Sticky rice - savory taste! (xôi mặn) - Part Two

Our tour with sticky rice dishes continues, this time - savory taste! To be honest I have no idea when savory sticky rice dishes have been created, but I remember when I was kid I did try two dishes: sticky rice with dry shrimp at my school (I can't remember - Chinese sausage was added at that time or not!) and another one - with char xiu (Chinese flavor barbecue pork - xá xíu)  and its special sauce.

Sticky rice with char xiu (mostly in China town)

Most favorite and popular  in this savory category are sticky rice with dry shrimp (tôm khô), Chinese sausage (lạp xưởng), greased green onion (mở hành) or crispy fried shallot (hành phi) and then with a bit of soya sauce! Nowadays at many places we could add pork floss (thịt chà bông), pâté, Vietnamese ham (chả lụa) or roasted chicken! I actually have very good recipe for this sticky rice, I do many times with different recipes, but realized this one could be one of the best! Hope to share with you some day!

  

Sticky rice with chicken floss and crispy fried shallot 

Sticky rice can go not only with roasted chicken but also steamed chicken, chicken floss, or roasted pork (heo quay) and its special sauce. When we have savory sticky rice, we never add fish sauce, soya sauce only, I don't know why! Maybe the fish sauce taste is not good for sticky rice!

and with roasted pork 

To me, two things that I don't like for savory sticky rice are pâté and salted ground peanut (muối đậu), I feel it's not right for this dish! But thousand people, thousand taste! Talking about this, I remember another special dish originated from the North - filled sticky rice "khúc" (name comes from the leave that they use during cooking process), I said "filled" because it's like cake with filling (green bean, egg, pork, black pepper...). Another popular sticky rice from Hà Nội is "xôi xéo", I didn't see it in Sài gòn, I don't know why they call "xéo", but sounds very funny to me (because in the South when we say "xéo", it means "go away" negatively! I'm sure "xôi xéo" doesn't mean that at all!)  

Xôi khúc - sticky rice "Khúc" with filling! 

I rarely buy savory sticky rice, I prefer to prepare it at home, so I can play with my imagination, add something new or new preparation process! As rice, sticky rice is our food culture, that's why two most traditional cakes for our Lunar New Year (each family should have it!) both made of sticky rice: bánh chưng (in the North) and bánh tét (in the South)! Nowadays we can buy these two cakes at any time, the feeling to wait until New Year time to taste this special cake has regretfully gone!

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