Mai Chau ( Hoa Binh Province)  Special Cuisines

Nature favoured Hoa Binh people a source of plentiful available food. Throughout a long history of formation and development, the people of Hoa Binh have discovered more and more sources of available food in nature which can be prepared to suit the tastes and improve the health to cure prevent against diseases. Furthermore, the ethnic groups have also formed up their eating and drinking habits and customs characterized by their own features, Joining adventure trips with Vietnam pathfinder travel to discover their dishes, home-stay in the villages of Thai Ethnic people and learn how the people in this mountain lives?
Here is one of the dish that you will get a chance to taste:

1.  Boiled Barbecued Pork
Pig, raised in an unbridled manner, is burnt brown, all the hair removed, washed thoroughly before dissecting to take out all internal organs, tied with bamboo strings and hang up to drain all the remaining blood, by so doing, the flesh shall be fresh for long and free from taint. After that, the meat is taken out and put into a pot to boil over burning woods. When the meat is done to a turn, it is cut into thin slices and put on fresh forest banana leaves, when served, it is dipped with the grinded fried salt and baked doi grains. The eater shall have the sweet taste of pork, the crispy of skin and fat, the aroma of banana leaf, the nutty flavor of doi grains, and the warm of fried salt.

2. Sour Salted Pork
Pig, raised in an unbridled manner, is embalmed with forest leaf ferment and grinded fried rice. The forest leaves is dried by fire, cleaned and put on the bottom of a bamboo basket. On top of the banana leave, there is a layer of grinded fried rice mixed with fried salt, over each layer of the meat, there is a layer of fried rice and salt. Finally, the basket is covered by a lid of banana leaf and it is placed around the wood fire or on a shelf over the fire. When enjoying this sour salted pork, the eater shall have the sight of the meat’s colour, the greasy taste of the skin, the sour of the forest ferment, the reasonably salty of the salt and the fragrance of the rice. This special dish is often combined with various kinds of forest leaf.

3. Sour Bamboo Shoots Cooked with Chicken
Chicken, raised in an unbridled manner, weighing between 0.8-1 kilo, is plucked all feather, dissected to take out the internal organs, cut into small pieces, embalmed with sour bamboo shoots and spices for 20-30 minutes, then put into a pan which is put around the burning charcoal for between 1-2 hours. When the chicken and bamboo shoots are well done, some grinded fried doi grains is added. When served, this food has a marvelous combination of the tastes of chicken, sour bamboo shoots and doi grains.

4.  Grilled Chopped Meat Rolled in Pomelo Leaves
Lean and fat meat mixed is cut into flat slices, embalmed with a bit of fish source and onion. Pomelo leaves are cut into twos, each piece of meat is rolled in half of a large leaf and half of a small leaf, clamped by bamboo clamps, and baked over burning charcoal. When the fat drips over the burning charcoal flares up with the aroma flies up, the pomelo leaves turn dried and slightly purple, the food is done. The product is characterized by tasty, crispy taste, the flavor of pomelo leaves penetrating deep into the the dried and brown meat that carries away the greasy feeling.

5. Steamed Baked Fish
Some kinds of fish such as cararrius auratus, silurus, carp, etc. are baked fragrantly. Before baking, a thin, long stick is thrust through the mouth, the belly until the tail and a green bamboo clamp is used to keep the fish from falling, breaking. The baked fishes are sprayed with salt, wrapped in banana leaves and then steamed before serving.

6. Buffalo Meat Cooked with Sour Leaves
Buffalo meat is burned to make it aromatic, shaved thoroughly, simmered to make it soft, taken out to cut into small pieces, braised in casserole until it is well done, some grinded lom leaves  (a kind of sour leaf), together with broken rice to bruise with the meat. When the broken rice is done, it swells and looks viscid, is the time the buffalo meat is well-cooked and permeated with the sour taste of lom leaves. This is the popular food of the Muong in Hoa Binh.

7. Lam Rice
This kind of rice is made by stuffing young and fresh bamboo tubes with fragrant rice, adding a reasonable amount of water and then baking over the fire. When the rice is done, the fragrance of the rice grains mixes with the natural aroma of the fresh bamboo would create an unforgettable impression of the North West region on each visitor. Nowadays, bamboo-tubed rice has become one of the specialties of hotels and restaurants in many other places in the country, not only in Hoa Binh.

8. Multicolour Sticky Rice
Colours for sticky rice are made from grass trunks, and then red rice is put down first, then green, yellow, violet and white is the last on the top of the steamer. When the sticky rice is done, it is taken out to mix together or leave separately each kind of sticky rice in a different colour,  very pleasant-looking. This disk is always preferred by tourists.

9.  Bitter Bamboo Shoots
Cooking bamboo shoots just begin to show alittle about from 1 to 2 knuckles, the remainder of tree-trunk is still flooded in the soil. When bark it, the bamboo shoot of stem is glossy and fair, spotless white.

If you want to have bitterly tasty dish, you have to choose bamboo shoot of buds to grill until it sing, dry up to dot sauce of java mouse-deer including salt, chilli, leaf of ginger, garlic and bulb garlic to pound. When you eat, you will feel bitter and sweet taste of it, salt taste.

10. Steamed Forest Vegetables
Forest vegetables include wide varieties: Beo vegetable, Tam Bop, Dom vegetable, pawpaw, leaves vegetable, banana  inflorescense, Quanh fruit, etc. cleaned and steamed in a wooden steamer for about 30-40 minutes. The eaters enjoy this food by eating the steamed forest vegetables with a special kind of fish source to make the best of the variety of different flavours that the food contains.

11. Loong Soup (young banana tree soup)
The outer bark of forest banana is taken off and the inner is cut into thin slices to press with salt and then put into the boiled meat broth and cooked  over the fire for about 30 minutes. Some grinded baked Doi grains and forest sliced piper lotot leaves are added before serving.

12. Fish Source with Chili
Baked chilli grinded with pickled scallion heads added with chicken brain, blood, bowels and grinded again, then mixed with fragrant plants to make up a kind of chilli sauce – a traditional spice of the Muong for boiled meat.

13. Can wine
Can wine is made by taking some forest leaves to grind thoroughly and then mix with starch to make ferment, then putting into the stove and covering with a layer of rice husk for fermentation. When drinking, tourists should only paw cool boiled water or bottled mineral water into the jar to maintain a moderate level. During the wine party, people sit around to enjoy the smooth, sweet, intoxicating taste and flavor of this kind of wine in the festive atmosphere full of gong sounds and voices.

14. Hoang Wine
Hoang wine is not hot, usually slightly sour, cool and smooth. The material for the wine is fragrant glutinous rice well cooked mixed with ferment and kept for a long time. This kind of wine needs no fermentation. After some time since being poured out, the wine becomes sour, looks opaque, it is poured into jars and placed around the fire to keep it ever warm. This kind of wine is characterized by its very peculiar aroma of the mountains and forests of the North West region of Vietnam.