With its delicate flavor and characteristic soft texture, nuggets can be eaten directly or processed into a variety of sweet and savory dishes.
Referring to COM, we often think of Hanoi’s autumn.
This “specialty” of Vietnam was once named by writer Thach Lam in his pen book “Ha Noi hashed six streets” as “a gift of young rice”, “a special gift of the country, a special food of the country”. the offering of green rice fields, bringing in all the rustic, simple and pure flavors of the countryside in Vietnam.”
As for the owner of the blog Inside the Travel Lab, nuggets are “a sign of Hanoi’s autumn”, and “one of the most special things of Hanoi’s autumn”.
According to Taste Atlas – a website known as the “world culinary map” specializing in collecting, evaluating, and introducing international cuisine – the introduction of nuggets is as follows: Com is a traditional Vietnamese dish from Vietnam. Red River Delta area, is a specialty of autumn.
Young sticky rice for making nuggets is hand-harvested so that the young rice grains do not break, the most delicious is the yellow-flowered glutinous rice. Young glutinous rice can be used in both summer and winter crops, but crop rice is usually used in late summer – early autumn.
After harvesting, the rice seeds are cleaned in water, removed from the flat seeds, and then dried over low heat before pounding. The nuggets are carefully pounded to a thin, flat thickness like tamarind leaves.
After crushing the nuggets, the finished product is wrapped in two layers of leaves – the inner layer is usually a potato leaf or lotus leaf to keep moisture and green color, and the outer layer is a lotus leaf with a faint fragrance. The package of green rice is square, neat, and looks like a gift package – because the seller also delicately uses sticky rice straws to tie it.
“The Gift of Autumn in Hanoi”
Sophie, the owner of the blog Delightful Plate, called it “a gift of Hanoi’s autumn”, “a cultural symbol of Hanoi’s capital”.
“Many traditional Vietnamese dishes reflect the importance of agriculture and wet rice culture in the country’s history, and nuggets are one of them,” she wrote.
According to Sophie, one of the reasons why green rice is so special is because it is a seasonal specialty.
Today, we already have dried nuggets, and vacuum-sealed nuggets that can be frozen to be eaten all year long, but the taste and aroma of these convenient nuggets can’t be compared with autumn’s fresh nuggets. Fresh nuggets are only sold in 1-2 months of the year, and are most delicious when eaten on the same day.
The nuggets have a very subtle flavor, and not just one layer of flavor. Com is both mildly sweet, with a slight milky scent (of young rice), the fragrance of leaves (the outer layer of lotus leaves), and the taste is supple. Sophie said that she feels the nuggets have an almost sticky aroma.
With its delicate flavor and characteristic soft texture, nuggets can be eaten directly or processed into a variety of sweet and savory dishes.
The simplest way to eat is to put little nuggets in your mouth and chew slowly to enjoy the ethereal fresh flavor of the nuggets. Fresh nuggets eaten with ripe bananas or red persimmons are also very delicious.
Vietnamese people also create a lot of sweet dishes from com, such as ice cream Com, Cake Com, Sweet Soup Com, or mooncakes filled with nuggets.
The nuggets can also be roasted to eat like rice crackers, or used in place of breadcrumbs in fried dishes.
Another famous Hanoi com dish is cha com – nuggets are mixed with minced pork and spices, then shaped and fried until golden brown. Cha com is often eaten with vermicelli with shrimp paste.
A Japanese person experiences eating rice for the first time
In an article posted on the website kett.co.jp, the author with the pseudonym K. Okawa told about his experience of trying rice for the first time in Japan – which is a “rare item” in this country.
The package of nuggets that K. Okawa received was as square and pretty as the one sold in Hanoi – the only difference was that the packet of nuggets that were brought to Japan had an extra layer of newspaper wrapped around it.
K. Okawa’s first impression of the taste of nuggets was “smells like soybean flour”: “When I tasted it a little, I found it to have a sweet taste, a gentle, faint scent of clear leaves. mouth – maybe it’s the aroma from the leaves used to wrap the nuggets. The nuggets are a bit chewy, like a cake made from glutinous rice flour but not sticky.”
K. Okawa commented, “Com is not as sweet as sugar and not as soft as sticky rice. But hidden in the nuggets is a very unique sweetness, very different [from Japanese dishes].”
K. Okawa was taught how to eat with ripe bananas by a Vietnamese in Japan, and this person exclaimed: “It’s very sweet! It’s delicious!”
Tham khảo: Taste Atlas, Delightful Plate, kett.co.jp, Inside the Travel Lab