The attraction of seafood cuisine to the development of Ha Long tourism

Abalone (Abalone, commonly used commercial name: gianttopshell) is a crustacean, belonging to the oyster and mussel family. Natural abalone is exploited from the sea depth of 5-20m. In Quang Ninh, abalone is abundant in the sea of Van Don island. Vietnamese abalone also has two types: donkey's ear abalone and nine-hole abalone (the shell has a stomatal cavity of 7-13 holes but usually 9 holes) with an average size of 5-6cm. The mass of meat inside the individual abalone shell is several dozen grams, up to 100 grams. Abalone meat has a thick, smooth tissue structure, similar to squid but softer, and does not become loose or tough when cooked for a long time. Vietnamese abalone is scattered from the sea of Phu Quoc to Binh Dinh, Quy Nhon to Quang Ninh, Hai Phong, but there is not much so it is mainly exploited for business on the spot as a local specialty or processed dry, the quantity is very low. For most Vietnamese housewives, abalone is something very distant and not as familiar as blood cockles, razor clams, scallops, etc. And names like abalone porridge, abalone stewed with chicken, pigeon stewed with abalone... are often only mentioned as extremely expensive dishes in luxury restaurants. According to research In

100g of abalone contains many nutrients: protein 17.05g; sugar (carbohydrate) 5.89g; fat 0.75g; cholesterol 84.7mg; vitamins B1, B2, minerals and trace elements. Protein also contains 19 essential amino acids for the body at relatively high levels such as Threonine 0.73mg; Isoleucine 0.75mg; Valine 0.7mg; and glutamic acid 2.31. Because of its nutritional value, abalone is considered a high-class food and is processed to be used as medicine.

Abalone can be eaten raw or steamed. To eat raw, you must use fresh abalone, burying the whole abalone with the shell in shaved ice for about an hour before eating. The best way to eat raw abalone is to have a delicious dipping sauce. Dissolve one part of soy sauce and one third of green mustard (or more if you can handle the spicy taste). Depending on your preference, you can replace the dipping sauce with salt, pepper, and lemon. When eating, you must pry open the abalone shell, separate the meat, and remove the impurities as you eat. If you want to prepare it in advance, cut it into thin slices as you like.

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a deep plate, put the abalone in the dish, cover the mouth of the plate with a layer of aluminum foil, spread the abalone on the plate and serve with dipping sauce and chilled green onions.

For steamed abalone, steam it with steam, you can use live abalone or frozen abalone, defrost, cut it into long, thin pieces as desired. Dipping sauce with ginger fish sauce: 1 tablespoon of good fish sauce, ½ tablespoon of minced ginger, 3 or 4 tablespoons of filtered water, 1 or 2 teaspoons of sugar to taste and minced chili, depending on how spicy you like it, you can replace ginger fish sauce with salt - pepper - lemon and serve with a few leaves of Vietnamese coriander if you like.

In addition, abalone porridge and stewed pigeon are elaborate dishes but very nutritious for health. To cook abalone porridge, it is important that the broth is delicious and sweet, made from simmered pork bones or chicken broth. The rice used to cook the porridge must be delicious rice, dry-roasted in a thick pan until the rice smells fragrant, do not roast the rice until it turns yellow. Cut the abalone into thin slices, marinate with spices, stir-fry with chopped onions, when the porridge is almost cooked, pour it into the pot, boil gently for about 5 minutes to have a delicious and attractive dish. For stewed pigeon with abalone, just marinate the pigeon with salt and pepper, chopped onions, black sesame oil, rub the spices inside and out, leave for 30 minutes, fry until golden brown. Then put the pigeon in a medium pot, add pork or chicken broth to cover, simmer until the pigeon is just tender, then add the processed fresh or dried abalone and mushrooms and continue cooking until the water is about 1/3. If using canned abalone, add it only when the meat is completely tender. The dish is satisfactory when the abalone is infused with pigeon flavor, served with salt and pepper.

