Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Makingsauces to accompany food is a challenge for any chef and the world of saucescan be a jungle that novice cooks falter in. 

Vietnamesedipping sauces could be categorised into a mixture of salt-based, fish sauce orsoy sauce-based and more sophisticated sauces like gravy that must be simmeredfor a long time and blended to make a fine dipping mixture. 

Thebasic family dipping sauce that most people learn first is to add sugar andlemon to fish sauce for summer boiled morning glory dipping. To alter the souringredients, you can replace with boiled dracontomelon, or tamarind. 

Theboiled morning glory must be dipped in mixed fish sauce or whole bean soypaste. The best soy paste comes from Ban Village in Hung Yen province, some60km east of Hanoi. 

Boiledpork belly slices can be dipped in normal fish sauce. But to enhance theflavour, they must be dipped in shrimp paste, with sugar and lemon orkumquat juice. The shrimp paste exudes a strong smell, but if you have itin an open space, like a garden or patio or the chilly weather of winter, thegood flavour shall be enhanced and the odour reduced.
 
Duringa meal, with shrimp paste dipping sauce sits on the table, all other saucespale in comparison next to the imposing presence and commanding taste ofthe shrimp paste flavour. 

Ina bigger meal where you have many dishes with accompanying sauces, dip thingsin the shrimp paste last, because, after that, you won't want to try otherdishes.
Thingsto be dipped in shrimp paste vary from fresh or fried tofu, boiled pork orvegetables with herbs and cucumber. But the most famous dish that goes withshrimp paste is cha ca, or Hanoi style grilled fish. 

Theshrimp paste can be used with most popular northern dishes, but some of thebest paste comes from the central coastal province of Thanh Hoa. 

ThanhHoa has also its own delicacy of cheo,made from the skin and bones and fins of fresh fish. The fresh fish, or goi ca, is the province's answer to theworld-famous sashimi of Japan. While the lean fillet gets cut into thinslices, the skins and bones must be cooked on a low flame, simmered for severalhours with curcumin, galangal and seasoned to taste. It then gets blended tomake a smooth gravy. 

Whenserved, you need to make a funnel with a green leaf, add a spoonful of sauce,then a red slice of hot chilli and a slice of fresh fish fillet toppedwith another fragrant herb.

FromThanh Hoa down to the south, the coastal fishing communities make their ownsignature fish and shrimp sauces. 

Themarshland and swamps of Hue provide six different kinds of sauces, but the mostfamous are anchovy sauce, tiny shrimp sauce and sour big shrimp sauce. 

Thesesauces all go with boiled pork with lots of different fresh herbs and greenfruit pickles marinated in the sauces. 

Thesour shrimp sauce has become so popular that many now think it originates fromHue, but in fact, Queen Tu Du, mother of King Tu Duc (1829-1883), and thesauce were from the land of Go Cong in the south near the Tien Giang River. Thequeen missed her home food so much, she ordered that the finely sieved shrimpmeat from her hometown be transported to Hue.
 
Shethen created the sour shrimp sauce from the locally caught shrimps of Tam Gianglagoon.

QuangNam province also has its own variety of fish sauces. Anchovy pickles are mostfamous and they can be had with fresh noodles in bunmam or rice crackers with fresh pancakes dipped in the saucewith fresh herbs and sour and acrid fresh fruit slices.

Thesymphony of fish sauce must be the Mekong Delta hotpot, where a mixture ofdifferent marinated sauces made from three types of fish are sieved to omit thebones.

The stock is then cooked into the most flavourful hotpot you canimagine. Fresh vegetables, young bananas, lily buds, bitter gourds and bittervegetables as well as assorted meats and seafood get dipped and cooked in theslotted ladle. 

Thisdelicacy has travelled north to become beloved in the restaurants in and aroundHanoi.
 
Truly,the art and craft of making marinated aqua products make a culinary quest inand around Vietnam so exciting and full of surprises./.