Returning to Muong village for Tet dishes

Each cuisine, whether rustic or exquisite, includes tales and values about the culture and life, tastes, and customs of the people of that place. The Muong Thanh Son people’s culinary culture consists of simple, rustic dishes such as five-color sticky rice, bamboo-tube rice, stream fish, sour meat, sticky rice, banana soup, sour bamboo shoot soup, hill chicken... which creates a distinct flavor of Thanh Son mountains and forests.

Nature’s flowers and leaves provide the colors for five-color sticky rice.

When discussing the Muong people’s traditional culinary culture, the leaf tray must be included since it reflects the Muong people’s distinct culinary culture. The round leaf tray (a symbol of heaven) represents roundness and is displayed completely and tastefully. The leaf tray contains dishes such as Muong pork, chicken cooked with sour bamboo stalks, grilled stream fish, and sticky rice. Muong pigs were traditionally cooked in leaf tray feasts by boiling or steaming. Today, to meet the requirements of everyday life and tourists, Muong pig dishes are more variety and distinctive than ever. Muong pork, after being fully prepared with dishes such as boiled, grilled, steamed, salad, etc., will be presented on a tray lined with banana leaves and heated over fire until soft and fragrant, typical of the mountains and forests, with green banana leaves creating attractive colors for the feast. Food is offered in a circular shape and in the sequence of different processed meals on the leaf tray, together with five-colored sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves in a square shape (a symbol of land).

The Muong people’s food is known for their five-color sticky rice, which is offered on all holidays, Tet, and weddings. The five hues of sticky rice are green, red, yellow, purple, and white, which represent the five elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. The colors of sticky rice also signify the Muong people’s desires for a life in harmony with heaven and earth, family unity, communal cohesiveness, and good fortune in life.

The food are creatively and elegantly prepared.

Ms. Dinh Thi Thanh Ha of Kha Cuu commune, Thanh Son district, stated that the materials for manufacturing five-color sticky rice include fragrant, sticky sticky rice, with the colors derived from natural flowers and leaves. To get the five-color sticky rice to “color” beautifully, place the easily faded dyed rice at the bottom of the basket, followed by the remaining colors, notably white at the top. The Muong people of Thanh Son have a “common denominator” in culinary culture, as reflected in the traditional proverb: “Paired rice, guard house, water to carry, pig to die, day passes, month comes”. Muong people enjoy foods like grilled, boiled, and sticky rice. Aside from the common and well-known meals, Muong Thanh Son cuisine includes various typical foods like as fish salad, roasted rice cakes, steaming rice cakes, lam bamboo meat, honey rolls, pang dishes, sour fish, sour meat, stone snails, and so on. Fish salad is unique to Thanh Son. As a result, after preliminary processing, they are dried with rough leaves such as leaves, leaves, and Ngai leaves, spiced with basil leaves, laksa leaves, and young buds of Nemelia plants mixed with mushrooms, and dipped in water mixed with honey and chopped fish intestines with salt sauce.

Honey rolls have a cold, buttery taste with a hint of bitterness from pig bile. To make honey rolls more aromatic, use bamboo tubes, broil them, or steam them with sticky rice. Suffocation cake is a sort of cake created in February and March during the breeding season for ants; suffocation ant eggs are the major component. Stifling ant eggs are stir-fried with onion, covered in sticky rice flour, and wrapped in young leaves before being put in a steaming basket. The cake contains the nutty flavor of the leaves, the greasiness of the filling, and the fragrant, sticky odor of the sticky rice. Lam rice, prepared from upland sticky rice, is an essential component of Muong cuisine. After soaking, the rice is placed in a young bamboo tube (or bamboo, rice cake tube), filled with adequate water, and placed on the wood burner to grill. When grilling, rotate the rice tube equally to ensure that the rice is cooked evenly and fragrantly. Lam rice may be converted into a visually appealing and tasty five-color lam rice meal by soaking it in leaf and flower liquids, similar to five-color sticky rice.

Lam rice comes in five different colors.

During holidays, New Year’s, and contests, women’s and youth union members in residential regions devote special attention to how to offer foods that are both beautiful and have the unique flavor of the mountain forest. Chicken, bamboo blue eel, stream fish, bamboo rice... are served on trays made of rattan, bamboo, and pumpkin, with red banana flower branches added to adorn or create accents.

The dishes are shaped like a stilt house and a water pond, in keeping with the village’s natural scenery, highlighting traditional dishes while demonstrating the ingenuity and creativity of the locals, thereby contributing to the preservation and promotion of Muong ethnic culinary culture.

Phuong Thanh