When cooking abalone with other foods, depending on whether you use canned, fresh or dried abalone, the finished product will have a very different flavor. Abalone can be cooked in combination with many other foods such as braised abalone with egg whites and crab roe; stir-fried abalone with grouper, abalone rolled with roast duck; stir-fried abalone with garlic...

Nowadays, many studies have proven that Abalone meat has good therapeutic properties, helping to nourish blood and qi, strengthen the kidneys, improve eyesight, prevent physical weakness and regulate blood pressure.

Blood, very good for people with weak body, poor eyesight, kidney failure, frequent urination at night and especially for people with diabetes to help stabilize blood sugar levels. Coming to Ha Long to eat abalone, you will feel delicious and comfortable right after a long day on the way back to Ha Long.

2.5.2.5 Sea cucumber.

Sea cucumber has the scientific name Stichopvssa Selelon, fishermen often call it sea leech or sea leech. Rare, delicious and nutritious sea cucumber is considered by oriental medicine as a kidney tonic.

Sea cucumbers live in shallow seas, with lots of mud, sand, and rocks or jagged coral reefs. This is a marine invertebrate, often found in bays and places with lots of rocks in the open sea. Sea cucumbers have a very high regeneration ability and endurance, they can live underwater up to a depth of 6,000m. This is the nature of wood and water, the sea cucumber has a long, soft body due to absorbing the spirit, it has unique medicinal properties like ginseng, so it is called sea cucumber (sea ginseng). Along the coast of Vietnam, there are sea cucumbers everywhere, but to catch them is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

The round body of the sea cucumber has fine hairs, about a few inches long, as big as a thumb, soft, undulating and very agile. The head of the sea cucumber has a small hole called a mouth, surrounded by 18-30 tentacles used to catch prey. Its food is small organisms such as algae and mud from the bottom of the sea. Sea cucumbers adapt to all weathers. When it rains and storms, the sea cucumber hides in rock crevices, waiting until spring to start swimming out to find food. Sea cucumbers reproduce during the hot season, September is the busiest season. Hunting sea cucumbers is extremely hard work and is only convenient during the dry season. Fishermen have to dive deep into each cave or coral reef and use a stick to pierce its body.

According to the results of modern nutritional research, sea cucumber is one of the foods with extremely rich nutritional value. Chinese scientists estimate that every 100 grams of dried sea cucumber contains 76 grams of protein, 5 times higher than lean pork and 3.5 times higher than beef. Sea cucumber also has a high content of

high content of precious amino acids such as lysine, proline... and many trace elements such as P, Cu, Fe..., especially Se - a miraculous detoxifier, neutralizing heavy metals entering the body through food (such as Pb, Hg) to be excreted in urine. In addition, sea cucumbers also contain many vitamins, hormones, and biologically active substances, including two types of saponins: Rg (which stimulates the nervous system, fights fatigue and enhances physical strength) and Rh (which inhibits cancer cells). Therefore, since ancient times, sea cucumbers have been considered one of the "four great famous foods" (four famous foods) along with monkey brain, bear paw and bird's nest of traditional oriental cuisine and are known as "ginseng of the sea". In terms of food, many physicians consider sea cucumber meat to be one of the eight famous "delicacies" (eight treasures) of the East, along with bird's nest, abalone, shark fin...

Fresh sea cucumbers are soaked in lime water, then turned inside out, the intestines are removed, boiled briefly, taken out and sliced thinly, then soaked in ash water, then washed several times with hot water. The sea cucumber meat is marinated with five-spice powder, onion and garlic and stir-fried until cooked, adding herbs, thinly sliced green banana, sliced star fruit, roasted peanuts, crushed and eaten with rice paper, dipped in ginger fish sauce, it is delicious. People also process sea cucumbers more elaborately. The sea cucumbers are gutted, dried, when eaten, soaked in hot water to make the meat expand evenly, taken out and sliced thinly, then stir-fried with shrimp and wood ear mushrooms. Sea cucumbers are also processed with other dishes such as duck stewed with sea cucumber, chicken stewed with sea cucumber, sea cucumber stewed with Chinese medicine, sea cucumber stir-fried with bitter melon... When coming to Ha Long for vacation, visitors should not forget to enjoy this dish.

