Da Lat has not been as urbanized as it is now, almost every house in Dalat has pink trees. At least a few three trees, many thousands of gardens behind the house.
People do not plant, do not care but keep in the middle of autumn heaven to give the golden pink, dyed a corner of the sky.
Migrants who came to Da Lat more than 30-40 years ago can still see where to do the house, because there is hardly a plot of land in the plateau. Find a forest of sparse houses and grow vegetables and coffee.
The rose tree was already somewhere in the woods behind the house. The gentle tree, quietly growing, does not compete with the soil with vegetables underneath should always be retained, summer shines green shade um, autumn for fruit fun home.
Talking about the rose tree, Mr. Nguyen Huu Painting, who made the book Da Lat in the past that many people relied on to understand Dalat, said: “The rose has become a cultural form that makes Dalat life.
The food culture, the tree-planting culture and the way of life of the humble Dalat people are as contained in that once wild tree.” Because a rose tree to grow needs decades, cut down is considered lost forever because if you do economics and replann, it does not … Economic.
No one grows crops that take decades to sell 5,000 – 10,000 VND/kg. Each tree at the same time obtained 100kg of fruit.
But Ms. Dang Thi Thu Van – owner of Hong Le Van, P.9, DaLat – went through many stages of poverty but still … do not worry about hunger thanks to the processing of pink berries. Wait for the pink fruit to turn yellow, picked down and put in a sealed plastic bag, 5 days later there is crispy pink.
Old pink fruit, left on the tree or picked down so that the airy place will become soft ripe pink fruit, fragrant, pink shell, slightly yellowish intestines, sweet as the name “pink”.
Photo: Mai Vinh
When she was hungry, Ms. Van said she was too hungry to break the ripe pink fruit to eat ballast, sweetness to wake up without scratching the intestines like other fruits.
When the pink fruit ripens, it is also when Dalat passes the rainy season. The garden picks ripe roses cut into thick slices of biscuit slices or left the peeled fruit folded on an iron plate, dried through a sun and put in the charcoal drying oven, about 5 days later into flexible pink jam.
Pink jam is an indispensable new year dish. Small plates of jam with teapots are full when visitors visit.
The Annual Ceremony Van Pink Factory is still located in Khe Sanh valley. Around the workshop is a large rose garden. In the real estate whirlwind in Dalat, rarely any family calmly maintains the same rose garden as Ms. Van’s house.
Her children grew up in the valley, was born to work in finance, banking but then one day begged her mother to return to the family workshop.
Lan Anh, Ms. Van’s daughter, the family made plastic pink jam from a young age so she was as good as her mother. “Making charcoal-dried pink jam also has many styles.
People do industrial style (high profit) use honeycomb charcoal, the heat is large so pink quickly dry, sometimes drying in the morning to evening is dry (split pink), while the whole drying pink (wheel) about 2 days.
Drying charcoal and drying wind heat is longer, pink split sometimes 2-3 days to dry, pink wheels take 3-4 days, depending on the size of the fruit. People with the mind often dry ripe pink with charcoal, dry the wind. Red is honeyed and then when drying is finished eating is not shy, soft, flexible. Coal drying is prone to cramping and chewy due to shortened drying time. Charcoal-dried pink often smells harsh” she explains.
Dalat pink fruit “changed fate” exactly 8 years ago, when the Japanese, namely experts of the Japan Agency for International Cooperation (JICA) in Vietnam brought the traditional method of producing pink hanging wind of Japan to guide more than 100 farmers, using only sun and natural wind instead of coal , charcoal for pink drying.
Pink wind,full name is pink hanging wind Hoshigaki, until 2014 thanks to the official person made in Dalat, is known by the purity and beauty of the finished product. The price of pink jam is twice as high, at times 3-4 times higher than the pink jam dried with coal or charcoal.
Photo: Mai Vinh
Mr. Mai Xuan Long – chairman of The Village Land Cooperative (Xuan Truong commune, DaLat City), a person considered as the “king” of pink wind – saw the method of hanging pink wind received from Japan saved the processing of dalat pink jam and saved the rose tree is not broken.
Before that, pink when in season price is only 2,000 VND / kg fresh fruit, pink sold full of sugar for visitors at the price only expected to compensate for picking. Charcoal-dried pink jam produces a lot but the taste is nothing special, the value is usually middle class, the storage core is also only for gradual sale to visitors.
Now the price of roses in the garden is about 10,000 VND /kg, the beginning of the season and the end of the season nudge a little. The rose tree begins to be carefully cared for. Mr. Long calculates that for every hectare of coffee planted with about 80 rose trees, so that the pink tree eats a little excess protein of coffee that lives, the farmers also cheated 100 million more bags.
The area of pink in Dalat is about 370ha with the annual output of fresh fruit reaching over 12,500 tons, according to the Economic Department of DaLat City. , the area mentioned above is not significant.
Pink fruit through the humid time, sometimes people compete to buy to get good roses as raw materials processing pink wind Hoshigaki.
Mr. Long was one of the first people to be guided by the Japanese to make pink wind. He said the pink wind was processed from the time the fruit was not ripe but old enough. The picked-down fruit must wash plenty of water, then peel off the stalks to hang.
Pink is heat-dried with charcoal for a very short time so that the outer layer of fruit hunts, then hangs into each wire in the drying house has two layers of doors, there are blowers to prevent dust and insects.
The process of sun exposure and wind drying lasts almost 25 days, pink fruit continues to ripen in high sanitary conditions. Therefore, although many visitors to Dalat want to visit, many factories have to refuse.
The pink fruit needs to be matxa to sweeten evenly and bile. “Every day I have to wear gloves every day. Very hard but do not do, the jam will not taste good – Mr. Long said – The delicious pink jam is pink jam intact stalks.
Look at the dried pink fruit and still be able to imagine how fresh the pink fruit is. When cut out, in the intestines there is a layer of sweet honey, almost the entire aroma of the pink fruit gathers here.”
Dried pink berries can be kept in the freezer and eaten immediately after being removed from the cupboard because the pink jam is not frozen.
Pink wind type extreme is the type stored in the freezer for a year or more. After a cold sleep, the title is buried with snow in the traditional Japanese way, the pink fruit covered with a layer of white sugar. The price of pink covering the road is now double the price of one sign of pink raw materials.
Then, pouring a cup of hot tea, grabbing a piece of pink…
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