I have an uncle in Vung Tau so I often visit him. He is a gourmet and good at cooking. When I called him and said I was coming home for the weekend, he chuckled and said, "Come here and I'll treat you to a special fish salad!"
When I stopped my motorbike in front of the gate at noon on a weekend, he was busy with a large basket of vegetables on a stone table in the middle of the cool, shady yard. After I finished my personal hygiene, I went back to the table in the yard, saw him arranging a bunch of leaves on a cutting board and using a knife to chop them finely, and I expressed my curiosity.
He understood and smiled, "I told you today is a special fish salad, not like the anchovy or herring salad you eat in the South. Today, I'll serve you Northern-style yellowstripe scad salad!" 
While quickly arranging the vegetable leaves and chopping them, he chuckled as if giving instructions on how to prepare today's dish. Northern-style fish salad can be made with silver carp, silver carp, crucian carp, tilapia, common carp, stream eel, etc. For the common people, they use common, easy-to-find fish because the deliciousness depends on the way it is prepared. The fresh fish will be gutted and cleaned, filleted, skinned (if the fish is large), then sliced. Slicing fish for salad must also be done properly to look nice and taste good. First, it must be sliced thinly to avoid small bones in the fish slices; in terms of slicing technique, the first cut must not be cut completely, but the second cut must be cut completely, so that the fish pieces spread out like a fan, looking very nice. Other ingredients to prepare are a few lemons and galangal. Squeeze the lemon juice, grind a few galangal roots, squeeze out the galangal juice, and season with a little MSG. Then put the sliced fish into the above mixture and squeeze well until the fish is cooked (rare). Squeeze out all the water from the fish pieces and use that water to cook the fish sauce (dipping sauce for eating fish salad). The galangal that has been ground and squeezed dry, divide 2/3 to mix with the fish that has been squeezed into the salad, the remaining part is poured into the fish sauce. A very important thing, to eat fish salad, you need a lot of vegetables and leaves to eat with it. In the South, there are some types of Northern leaves that are very hard to find, both grown at home, you have to go hunting everywhere to get this basket of leaves including: Polyscias fruticosa leaves, Perilla fruticosa leaves, Vong cach leaves, Chrysanthemum leaves, Kudzu leaves, Acanthopanax leaves, etc. and they have to be finely chopped when eating. 
I was wide-eyed listening to the instructions on how to make fish salad when my uncle finished cutting up the basket of mixed vegetables. The pan for cooking the fish sauce was placed on the induction cooker, placed in the middle of the table. The plate of fish salad mixed with galangal was brought out along with two plates of roasted peanuts, placed next to the basket of chopped vegetables, and a few slices of mango. The neighbor brought over a small bottle of Vodka, so the uncle and nephews began to "fight". Scoop a spoonful of hot fish sauce, sprinkle a pinch of chopped vegetables and a few roasted peanuts, then pick up a piece of fish salad, dip it into the bowl of thick fish sauce, then slurp and eat. Wow, it's so delicious! The sweetness of fresh fish mixed with the sour, salty, slightly spicy taste of galangal, the richness of peanuts, the aromatic, astringent taste of vegetable fibers... all blended together, making me close my eyes and eat while inhaling with delight. My uncle’s neighbor loved the fish sauce so much that he scooped out a bowl to eat with a piece of fish salad. Just like that, the uncle and I had a party with a typical Northern countryside atmosphere under the shade of a tree in the garden. The next day when I returned to the city, my uncle told me: When I can find a big silver carp, I will call you down to eat the salad, it will be even more delicious than today’s yellowstripe scad salad.
Uncle chopped various raw vegetables to eat with the salad.
Northern style fish salad under the shade of the trees in the garden is ready
Comment (0)