2.5.2.6. Sandworm

Sandworm is a sea worm, some places call it sandworm. In Vietnam, Quang Ninh is a special sea area with a lot of sandworm.

The reddish brown sandworm looks like an earthworm, with tiny veins on its body, but it is larger and its intestines are filled with sand. Sandworms live in burrows deep under the sand.

People usually catch sandworms early in the morning, when the tide has just receded, leaving traces of them after a night of crawling out of the sand to forage and mate. Just like digging for earthworms, if you see traces of sandworms, just dig deep into the sand layer and you will see them underneath. Sandworms feed on organic debris and plankton suspended in the water. A sandworm is from 7 to 15cm long.

Sandworms have many nutritional values such as amino acids, glycine, alanine, glutamine, succinic acid... and many taurine and minerals. When processed, sandworms have a delicious and characteristic flavor. According to a group of scientific researchers from the University of Natural Sciences, Ho Chi Minh City, the meat of sandworms contains 17 mineral elements, eight types of irreplaceable amino acids and ten types of replaceable amino acids that are essential for the human body. According to Oriental medicine, sandworms have a sweet taste, cool properties, treat cold heart syndrome, and nourish yang energy.

In the past, people used sea worms mainly as a type of dried shrimp used in making broth for pho, hu tieu, and vermicelli. A small amount of dried sea worms roasted and put in a filter bag in the broth will make the broth have a rich flavor. Nowadays, sea worms are on the menu of seafood restaurants, especially grilled dishes.

Processing the sea worms must be very meticulous, because you have to turn them inside out and rub them thoroughly with salt to remove all the sand and fishy smell, wash them many times until the sea worms turn pinkish white.

Fresh sea worms can be processed into dishes such as stir-fried sweet and sour, fried, grilled. To process fresh sea worms, after washing thoroughly, put the ingredients in a pan and roast on the stove until dry, then pour into a basket, rub off any remaining sand. Next, you can grill them, make lemon salad, add some banana blossom, herbs, peanuts. The sea worms themselves have a natural sweetness, so the longer you chew, the more you absorb the sweetness, similar to dried squid.

Sandworms can be grilled and eaten with salt, chili, and lemon juice, or marinated with salt, chili, and grilled. Restaurants often serve this dish to guests to enjoy with beer, just like shredded grilled dried squid! Sandworms are crispy, soft, and chewy.

chewy, fatty and sweet, so the more you eat, the more delicious it becomes.

The sandworms in Quang Ninh are small worms, when dried, their bodies are only about 8 cm long. The land of the sandworms is the coastal area of Quang Ninh, especially the communes of Minh Chau and Quan Lan. This is also the land with the most delicious sandworms. The sandworms live in the sandbanks with ebb and flow of the tide. The person digging for the sandworms must have experience, technique, and skillful movements like an artist dancing on the sand.

Digging sandworms are stir-fried with fresh garlic, a very delicious rustic dish that the people of Ha Long Bay call stir-fried bait . When cooked, fried sandworms have a golden color and a very fragrant smell - a rich, rich aroma of the sea. Fried sandworms are dipped in chili sauce, garnished with fish mint, herbs and drunk with beer, it's great!

People in Ha Long also prepare many delicious stir-fried dishes with fresh Sandworms. Of course, when the product is finished, it has been processed, turned inside out (due to the process of pre-processing and washing to remove sand), so its animal shape is no longer scary. Fresh Sandworms can be stir-fried with celery and garlic, quite delicious and attractive. Dried Sandworms can also be roasted to make a delicious dish to eat with beer. Thanks to its natural sweet taste, Sandworms were soon "specially" used by the people of Quang Ninh to replace MSG, especially in Pho broth. Quang Ninh is not the cradle of Pho, but a delicious pot of Pho cannot lack dried Sandworms. When I was young, dried Sandworms were not too expensive, sometimes the house kept a whole bag for later use. In Pho, Sandworms are grilled or roasted to make a light yellow color, then cut into short pieces, put in a basket and shaken gently to remove the sand, then dropped into the broth to simmer to produce sweet water. Sandworms are now becoming scarce, and catching them is also very laborious. Currently, they cost from one million two hundred to one million four hundred thousand VND/kg, much more expensive than sandworms in other regions.

