Nhum sauce – Special foods of Con Dao Island

Con Dao is not only famous for jam of terminalia catappa’s seed,moon crab or her breast snail but also noted about a kind of fish sauce which was called Nhum sauce, a noble sauce.

Nhum is a kind of sea urchin which hasa normal size. Not much meat in a nhum individual and no easy to catch nhum, but it is used to create anattractive red sauce. When using boiled dishes or rice paper roll with nhum sauce, you can easy to recognize the sweetness of nhum meatmelted in your mouth with a little salty taste of thesea, somewhatsour and greasy taste.

It is not easy to catch nhum. The way to cook it is also sophisticated. To makeveritableopaque red and aromatic sauce bottle, they must put cleaned nhum meat into the jar or stoneware pot. Then sprinkle more salt on the surface. The jar after sealed will be buried under ashor dried in the sun about 20 days.

After that, it is time for enjoying. Perhaps, they only need a bowl of nhum sauce and some steam of boiled vegetable to keep a strong attachment to the remote island all their life.

Formerly, nhum sauce is also a type of food to donate for kings by a typical delicious taste.