Taste of Homeland: Eating Sweet Potatoes and Gossiping About Old Stories

You are a teacher in Que Son (Da Nang), one day you sent out a dish of sweet potato chips. You said that now in the countryside, many cooperatives, production and business households, startups... have chosen sweet potato chips as an OCOP product, sending them to be sold in supermarkets and convenience stores across the country, sometimes even abroad.

A rustic dish, for the poor in the past, now thanks to the new countryside, "one step up in life".

Remember, in the midlands of Quang Nam such as Thang Binh, Que Son, Hiep Duc... in the past, in addition to rice, cassava, peanuts..., an indispensable agricultural product was potatoes. In particular, Tra Doa potatoes in the eastern region of Thang Binh have entered the subconscious of the people with the songs: " Quang Nam has Phu Bong silk/ Tra Doa potatoes, Thu Bon river", "First is Viet An girl/ Second is Tra Doa sweet potato"...

Sweet potatoes are rubbed with jackfruit leaves and guava leaves from the home garden, fragrant with memories.

Photo: Anh Quan

Sweet potatoes, a "famine-relief" agricultural product that makes people choke and feel sick all the time, are processed by the people of Quang into many dishes to change the taste: in addition to boiled potatoes, baked potatoes, and sweet potatoes, which are stored as long-term food, people also make dried potatoes, bamboo shoot potatoes, soft sweet potatoes, and sweet potato chips. Dried sweet potatoes are fresh sweet potatoes cut into slices and dried, bamboo shoot potatoes are cut into square pieces and dried, soft sweet potatoes are yellow-fleshed sweet potatoes that are cooked, sliced, and dried in the sun for a few days, and fresh sweet potatoes are cooked and then rubbed on a basket into small round grains, dried, and called sweet potato chips. The fine grains are for eating, the large grains with shells are used to feed livestock and poultry... The best sweet potato chips are made from the soft, crumbly Trui Sa variety.

There are five or seven ways to eat sweet potato, depending on the economic conditions of each family. Poor families take sweet potato out into a bowl, pour in warm water, called "sú", wait for it to expand, add a little salt or fish sauce and eat. Or dry sweet potato mixed with salt, scooped with a spoon or jackfruit leaf and eat. Families with better conditions mix dry sweet potato with sugar - such as crushed sugar, liquid sugar, granulated sugar..., or with crushed roasted peanuts and a little salt. Sweet potato eaten this way has a very delicious aroma!

Nowadays, people mix sweet potatoes with powdered sugar, caramelized sugar, mold them into cakes, put them in boxes to sell in markets, supermarkets or "export" them through "unofficial" channels for people far from home to enjoy the taste of their homeland...

Eat to "gossip" about the poor childhood days, that's all it takes all day...

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/huong-vi-que-huong-an-khoai-cha-tam-chuyen-cu-185250705234459716.htm