Referring to Hoa Binh tourism, besides the beautiful nature, the cool climate of the four seasons, the unique local culture and many attractive delicious dishes, it is necessary to mention the rustic but delicious gifts. Anyone who has come or stopped by Hoa Binh once, it is impossible not to buy it as a gift.
1 - Cao Phong Cam
Light aroma, gentle sweetness wrapped in tangerines, slight acidity. The orange cloves are golden and juicy, and the orange juice blends like forest honey. Gently pressing her fingernails on the peel, the smell of essential oils has been suffocating, stimulating the senses. There is no doubt - this famous fruit of Cao Phong is definitely at the top of the list of items to bring home when traveling to Hoa Binh - Cao Phong orange.
Cao Phong land is mainly hilly land with sun, wind and favorable climate, thick arable soil, surrounded by limestone mountains, mild weather all year round, temperature 3-4 degrees lower than other places. All create the perfect conditions to form a famous delicious orange region.
Even fastidious guests find it difficult to resist the charm of this round orange filled with the sun and wind and the aroma of Cao Phong hilly soil.
Cao Phong oranges enter the main season every year from November last year to April next year. A Cao Phong orange is attractive because of the slight sour taste mixed in the sweetness that makes you want to eat one bite and want another one. The taste of oranges comes from the characteristics of Cao Phong hilly soil, different by the soil and climate that Ha Giang gourmet oranges and Vinh oranges of Nghe cannot have.
Coming to Hoa Binh, the orange season is in full swing, if you pass through Cao Phong, visitors will be delighted by the orange orchards, people are quickly harvesting oranges, traders are bustling in and out. Visitors will not be able to resist the smell of fragrant oranges all over the road, in front of the yellow orange baskets like the summer afternoon sun, stop the car, buy a few pounds as gifts.
Photo: VNA
2 - Purple cane
When Cao Phong oranges are ripening yellow, it is also the time when the purple sugarcane of Lac Son soil is sweet to the top, urging people to harvest quickly. Purple sugarcane is a specialty of Lac Son, Cao Phong, Tan Lac, Kim Boi districts - the capital of sugarcane land with over 9,000 hectares.
If the time of year passes through Lac Son, everyone has to ecstasy to see the vast green sugarcane fields to the limestone mountains, then from November to March every year, along the Hoa Binh provincial road through Lac Son, it is bustling with sugarcane sellers and sugarcane sellers.
Purple sugarcane has become one of the idyllic hometown gifts that are difficult to ignore of this land.
Hoa Binh purple sugarcane is famous for its soft, sweet sugarcane stems. The sugarcane is thick, long. The sugarcane stem is dark purple, the tree is nearly 2m high. Sugarcane is sold whole, cut into short pieces or pre-peeled and packed into small bags for passers-by to enjoy on the spot. Large bundles of sugarcane (10 trees) cost only from 25,000 to 40,000 VND/bundle or odd trees for 3,000 - 4,000 VND/tree when bought at the garden, 10,000 VND for a small bag of ready-to-eat sugarcane. Sugarcane is gradually associated with Hoa Binh, simple but close to the cute personality of the people and the land of Muong here.
Photo: Ngoisao.vn
3 - Can wine
Speaking of specialties, the items to bring home when traveling to Hoa Binh cannot be ignored. This is a traditional drink of the Muong Hoa Binh people cooked from leaf yeast according to an esoteric recipe. Among them, the most famous is Muong Vang can wine (Lac Son district) - which is considered the most intact ancient can Muong wine, where there are still many Muong women who wear "pickles" to the forest to pick leaves to make wine yeast.
Legend has it that the recipe for making wine was passed down by her mother to her daughter-in-law, and the men in the house hardly participated in this work. An important factor that determines good wine is the yeast of the wine. The best yeast must be yeast from forest leaves and from plants such as fang, basil...
In addition, the wine is brewed from glutinous rice soaked overnight, rice mixed with rice husks and then made into rice, then mixed with yeast and then boiled into wine. When drinking, you open the lid and add about 1 liter of hot water, then continue to add cold water and plug the stick into the drink. Drink and hydrate slowly. Wine can be delicious even if it is poured with water many times, it still retains its sweetness, aroma, and slight spiciness, and so on until the yeast makes people dizzy, making the space to gather with friends and family more intimate and cozy.
For the Muong people, can wine is usually only drunk during holidays, Tet or welcoming distinguished guests. Gradually, wine can become a specialty that makes any tourist to Hoa Binh want to buy it as a gift.
Photo: baotintuc.vn
4 - Lam rice
Referring to Hoa Binh specialties, lam rice is the most popular dish for many tourists when visiting this land. Lam rice is easy to eat, easy to store, easy to transport long distances - also one of the gifts that anyone who travels to Hoa Binh will bring back at least a few times.
