Beef with ant bites
This dish makes diners from far away curious right from its name. The way it is prepared is also strange and elaborate: Hang a piece of hot beef that has just been cut on a tree trunk, right in front of an ant nest so that they can sting it, then wash it with diluted salt water and grill it rare over charcoal. The cook only "lures" ant nests on the tree to ensure hygiene and the more aggressive the ants are, the better.
According to local chefs, each type of ant brings a different flavor to the beef, such as black ants creating a strong aroma, red ants creating a sour aroma, or some ants giving a sweet or spicy taste... Therefore, each time enjoying, diners will have a different feeling.
A standard piece of meat is rare, not burnt and thinly sliced. When eaten, the meat is sandwiched with green bananas, Vietnamese coriander, and dipped in a sauce made from corn sauce, bean sauce, minced ginger and sugar. This dish is available in specialty restaurants, priced at around 400,000 VND/kg.
Molasses cake
Banh Trung is a specialty of Vinh Phuc with a rich sweetness from molasses, a slightly spicy aroma of ginger mixed with a layer of fragrant white dough, and a little richness from sesame. Visitors to Tam Dao can buy Banh Trung for breakfast.
The cake is made from carefully selected, delicious sticky rice, soaked in water overnight and then ground into flour. The maker must have experience to ensure the flour is neither too sticky nor too dry.
The dough is skillfully shaped into small, diamond-shaped balls, boiled in molasses mixed with a little water, so as not to burn or thicken. The molasses used to make the cake must be from Tan An village - a long-standing molasses-making village in Vinh Tuong district (Vinh Phuc). The molasses is thick, fragrant like the smell of grilled sugarcane, deep red in color, and the molasses grains stick together tightly. The cake is boiled until it is clear and cooked. When taken out, the cake is a cockroach-red color, sprinkled with a little roasted sesame seeds for eye-catching.
Grilled clay-wrapped hill chicken
This is a very popular specialty dish when tourists come to Tam Dao. The dish uses free-range chickens and bamboo chickens, so the meat is firm, chewy, and sweet.
The chicken is cleaned, wrapped in a layer of lotus leaves and then a thick layer of clay, grilled over charcoal until the clay turns black and begins to crack, then the chicken is cooked. The chicken skin is crispy, the meat is sweet, hot, and dipped in salt and lemon.
Black sticky rice
People in Tam Dao cook sticky rice with water from lau xau leaves and crushed banh te leaves, creating a natural, glossy dark green color. This sticky rice dish is cooked quite elaborately, people will soak the sticky rice for 2-3 days to absorb water, plump and then mix it with the leaf water.
After that, the rice will be steamed into sticky rice like regular sticky rice dishes. This dish not only has an attractive aroma, sweet, delicious, naturally sticky taste but is also very good for the digestive system, cures headaches, anemia, so it is very popular. Tourists to Tam Dao, if lucky, can find this dish at the night market or specialty restaurants.
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