2.5.3. Beverages

Eating and drinking are two activities that go together. According to nutritionists, people can go without food for many days, but not drinking for 2 days will endanger their lives. Of course, when you are thirsty, you drink. But when you are not thirsty, you still drink. Drinking brings refreshment to the body and also to fully absorb the pleasures in the "four pleasures" of human beings.

Every day, just like people in other khaki regions, Ha Long people also drink different drinks such as tea, beer, wine, fruit juices, coffee, etc. Moreover, for a long time, Ha Long people have been proud of the abundant Quang Hanh mineral water source, famous far and wide.... On the common foundation of "drinking culture", Ha Long people also have very unique drinks from the sea.

2.5.3.1 Drinking fish sauce

As people who often face the cold, wind, sun... both cold and cold, they often carry pure fish sauce to prevent colds. The ancients used "old" fish sauce to treat diseases. According to oriental medicine practitioners: If the patient is weak due to digestive typhoid, the stomach qi in the patient cannot communicate and causes hiccups, it can be cured with old fish sauce. That is the type of pure fish sauce buried in the ground as deep as possible for as long as possible (some families bury it for up to 9, 10 years) will moderate the salty, sweet, fatty substances, creating "stimulants" that regulate the yin and yang in the patient."

Drinking fish sauce is a very effective medicinal drink of the Ha Long fishing people, for many reasons it is difficult to be included in the menu of restaurants. However, if you are curious and love Ha Long cuisine, want to fully enjoy the flavor of the sea, visitors can come to the fishing village to hear and enjoy "with your own eyes, with your own mouth..." this drink. Surely visitors will feel very interesting.

2.5.3.2. Wine for blood

Perhaps any tourist coming to Ha Long has the opportunity to enjoy many kinds of seafood from Ha Long sea, and "ngan" is an indispensable dish.

still strange to many tourists.

Cockles are processed into many dishes such as grilled cockles, steamed cockles, these two dishes are dipped in chili sauce mixed with a little seasoning powder, pepper, squeezed fresh lemon, eaten with herbs. Cockles porridge is sprinkled with green onions, coriander, a little pepper, fried shallots on top. Cockles stir-fried with noodles and vegetables is also very attractive... because of the rich sweetness of cockles, it is called "cockles" but when eaten, you don't feel bored at all. Those are dishes made from cockles. Cockles are not only processed into dishes but cockles are also processed into a famous wine in Ha Long.

To make delicious wine, the right process must be followed. The blood of the oyster is located inside the oyster and is dark red. When separating the blood from the oyster, you must be gentle and not let the blood break. Put the blood in a glass cup, pour white wine into the cup, and use an egg beater to break the blood. The blood of the oyster is dissolved in the wine and is light red. When drunk, it has a spicy, sweet taste and a characteristic aroma.

On a cold winter night, visitors should sit with friends on the shore of Ha Long. Gather around the red fire, drink wine together. On the red fire, remember to grill some dried squid, sing songs about Ha Long together, Enjoy wine, the most interesting thing is to eat seafood on the rafts. With friends around, laughing and talking next to the steaming plates of grilled shrimp, steamed squid, boiled clams... then the feeling is so warm as if winter out there never existed. Add a few jars of hot wine, friends excitedly pour each other fragrant, shimmering cups while the rafts are swaying and swaying by the waves, just looking into each other's eyes is enough to make you feel drunk.

Night food stalls and snail shops in Ha Long all have rice wine. At night, you can go to the wharf area to drink rice wine with chicken neck and wings. At the wharf, you can sit and drink rice wine until 3-4am to freely compete in drinking.

If you have the opportunity to visit Ha Long in winter, don't forget to try this interesting feeling! I guarantee you will love this style of Ha Long people.

The attraction of seafood cuisine to the development of Ha Long tourism - 10

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