Because I always had the impression that these two dishes in the city were not delicious (chicken was usually industrial chicken, soft, bland and big) and sometimes not hygienic, with a lot of preservatives. I only felt most comfortable and delicious when eating these two dishes in the countryside. So, on occasions when I went back to my hometown, I still had time to call my friend in the same neighborhood, telling him to find a place where people slaughtered pigs, the kind that ate bran and burned it on a wood stove, to buy some offal for lunch for the group to gather. He agreed, so I could pack up and go with peace of mind.
Leaving early in the morning, I got home around 9am. I greeted my parents, lit incense for my ancestors, cleaned up the house and yard for a while, probably around 11am. After giving instructions to everyone, I slowly walked down to my friend's house. Looking into the kitchen, I saw him with his back turned to the outside. On the stove was a large pot of steaming, boiling pot. Below was a carefully spread out flower mat, on which was a tray with a bowl of fish sauce with garlic and chili, all kinds of raw vegetables washed and drained, and a bottle of country wine as clear as a cat's eye, corked with dry banana leaves, bubbling steadily.
A plate of pork offal with full of dishes and herbs
No need to greet each other, no need to turn around, just a few pleasantries to know that we have met. After a while, he asked for the basket. The basket was a round-mouthed, deep-bottomed basket woven with evenly thin bamboo strips. After rinsing it once more to clean it, draining it and handing it to his friend, he placed it on the mouth of another pot and used long chopsticks to scoop out the pig intestines from the boiling pot.
Pig intestines are indispensable anywhere. It seems that the West also has intestines. But unlike the pig intestines in the city, in the shops there is only the large intestine stuffed with blood mixed with a little minced meat and fat, when cut it looks a bit hard and quite boring, the intestines in the countryside are the large intestines soaked in salt, squeezed thoroughly and washed, one end is tied tightly with bamboo strips (very organic, not using plastic strings), the other end usually has a wide mouth (where it meets the pig's stomach) that one person opens, the other person uses a large spoon to scoop the intestines into the bowl of intestines to stuff.
The filling here of course has pig's blood as the main ingredient mixed with caul fat and finely chopped pork or ribs, both lean and fat, crushed green beans soaked until soft and a little herbs (onion, cilantro cut into small pieces so that when the sausage is boiled and sliced it won't be stringy), the seasoning of course includes fish sauce, salt and a little pepper for flavor. People who know how to cook well when boiling sausage often have a bamboo skewer sharpened at one end to test whether the sausage is cooked enough: need to poke the skewer into the sausage, look at the boiling water to know if it's time to take it out or need to boil it for a while longer.
Pig intestines anywhere can not lack sausage
Other dishes such as stomach, neck, intestines, small intestines or liver, heart, lungs... through the skillful hands of my friends, a few experienced chefs, later had a full tray of dishes, each dish was delicious, chewy, crispy, hot and fresh, just remembering it made my mouth water.
Pigs in the countryside are raised mainly with leftover rice or burnt rice, rice water, green vegetables (old spinach or sweet potatoes, duckweed) mixed with rice bran, sometimes eaten straight, sometimes boiled, without growth stimulants or "stork" bran, so the pork is fragrant, soft, and when boiled or roasted, it does not bubble up with a strong smell like industrial pork.
There is one thing that I rarely get to eat, but when I go back to my hometown, my friends know my personality and pamper me so I have the chance to enjoy it, which is boiled pig tail. When I went to the supermarket to buy food on the weekend, I once saw a box of pig tails for sale that looked a bit strange. Pig tails in the countryside are usually long and thin (not short, big and fatty like pig tails in the supermarket). The tail only has bones, skin and a little meat (mostly fat) wrapped around it, but when boiled, it is very delicious, fragrant and not greasy, and when mixed with alcohol, it is definitely soft on the lips. The tail is the part that the pig or fish uses the most because it moves a lot, so it is firm and fatty.
Braised pig intestines is a dish of intestines cooked on one fire (already boiled), marinated with fish sauce, salt, and spices, then boiled like roasting meat. My hometown Thanh Hoa has Thanh Huong fish sauce, if used as a dipping sauce, the taste is still unrefined, but when used to braise fish and meat, it is extremely delicious. Braised pig intestines look a bit like the Southern dish of "pha lau" but are rich in flavor, each piece of intestine has been heated through two fires without the need for dipping sauce, soft and melting, making the eater gain weight quickly, because it goes down smoothly with rice.
Chicken with lemon leaves
The chickens that my relatives and friends feed me in the countryside are usually the native chickens, the biggest is only about one and a half kilos, the white meat is smooth and delicious, the thighs and the black meat are crispy and chewy. When I was a child, there were more "field chickens", now the chickens are raised by households in a large garden, surrounded by nets, every day they scratch the ground to catch worms and termites, and at mealtimes they are sprinkled with cold rice and rice grains to feed. The eggs of chickens fed on rice grains usually have dark yolks that look very beautiful and delicious.
The chicken is butchered, the thighs, wings and breast meat are boiled and dipped in salt and spices mixed with finely chopped boiled blood, the remaining part is chopped and marinated with fish sauce, salt, peeled and crushed dried onions and fried, the gizzards are cleaned and stir-fried with squash and bean sprouts, sprinkled with chopped green onions. The broth is shimmering with fat and cooked with vermicelli to make soup or seasoned to round out the flavor and eaten with fresh rice noodles. The hot food is just ladled out of the pot, spreading the aroma of a warm feast that makes everyone around drool.
