paste with lemon and chilly.

The Cha ca La Vong Restaurant on No.14 Cha Ca Street is the "ancestor restaurant" of the dish.

Banh cuon (Rolled rice pancake) 

                                            

Banh cuon is popular to Vietnamese as disk for breakfast. The cake preparing process includes grilled rice which is steamed and oil-spread to have sweet-smelling. Banh cuonis prepared available. Leaves of cake put on plate as the customers ask for the disk. The cake is called Banh cuonThanh Tri due to its origin is Thanh Tri Village of South Hanoi. Besides Banh cuon Thanh Tri, there is rolled rice pancake with the filling of the cake is made from minced pork mixed with Jew's ears and thin-top mushrooms. The cake, placed on plate, serve with salted shredded shring and fried dry onions. The customers immediately experience the disk as it is just finished and stilI very hot.

It is the sauce of the cake that fascinates the customers. The cake-makers have their own know-how, some of them prepare Banh cuon with Belostomatid essence to have sweet -smelling to attract to the customers.

Lon quay Lang Son (Lang Son roasted pork)

Anyone who arrives in Lang Son Province could find it difficult to say no to Lon quaydish. Lon quay Lang Son is delicious for many reasons, however, the main specific taste of the dish comes from the unique flavor of a kind of leaf called "Mac mat" (meaning "sweet leaf"). The leaf is soaked with spices, fish sauce, glutamate, flavoring powder, then stuffed into clean pig belly and placed on reverted furnace. Pig is fried the spread with watery honey so as to make the skin turn golden and brittle, and pork is soft and sweet-smelling as finish.

Banh tom Ho Tay (Ho Tay fried shirmp cake)

All people who used to live in Hanoi are familiar with Banh tom Ho Tay Restaurant on the Thanh Nien (Young) Street. The cake preparing process includes wheat flour mixed with potato fibres, placing on shape with shrimps upper, then fried with oil. The cake is brittle, soft, sweet-smelling, and served with vegetable pickles and sweet and sour fish sauce for best taste.