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A<\/span><\/span>jar of \u1edat T\u01b0\u01a1ng Tri\u1ec1u Ph\u00e1t, the iconic chile sauce, lives on nearly every table in Vietnam, especially in the country\u2019s south. This hot sauce is not all brute force. It\u2019s a delicate sauce, one that simmers rather than boils, equipped with a slow-burning heat that rumbles to a fervent coda on the back of the tongue. Vietnamese food, with its cilantro, galangal, and mint, requires a sauce with backbone that won\u2019t railroad less bullish flavors. In this regard, \u1edat T\u01b0\u01a1ng Tri\u1ec1u Ph\u00e1t is an exercise in precision, subtlety, and restraint.<\/p>\n My own relationship with the famed hot stuff began in 2016, when I landed in H\u1ed9i An<\/a>, where the banh mi<\/a> sandwich came to prominence in the 1950s. Seated at a banquet table during an interactive food tour, I spied a bounty of cylindrical bottles adorned with lemon yellow labels, black caps, green print, and images of two red chile peppers, front and center. The bottles extended as far as my eye could see. My tour guide, Neville Dean \u2014 who started his company the Original Taste of H\u1ed9i An<\/a> with his wife, Colleen, roughly a decade ago \u2014 told us to open the sauce. An assault of umami, heat, and a surprising earthiness followed. Suspended in a vibrant red oil, the chunky sauce emerges as if from a molten pile of peppers. It required my attention, but didn\u2019t burn my face off in the process. Give it a stir as a last-minute emulsifier and spoon it on. I ate it, first, on tooth-shatteringly crispy Vietnamese spring rolls. Sublime.<\/p>\n Unlike the Thai Sriracha<\/a>, with which Americans are now more than familiar, \u1edat T\u01b0\u01a1ng Tri\u1ec1u Ph\u00e1t is neither smooth nor particularly acidic. It more closely resembles a jam than a sauce in consistency, and that texture is part of its appeal. Made by the same family for generations, H\u1ed9i An chile sauce has a firm hold in Vietnam, particularly in H\u1ed9i An. The sauce is the provenance of Tran Van Can, otherwise known as \u201cMs. Van.\u201d She follows a 150-year-old recipe passed down through her Chinese expatriate family. \u201cMy grandmother used to make chutney and satay\u2026 to give to relatives to eat,\u201d Ms. Van says. \u201cMany people asked to buy it, and she started to sell from there. She made chutneys from fresh chile peppers, carefully cooked to form a spicy, aromatic spice, which makes everyone remember and taste it forever.\u201d<\/p>\n The inherited sauce involves elephant tusk chiles \u2014 Ms. Van refers to them as \u201c\u1edbt ch\u00eca v\u00f4i,\u201d or \u201cpeppers with lime\u201d \u2014 a large pot, and time; the process takes three days. Ms. Van watches her chiles vigilantly, stirring them into submission. \u201cAll chile sauce processing is done manually,\u201d she says. \u201cIs our chile [sauce] art? I think the raw material of the chile is also important.\u201d In Southeast Asia, elephant tusk chiles are also known as elephant trunk, or cow horn, chiles, owing to their shape. Part of the capsicum annum <\/em>species, these peppers originally hailed from India and Central and South America. After selecting her fresh chiles, Ms. Van removes the stalks and seeds, grinds the chiles, and stir-fries them. Batches are produced every two days and are all made entirely by hand.<\/p>\n \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t eat them raw on their own,\u201d says Siem Reap-based food and travel writer Lara Dunston<\/a> of the peppers. \u201cBut cook them up and they\u2019re medium-to-hot, depending on your tolerance. They\u2019re a little sweet and fruity, but simmer them over a long period of time, as Ms. Van does, and the fruitiness and sweetness is more pronounced, as is the heat.\u201d \u00a0Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ajar of \u1edat T\u01b0\u01a1ng Tri\u1ec1u Ph\u00e1t, the iconic chile sauce, lives on nearly every table in Vietnam, especially in the country\u2019s south. This hot sauce is not all brute force. It\u2019s a delicate sauce, one that simmers rather than boils, equipped with a slow-burning heat that rumbles to a fervent coda on the back of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5,3,25],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jimmyschmidt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/F7E0B551-D191-447A-807C-23D2C3EF7D95.jpeg?fit=2320%2C1305&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p82DZ0-AT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimmyschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimmyschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimmyschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimmyschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimmyschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jimmyschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2289,"href":"https:\/\/jimmyschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2287\/revisions\/2289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimmyschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimmyschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimmyschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimmyschmidt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/thumbor\/imF0bXup6LB-UiD5NXQ1xDuC5mk=\/0x0:2832x4256\/320x0\/filters:focal(0x0:2832x4256):format(webp):no_upscale()\/cdn.vox-cdn.com\/uploads\/chorus_asset\/file\/19698883\/Hoi_An_CAM6993__2_.jpg)
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