Whenever he goes, in each person’s heart there is always a homeland to remember. Hung Yen residents remember their loved ones, close memories, ripe and succulent bunches of longans and also appetizing flavor of Bun Thang The Ky....
Bun thang traditionally originated from the preparation on the fourth day of our Lunar New Year, when Vietnamese people have a meal to see off ancestors. All the left-overs in the kitchen have been used to make this Bun Thang. That's why everything has been cut into shreds. Along with the rolling dishes, Bun Thang is the delicate dish with the outstanding flavor among other heavy dishes on Tet holiday.
Bun Thang is popular in many places but not every place has the special tasty soup as Bun Thang The Ky. The reason behind the name Bun Thang The Ky is unknown, but whenever people are hungry for Bun Thang, they always come to this famous Bun Thang restaurant. The restaurant has no signs. The familiar customers call this restaurant after the host’s name and hope that this dish will exist in 100 years to come. This restaurant is large and airy with shady trees in the front.
The most important part of making Bun Thang is adequate ingredients. The main ingredients are eel, chicken, pork ham, yellow eggs shreds. Missing one is missing one color for the Bun Thang bowl. Firstly, the qualified broth must be pure, hot and aromatic. The broth has the sweetness of chicken bones, pig bones, red shrimp floss, delicious sauce but not the unpleasant odor of cow or buffalo bones or the unhealthy sweetness of chemical sugar. During cooking process, the cook has to stay near the pot to remove all impurities. A qualified broth must be clear, light, fragrant of shrimp floss and dried mushroom. The rice vermicelli must be soft, tangled, white with small shreds, normally Van Tieu rice vermicelli. Before putting in the bowl, it is poached to make it softer.
The complicated step is beating eggs. In order to fry thin egg sheets, a little white wine is added. Use the cotton buds, dip into the cooking oil and grease the pan. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and tilt the pan fast in a circular motion to coat the base of pan.The eggs are sliced into very thin strips. Many people misunderstand the word “thang”, saying that the name comes from the fact that the vermicelli bowl looks like a “pack” of medicinal herbs. But that is not true. Bun Thang means, rice vermicelli poured the broth, “thang” means ”broth”.. Eel Bun Thang is more delicious than chicken one. In order to make a tasty dish, eels must be fresh, burnt and then killed so that eels do not loose blood and the meat is sweater.
There is another indispensable Bun Thang’s ingredient that is the hidden charm of this dish and makes it the signature dish. It is brown pink shripm paste. The unpleasant smell of the shrimp paste can complete five flavors in a bowl. As a comment of a tourist, Bun Thang missing shripm paste is like Pho missing the broth. Elostomatidae essence is another ingredient used to spice up the soup. Only a point of Elostomatidae essence can conjure up the right taste of Bun Thang. Lastly, they scatter some fresh onions, minced coriander to accentuate the fragrance of this dish. After placing all ingredients on top of the bowl, pouring the boiling hot broth into it to taste the delicacy of the broth and the stunning scent of its ingredients. Taking a sip of the broth, tourists can feel the fragrance of skies and nature. According to author Vu Bang, this dish conjures up a “irresistible scent”
The food of Bun Thang The Ky is kept in the glass closets with each bowls containing different colorful strips such as eels, chicken, pork ham, eggs. Upon order, the host put the rice vermicelli, swiftly scoop the ingredients into the bowl, in a blink of an eye, the Bun Thang bowl is a vivid masterpiece with white Van Tieu Rice vermicelli, yellow fried eels and chicken, flavored by green flagrant knotweed.
Making Bun Thang is not so difficult but it is uneasy to make a delicious Bun Thang bowl. There was no seasoning in the past but the broth was braised from pork and chicken bones, farming crabs, shrimp floss and Sa sung (a special seafood). The impurities are removed to make the broth clear and greasy. The secret of Bun Thang The Ky is that every ingredient is perfectly cooked and mixed based on the acquired experiences times after times; otherwise, the flavor of the dish is poor and bland.
Due to sophisticated recipe, Bun Thang is not as popular as other Rice vermicelli soup. However, this is a delicate and stunning dish showing the acceptance of theory of five basic elements and convergence of skies and nature.
