Summer holiday is coming soon, and we look for food and drinks that are not heavy, and have a cooling effect – different kinds of salads, lemonade made with kudzu powder (bột sắn dây) and so on.
Photo by Thúy Hằng |
One food that has emerged as a gourmet favourite for summer in Vietnam is the jellyfish salad, which is appreciated not only for its taste, but also for its medicinal properties. Herbalists say jellyfish is good medicine for hypertension.
Choosing fresh jellyfish is very important to ensure a tasty dish. The jellyfish should have been pushed fresh to the seashore and they have to be cleaned very carefully because their tentacles have a lot of sand in them.
To make the salad more tasty and crispy, fresh jellyfish is wrapped with tender guava leaves for 30 minutes and re-cleaned it with strong tea before mixing it with pieces of cucumber, young fresh mango, banana slices and some homemade shrimp paste.
This salad is often had with rau mui (cilantro), rau ram (fragrant knotweed), marjoram, young cassava and dinh lang (polyscias fruticosa) leaves.