When mentioning Nghe An cuisine, everyone will surely remember the spicy eel dish that can be processed into countless delicious dishes such as eel soup, eel porridge... Recently, CNN posted a video praising Nghe An eel soup with its characteristic spicy flavor that diners will find hard to forget when enjoying it.
Nghe An eel soup is cooked quite simply, not as thick as other soups but still retains the fresh taste of the dish. First, the eel is cleaned of slime to remove the meat. Many experienced artisans also teach their children the traditional way of making eel, without using a knife but using bamboo to filter the meat to avoid the fishy taste. After cleaning the eel, it will be stir-fried with turmeric, chili, and ground pepper. Especially indispensable is the shallot - a type of onion only found in Nghe An and Ha Tinh - to enhance the aroma of the eel, creating a spicy taste for the soup.
Scooped into the bowl, the eel is still intact. It is very soft to eat, and has absorbed all the spicy flavor and aroma of chili and onion. It has the golden yellow color of turmeric, the green color of coriander leaves or fresh onion. Skillfully squeeze in a little more lemon juice to make the eel soup truly complete.
Eel soup is often enjoyed with bread (like eating bread with red wine sauce), then the unique flavor of eel soup is most clearly shown. Gourmets often eat eel soup with crispy bread. When eaten with a bowl of hot eel soup with a spicy, rich flavor and the flavor of eel with the crispy aroma of bread, no one can resist. Nghe An people also vary another interesting side dish when eating eel soup, which is replacing the bread with a plate of wet rice cake - in the North it is called steamed rice cake. The wet rice cake (rolled rice cake) is thinly spread, without filling, sprinkled with a little dried onion, poured with delicious eel soup that is not greasy.
Entering any eel restaurant in Nghe An, it is easy to see people slurping bowls of eel porridge or soup. Although eel soup can be found in many restaurants in the city, the best ones are those on Tran Quang Dieu and Dao Tan streets...
According to oriental medicine, eel has the effect of nourishing blood, eliminating rheumatism, and can cure malnutrition, dysentery, spinal pain, internal hemorrhoids, rheumatism... Therefore, this dish is not only delicious but also very good for health.
