Snails..hmm yeah snails

This snail dish is one of the most favourite snack of all time, apply to everyone in Vietnam. It is just a normal, cheap dish but somehow I find it really sophisticated in the way they cook the snail and mix the sauce.
There are so many kind of snail, big ones, small ones, twisting ones... And you can find snail vendor everywhere. Fancy restaurants cook it the fancy way, wrap in ginger leaves, steam with herbs. But the strong smell of herbs can not defeat the smell the snail, a special tasteless kind of smell. However, most people enjoy eating Ốc luộc on the street, sitting on the pavement one summer evening, with friends, family, just simple like that, as simple as the dish itself.
The art is in the cleaning process. The snails need to be clean, soak in rice water (some people put chilly in the water), then cold water, then wash as if you're washing pebbles. Snails are cooked with lime leaves or graphfruit leaves with a right amount of water.
The sauce is also the art of Ốc luộc. Only a very few places can mix the sauce well. It should be the expensive fish sauce, add a little bit of Ajinomoto, white vinegar, water, sugar, a lot of ginger and little bit of lime leaves. Sometimes, according to taste, people add chilly paste, and squeeze a kum-quat in. The art of the dish is here, in the sauce.