Vinh Son village has a tradition of raising snake with a very long history that no one knows. The elders at the age of 80 – 90 said: at first people took snakes to sell to the wine drinkers; they put the snakes into tanks and wait to sell them. After seeing that the female snake laid eggs so they kept raising them; then it became the hereditary career. Then the whole village imitated each other and turned into the craft village.
In 1978, Vinh Son built a snake-raising center to conserve the local snake breeds and provided it to the needy. The hatchery was built with a scale of snakes raising, snakes hatching, and snake product processing. ... Provided many snakes for other places. Many solid products have been processed to foster health, cure rheumatism, sciatica; in some cases, the pain came to the cuffs and had to be on crutches, and drinking alcohol with five bars was also completely healed. Solid bile is generally very good at treating asthma; especially cobra can cure early stage cancer.
In snake meat, there are up to 30 trace elements, 80% protein, very nutritious, invigorating for everyone, especially the elderly. Someone after eating snake meat feels refresher and stronger. Cobra meat has a slightly fishy taste but is very popular with many people.
Skilled people in Vinh Son snake village often make snake meat as follows:
First, catch the snake, tie the neck, hang it on a high point. Take a sharp knife cut across, just below the neckline. Measure from the neck cut down to the tail pointed three parts, extract the knife at the point 1/3 above, expose the solid heart, you will see two rays: one purple and one pink. Cut the rose and put it into a glass of fresh coconut water (the properties of fresh coconut water make the blood not fishy and not frozen, it will not freeze for a few days); without coconut water, it's fine to use white wine. After that, take a sharp knife and then operate it down to the tail, taking all the heart, liver and bile, leaving the heart and then peeling skin. After peeling off the skin, take the tissue paper to dry the snake, break it out and then use a sharp cut to cut all the flesh on both sides of the spine. All details of the snake have been processed; only skin and tail (skin healing) continue to be processed: put the skin on habit, pour water, use a strong brush to remove the outer layer of paper skin and then wash it to finish the preparation step, move on to processing of dishes. Slaughtering snakes is tricky, but t cooking is not difficult.
A snake of five grams can give us more than ten dishes:
- Blood and bile: The treated blood can be taken immediately or for other dishes; but should not be saved for long. Bile should be swallowed fresh immediately after surgery.
- Heart and liver: Clean and cook with onion and spicy vegetables
- Stir-fry soft snake skin: The snake skin is cleaned, cut into pieces, seasoned (fish sauce, salt, onion, pepper ...). Heat up the oil, pour snake skin on and cook.
- Fry snake skin: Cut into pieces 5-7cm long. Put oil in the pan, boil it, pour the snake skin into the frying, when you see the yellowish color, and let it cool. Then fry it.
- Steamed or simmered snake meat: Solid meat is cut to the largest chunk, seasoned with spices and then steamed. The same piece of meat can be simmered with sugar cane juice.
- Fry ribs: Filter the ribs along the length of the meat, cut into pieces and then fry them, eat crispy, fatty like shrimp crackers.
- Snake meatball: Snake meat mixed with spicy vegetables, make small balls and then fry or cut square meat, marinated ginger and spices and then grilled, eat like dried beef.
- Stir-fry snake-meat: Slice meat 4cm long, seasoned with salt and pepper sauce, dried, sliced onions and then fry like a beef.
- Stewed snake meat: Snake meat cut into pieces (to do this, do not need to peel skin) put in a low-heat stew. When the meat starts to ripen, add some sugar, delicious fish sauce, and pepper; just chewed the whole piece, just feeling the sweetness of the meat, the sweetness of the bones, the sweetness of the skin, all three flavors mixed together, indescribably delicious.
- Snake porridge: Also this stewed snake meat pot, add rice, green beans to the cellar together will be a pot of solid porridge, delicious and nutritious, especially for the elderly, people who have just recovered from sickness.
Collected by Vinh Phuc Portal