Not simply a rice dish cooked in a tube (called a pipe by Muong people), Hoa Binh lam rice has its own characteristics, different from the lam rice of other regions in the Northwest or the Central Highlands.
This difference comes from the famous fragrant sticky rice in the fields of the Thai people, Muong Hoa Binh people. The rice grains are fragrant, flexible but not sticky, even when cooled, they are still fragrant, delicious and rich as if they were just cooked.
This specialty rice is soaked for 8-10 hours, then drained and then put into a tube.
The quality tube for making lam rice must also be fresh, belonging to the type of cake tube, not too young or too old. The meticulous rice cooker will always choose the tubes in the middle of the tree, there is still a little stagnant water inside. People think that it is "heaven's" water, which will make the rice tube taste better than usual. When pouring rice in, it should not be compacted. Finally, roll up the glutinous rice leaves and cover the mouth of the tube and then put it on the wood stove to grill.
Grill the rice tube until the outer shell is scorched, press softly with your hand to take it down. Gently peeling off the shell, I saw that the thin coat like ivory silk was still clinging to the fragrant and inviting rice.
Fingered a piece of blue rice. The aroma of rice is mixed with the smell of forest pipes, wrapped in tangerines, and the question in the mouth when you put a piece of blue rice in to enjoy. Lam rice is best when dipped with sesame salt. The fatty, fragrant taste of peanuts and sesame enhances the sweet, flexible and rich taste of rice grains. These rustic but attractive flavors continue to support each other to create a simple but delicious taste of heaven and earth. After eating all this tube of lam rice, he wanted to eat another tube.
In addition to sesame salt, lam rice can also be enjoyed with "jogging" chicken raised in the village, grilled fish, mother pigs... Today, Thai and Muong people in Hoa Binh also create coconut pulp, coconut water or cook with colored leaves to create attractive colorful blue rice tubes.
Photo: baophunu.vn
Lam rice is also popular in almost all large and small restaurants, to roadside toad shops on all roads in Hoa Binh. Visitors can easily enjoy it on the spot, and certainly cannot forget to buy a few tubes to take home as gifts, so that when you open it, you will see the fragrance of Mai Chau, and you will miss the green fields at the foot of the purple mountains and the fresh air of this pure land.
5 - Sour meat
One of the other favorite specialties of Muong Hoa Binh that is always in the TOP of must-buy items when traveling to Hoa Binh is sour meat.
With the hilly terrain, pigs are raised around the house in the form of free-range, giving the quality of firm, fragrant and sweet meat. The indigenous people of Hoa Binh have processed into many delicious dishes such as grilled pork, kitchen pork, roast pork... In particular, it can be taken far away, brought back as a gift, including sour meat processed from village pigs.
The sour meat dish of the Muong Hoa Binh people is mainly used on holidays, Tet, weddings or welcoming distinguished guests to play at home. Delicious sour meat is also a feat of meticulous and extremely sophisticated processing.
First, it must be pork, no more than 30kg. Pigs are roamed on the slopes of the hills for a long time, eating native corn and vegetables for firm, low-fat, and lean meat quality. The meat after cutting into bite-sized pieces is marinated with salt and dried galangal, pounded, glutinous rice with forest leaf yeast. An indispensable ingredient that stimulates the fermentation process and uplifts the taste when enjoying is hearing, made from pounded (ground) rice as fine as bran powder.
In particular, Hoa Binh sour meat is also delicious because it is brewed in bamboo tubes lined with banana leaves, called "bodhisattva". The salted pork belly is placed in the attic of the wood stove to be composted weekly, so that the meat ferments naturally and sourly. When enjoying, cinnamon leaves, young jackfruit leaves, fig leaves, even betel leaf are indispensable...
The slight sourness, the sweetness of the meat, the fat taste of the ears, just right thanks to the salt, mixed with the flavor of forest leaves, dipped with spicy chili sauce. Eating the first bite, I felt strange as if I was surprised, but standing in front of the amazing wild mountains and forests of Muong land, to the second and third bites, I began to feel the charm of the interesting combination of ingredients that are basic foods in daily life.
Both a traditional delicacy and a drink just to treat distinguished guests, today, the delicious taste of Muong sour meat has been spread far and wide. Anyone who visits Hoa Binh, also wants to buy some sour meat to take home as a gift. To occasionally spend the weekend with friends, I remember one night sitting on a stilt overlooking the mountains and hills of Hoa Binh, sipping can wine, enjoying sour meat on an unforgettable trip.
Photo: Justfly
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