The price of melon is very “chestnut”, making many delicious, cool and strange dishes

“It’s the season when Hanoi doesn’t have this melon dish, which is a simple, familiar medicinal fruit that has the power to touch the whole sky bright and peaceful childhood memories of many people, now it is also used to make many delicious and delicious dishes. cool and very cheap price”. – a reader shared.

This year Hanoi does not have Bac Ninh’s melons

Bac Ninh pickled melon – a gift that is so simple and small that it touches the sky of immense memories in my mind about a bright and peaceful childhood in the old town.

When I was a child, my mother wore a brown shirt and scarf in the middle of a hot summer afternoon, cutting a large chunk of melon and sharing it with her children who came home from school in the sun. Each child only has a piece of melon that cools their intestines, quenching their thirst at midday in the summer.

The fruit of the melon is as long as a young squash, the taste is only slightly sweet. Illustration

Bac Ninh melon is not a precious fruit, the fruit is as big and long as a young squash, the sweetness is only shy, buoyant, not as attractive as other fruits, but the price is very ‘chestnut’. cast iron is very cool to eat, but eating until the second slice is boring.

My grandmother’s hometown is in Bac Ninh – the land of melons, so anything from my hometown becomes delicious. Once, I followed my grandmother and mother to the village festival on the 8th day of the first lunar month, wondering where the village grew melons?

Mother said February and March are the new melons growing season. In early summer, there are fruits because melons are easy to grow and grow quickly, only a few months are good harvests, large fruits and lots of cool water. If you are familiar with sticky rice, you can grow it, but you can’t sell the whole melon field for much money.

April and May of the lunar calendar every year is the hot season. The burdens, the trucks carrying melons are sold on the old quarter of Hanoi. The melon has a cool green color, glossy, fatty membrane that looks very pleasing to the eye. There are melons left at the tip of the leaf stalk like a beautiful little pumpkin leaf.

Every time I meet a melon shop, my mother almost caresses the hard-working farmer – because the harvest season of melons in the hot sun “breaks his head”.

Mother often buys a lot of big fruit, cut for the children to eat only a few. The rest of the mother cut in half, removed the intestines, chopped and then mixed with a little salt, a little sugar, mixed with paprika, crushed garlic, then sprinkled a little herbs, Chinese flavor into a delicious salad.

The spicy mixed melon dish was a favorite for my father, appealing to my sisters and brothers because of its sweet and sour taste. The melon dish as a mannequin is grated, squeezed with vinegar – salt – sugar, and then mixed with chili garlic, herbs, marjoram and sesame seeds… just enough, even more delicious.

And the season of salted melon of the Bac Ninh people

My mother told me that in my mother’s time, melons were salted and saved to eat when the seeds were harvested. Salted melon is more salty than dried sea fish, salted pork. There are years when relatives in the countryside send up a whole sack of fresh green melons. Eating raw and making mannequins forever is still so much that the grandmother put out the pickles.

She told me and my sisters to bring melons to the balcony to dry in the east direction for the pigs to wilt. Then she boiled a large pot of very salty salted water and let it cool. Take a Huong Canh crock pot as big as a corrugated iron box containing rice to layer each layer of melons. Then she was flooded with salt water, covered the bamboo griddle on top, and compressed a jar of sauerkraut into the heart of a large jar of pickled melon. On top of the jar, there is also a large, heavy grinded wooden cutting board.

Bac Ninh melon dish makes a very delicious and cool salad. Illustration.

Bac Ninh has the famous Dinh Ginger tomato paste, which is sprinkled with garlic and chili sugar, with a little ginger or crushed galangal. As for Bac Ninh pickled melon, it is simply a salted garlic and chili paste (before pickling, you have to chop the melon and wash it and squeeze out all the water to reduce the salty taste). Pickled melon has a lighter taste than eating pickled eggplant. Especially the crispiness of the melon is eaten with the pickles, and the mouth is chewed with crispy earphones.

My grandmother said that eating eggplants is delicious, but “one eggplant is equal to 3 drugs” should eat healthy melons, especially fresh and cool melons, each of which is a bit pale and does not last as long as pickled melons.

Pickled melon and braised pork belly just change the meal is also very delicious. The purchased meat is washed, cut into pieces, fried with oil and then fried until fragrant. The melon is also cut into pieces and then washed, squeezed out the salty taste, then put it on the island to mix with the meat and then add water, so you don’t need to add salt sauce because the salty taste from the pickled melon is just right. When the water dries up, sprinkle with scallions and peppercorns.

Every time I had a pickled melon dish with braised meat, my mother told me to add 1 more rice butter to cook rice lest I eat “the pot is floating”. At mealtimes, my sister and I took care of the meat (even though it was divided equally), the salted melon just picked up the tears… even though the piece of melon soaked in crispy fatty meat was as delicious as a ham. My mother only laughed because she knew that when she woke up to eat cold rice tomorrow morning and went to school, my sister and I still ate all of the braised melons – and that delicious taste has been preserved to this day.

Salted melon once was less, perhaps because Bac Ninh people no longer grow much, fresh melon is also inferior because its taste is lost in the middle of the forest of sweet and fragrant fruits in the South and the North, and then imported from Vietnam. Europe, America… should gradually disappear.

Both my grandmother and my parents are now ancient people. Bag delicious foods The old days also followed in the footsteps of the ancient people but faded. Recently someone told me, so I went to Bac Qua market, scoured and inquired about each row of goods but could not find any pickled melons.

Asking for the largest pickle stall of the silver-haired old woman in Thanh Ha alley, which opens to Nguyen Thien Thuat street – the old woman was stunned for a while and said that Bac Ninh pickles have not been found since the season. Probably due to the pandemic, it can’t be shipped, but I still see it for sale every year.

Searching the internet, I found a phone number selling pickled melon from an old farmer named D. V. L lamented that his house was full of pickles, but it was also slow to sell online, and buyers who were far away were afraid to translate, so they couldn’t ship.

His family also only sells melon pickles, and 5-6 sao of melons are grown by the children. This year, the price of pickled melon is only 60,000 VND / bird’s nest – that is, 1 bird’s nest of Que Vo salted melon is equal to the price of 1 pound of Dinh Ginger coffee. Hopefully the epidemic will end quickly so that farmers can bring salted melon to Hanoi to sell. I love you so much, Bac Ninh!

Melon has a signal of recovery, because of its light, sweet taste, today it is used by chefs to make many delicious dishes. Here is how to make a cool melon smoothie, cool down, relieve boredom, reduce thirst.

Material

– Melon: 500g

– Fresh milk: 80ml

– Condensed milk with sugar: 50 m

– Shaved ice: 1 bowl

Making

Choose melons that are fresh, not wilted, natural green in color, washed, peeled, halved, gutted, and chopped for easy grinding.

Put the melon in the blender. Add fresh milk, condensed milk, 1/2 place of shaved ice and grind together. Turn on the machine and puree the mixture for about 3-5 minutes to be smooth and delicious.

Put the remaining shaved ice into the glass, then slowly pour the crushed melon on top to finish the melon smoothie.

Garnish with a small slice of melon, or a small slice of lemon on the rim of the glass. When mixed together, this dish is best served cold.