The girl cleverly refused a forced marriage by challenging her that lettuce was used to make pillars for the house, while ironwood was chopped. Because lettuce is so fragile that it cannot be used as a pillar of a communal house like ironwood, so it can only be chopped up and eaten as a vegetable.
So what is snacking and chopping? Eating on the side is eating one or more very finely chopped vegetables with a certain dish, usually a liquid dish such as crab vermicelli, banana and tofu snail vermicelli, fish curry soup, and tomato sauce dishes. So chopping also refers to the technique of cutting into very small pieces.
Vietnamese people often use lettuce to snack during times of excess protein and fat after Tet and during hot weather. For generations now, on Tet, just on the second and third days, everywhere people have been cooking vermicelli noodles, vermicelli with snails, served with lots of raw vegetables to prevent boredom for a palate full of meat and wine.
The main raw vegetables are spinach, with lettuce being the main ingredient, along with coriander, mint, perilla, marjoram and a little chopped onion. Everything is chopped into small pieces, about the size of a toothpick, and placed on a plate. When eating noodles or soup or tomato sauce, people use chopsticks to pick up a large handful of vegetables, dip them into the bowl so that the flavor and taste of the broth or sauce permeates the vegetables, then put them in their mouths to eat.
The coolness of lettuce, when first chewed, it has a dull taste, but the more you chew, the more flavorful it becomes, and the faint aroma of vegetables with essential oils such as mint, coriander, and perilla makes the piece perfect between a sour broth with a sudden vinegar or tomato flavor from a bowl of vermicelli noodles.
The more you eat, the more you feel hungry because you’re so happy. Every piece of vegetable that you eat cools your heart and intestines. The burning feeling on your skin suddenly disappears, the heaviness of banh chung, the fatty meat in your stomach. They also invited each other to go somewhere else, the feeling of delicious food and cravings suddenly returned.
Eating like that wastes a lot of vegetables, a bowl of vermicelli noodles includes a huge basket of vegetables. Because vegetables are chopped, eating vegetables is even more convenient. But just eat it because lettuce is very cheap or available in your garden, you can eat as much as you want, freely purifying or healing your body.
Cheap and readily available is also another reason why Vietnamese people like to snack on lettuce, in addition to preventing boredom after Tet. In the past, vermicelli noodles, snail noodles, and fish noodles were all cheap gifts for the poor. But the poor worker’s stomach knows how much to hold. One bowl of instant noodle soup is enough.
Therefore, lettuce plays the role of savior. Just use a bowl of vermicelli as an excuse to eat shredded lettuce and you’ll have a decent afternoon snack. That “slightly fake” indifference is also very precious to those who consider rice as pearls and firewood as cinnamon. Thanks to the piece of vegetables, I can continue to struggle with life.
It’s just a pity that nowadays people eat lettuce, which is much bland compared to lettuce. But the pieces of vegetables are now cut carelessly, the vegetable fibers are large and tangled, so they have completely lost the small, smooth quality of the vegetables in the past.
Lettuce rolls of Hanoi people
After Tet, Hanoi people often use lettuce to make extremely elegant, unique and delicate lettuce rolls. It must be lettuce that makes this dish, that’s why it’s called Lettuce Cuon. Replacing lettuce with other vegetables is a complete failure because lettuce is a raw vegetable with a characteristic taste of coolness and a greasy, nutty aftertaste.
These flavors make the lettuce roll soulful and it is even more delicious when prepared by the skillful hands of a diligent and diligent Hanoi woman. This is a dish often made after Tet, during the full moon day of January to treat friends and relatives.
Lettuce rolls are very simple, but preparing a delicious lettuce roll is not simple. Newly sprouted corn lettuce is fresh, has large leaves, soft stems and is not crushed (the characteristic of lettuce is that it is easy to crush and rot).
Choose fresh, newly caught shrimp, about the size of a chopstick head, the shell is not too hard, cut off the antennae and steam until cooked. Pork belly with cinnamon is selected to be delicious, fresh, pink in color, boiled until cooked, and re-cooked into thin pieces. Choose onions with long leaves and round white roots, wash and steam until rare.
Beat eggs, thinly coat, and cut into 2 finger-sized rectangular pieces. Sliced pork sausage large and thin, the same size as the meat. The dipping sauce is made from wine boiled with molasses, and crushed roasted peanuts are added to increase the aroma. In addition, there are some coriander, basil, laksa leaves and mussel vermicelli.
Use the lettuce as the base, place the mussel vermicelli, meat, pork sausage, eggs and on top the shrimp, then gently close the roll, use green onions to tie the lettuce roll firmly, the ingredients do not fall apart or fall apart and put them together. plate. When eating, take a piece of lettuce and dip it in a bowl, steam it, then put it in your mouth. The taste is sweet, slightly sour, lightly fragrant with the smell of wine and roasted peanuts mixed with the flavors of shrimp, meat, eggs, and herbs. It’s just as good as you. Mom, I’m full without feeling bored. Again feel the cool taste of lettuce, refreshing the palate. This is truly a delicious, memorable piece of life!