Ketchup memories…

Cicadas tingle somewhere in the garden, at leisure, at climax… The school days have finally passed, and my childhood was bathed in a summer in the countryside. That’s when the noonday heat begins to simmer, the family meal cannot be complete without the traditional soup with the mother’s Northern-style sour batch and the father’s “heaven” ketchup plate. Remembering life is the sweet vegetable dish dipped in soy sauce that is still somewhere softly and richly deposited on the tip of the tongue. For many years, every summer, I remember the atmosphere of family meals when I was still three and all family members. Now he has gone a long way.

Water spinach soup, tomato pickle with soy sauce… Every year, after the season of plucking the peanuts and pressing the oil, Dad uses those oil cakes to make soy sauce. Banh Dau sauce is made from the carcass of peanuts after pressing all the essential oils. The bean carcasses are packed into round, thick cakes. When making soy sauce, three chop the oil cake into pieces and then pound it, sifting to get the fine powder. The flour is roasted, mixed with hot rice, granulated sugar and salt, finely ground and incubated for fermentation, forming soy sauce. The stages of making Banh Dau sauce are not difficult, but perhaps the secret, or it is often said, that the person who has the best hands in making the best soy sauce in the village is only three.
One of the secrets of my father, I know, when making soy sauce, he never used well water but only rain water from the cement block in front of the house. This is also the type of water used to make tea, offer rice on the occasion of the full moon, or the death anniversary. In summer, it usually rains for two or three days. Rainwater from the jackfruit tree makes a faucet catch the lake, carefully covered around it. Giap weekly change the water so that it does not get dirty, swarm or leaves fall in. The most oppressive tree on the summer side, when the wind blows, only a few leaves are considered as water damage. Banh Dau sauce has a brown color of cockroach wings, fatty, aromatic taste, at first glance similar to fish sauce, but the taste is lighter and the fragrance is very characteristic.
In those years, life was still very difficult, fish and shrimp paste was not like it is now. I remember sometimes carrying fish from the sea across the sea to follow in the footsteps of thousands of women, every house buys a little bit called… to eat for fish. In order to have a more sustainable meal, many families have to pack bags and tin boxes to cycle for dozens of kilometers down to Hoi An to buy fish incubated with fish sauce to eat all winter.

At that time, my house was at the top of the village, right at the foot of the mountain. After the liberation from the North, his father spent months in the forest cutting trees to build a spacious 4-room wooden house. On the porch, close to the wall facing the rising sun, put two jars of earthenware, a jar of soy sauce and a jar of salted eggplant. Ba Bao ketchup is like a plant, it needs sunlight to be delicious. With soy sauce, each meal can be scooped into a cup and then cooked in the rice cooker when it is exhausted. Changing the taste can de-oil making the sweet potato dipping sauce great, and the pickled eggplant is also delicious.
Every day, when there is pork divided into seasonal rice, my father shows off his ability to store meat with soy sauce, which is very interesting. Pork cut into small slices, marinated with a little seasoning, sugar, main noodles, onions, garlic for about fifteen minutes for the meat to absorb the spices. Lemongrass washed, cut the white part, chopped. Heat peanut oil and then add lemongrass and stir until the lemongrass turns yellow and fragrant, then add the meat and stir-fry. When the meat is cooked, add the soy sauce and stir. Then, add a little warm water, simmer on low heat for the meat to infuse. When the water in the pot is completely exhausted, the slices of meat become dry, a layer of brown soy sauce, emitting a fragrant aroma is okay. You can also add a little roasted sesame to braised meat, rub off the silk skin to make the dish more flavorful. In particular, this delicious dish can also be preserved in a glass jar and eaten gradually for a few days and still retains its delicious taste.
Soy sauce is also used to pickle pickled tomatoes. The fish is drained, soaked with seasoned soy sauce, and eaten very well. Biting a piece of coffee, it sounds like a crackling sound, no matter how tired people are, they want to wake up. The sweet and fatty sauce mixed with the tray taste of the eggplant settles down on the tip of the tongue, it is difficult to resist when picking up the first egg, the second and third are hard to resist. And always, the ketchup meal ends with a cup of water spinach soup, or a new bowl of boiled vegetable juice. Reading “Love and miss the twelve”, writer Vu Bang once sang “how disgusting that the beloved North Vietnamese country is not richer than anyone else, not as luxurious as anyone else, but how can it produce a delicious eggplant, melon, soy sauce, and fish sauce? “The devil cries so much”.
Please tell me, the Central region of my hometown is also inferior, especially the dish of ketchup, boiled sweet vegetables dipped with soy sauce on every summer occasion that my father makes. But that’s also true, delicious food doesn’t have to wait to be rich. And then the writer and author of “Hanoi delicacies”, “Stranger dishes of the South” confessed: “Oh, it’s the compassion of people, many things don’t produce anything “dead” that they can do for themselves. But remembering the turmeric eggplant or a piece of tomato and soy sauce to eat right in the summer, it’s not just about missing coffee, it’s about remembering the wife of Cao Khang…”.