Hanoi this season has a gentle wind, bringing with it countless lovely flavors of autumn. There is a typical fragrance of Hanoi soil that Thach Lam once likened to: "A gift of young rice" in the book "Hanoi 36 Streets". That's nuggets.
When mentioning Hanoi gifts, people of the capital will proudly mention green rice in Vong village, a small village on the outskirts of the city in the ancient Tu Liem district, now Cau Giay District, Hanoi. Lang Vong green rice is famous far and wide for its cool green color like jade, sticky seeds, sweet taste and the scent of young sticky rice milk, not browned. In the Mid-Autumn Festival, when the green rice season comes, the whole Vong village resounds with the bustling sound of pestles pounding green rice like a festival.
To have a delicious batch of green rice, the maker chooses young sticky rice flowers that are just plump, the rice grains are filled with milk inside the green husk. Rice ears are pounded, sifted, roasted, pounded... Finally, a batch of sticky rice is produced that is as sticky as sticky rice, containing a lot of effort from the maker.
Standard Vong village green rice is wrapped in two layers of leaves: a layer of green rice leaves keeps the rice from drying out and lasts longer, and a layer of lotus leaves wraps around the outside to accentuate the subtle scent. The package of green rice is tied with soft strips made from threshed rice stalks, sometimes with a few small grains left behind.
To properly eat fresh green rice, you have to gently use your five fingers to pick up a little bit and put it in your mouth, slowly enjoying and absorbing the elegant flavor of the Vietnamese countryside. There is a fruit that when eaten with fresh green rice is banana, pepper and eggs. It's a naturally ripe banana with speckled skin like a coot's egg.
Com Moc can also prepare many dishes such as green rice cake, rice cake, sticky rice with green rice, spring rolls or stir-fried green rice... for fun. Each dish has its own flavor, but only for enjoyment, because fresh green rice, through cooking and processing, more or less loses its inherent rustic flavor.
As Hanoi begins to fall, every street is filled with the scent of milk flowers, a subtle scent of heaven and earth between the changing seasons. The neighborhood with the most places selling green rice is Ly Quoc Su, Nha Chung... in front of the Cathedral.
