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…”.

Noon, the sun shines through the forest canopy and falls down the waterfalls. Cool fish from the cave swims in groups to eat algae. Where the sun shines, they swim along. After carefully targeting the place to drop the net, Old Deep took off his shirt and jumped into the water. At nearly 60 years old, his arm span is still very strong. Less than ten minutes, the net, about 20 meters long, was released, close to the shore, blocking the doors of the rock caves that he knew there were cool fish hiding inside. Cool fishing in the upstream of A Tang stream Elder Sau said that the cool fish were very smart. When they saw the cave, they swim right into the cave to hide. When they feel really safe, they swim out. Therefore, after “staging” with a net, he cut down a long bamboo tree to kick the fish out of the cave. Deep cave, you have to dive, use trees to scare away. Fish panicked, swimming out of the cave, they met the net and got caught right away. While his father caught fish with the net, Mr. Chang wore diving glasses and slipped into each cave to find cool fish. “Cool fish entering the rock cave usually stand still, very easy to shoot. Every day, the familiar crossbow shooter will earn a few kilograms of cool fish” – Mr. Chang affirmed. That day, the father and son of worm hunted more than 1 kg of cool fish. According to Old Deep, there is still a lot of cool fish here because people do not use electric pulses and explosives to catch. Moreover, every time people go down to the stream, they only catch enough for their meal, they catch the big ones, not the “upper golden lower bran” style. On the way back to the village, Mr. Chang picked a handful of leaves that grow a lot in A Tang stream. He said that sour leaves are very suitable for cool fish, cook soup to fill up the water, and eat it very well. If the soup is not cooked, then grilled, steamed onions, and braised. Freshly grilled fish and then hung up in the kitchen guard. Then, crushing fish with salt, dried chili, galangal, and pepper will create a very unique dipping dish. The people here call it cheo. Cool fish is often used to dot with rice, sticky rice, meat, and wild vegetables and is often given to guests from far away.