Hà Giang Province

Traditional H'Mông stew of horse or buffalo offal simmered for hours with spices in a communal cauldron - pungent, rich, and deeply warming, eaten at highland Sunday markets with corn wine

Steamed corn flour crumbles - the staple food of H'Mông families for centuries, eaten plain or with vegetable soup, with a slightly sweet, nutty taste unique to the highland corn varieties grown here

Rice porridge cooked with ấu tẩu - a toxic highland tuber that must be boiled repeatedly to neutralise - producing a thick, slightly numbing broth that H'Mông people drink to warm up on cold mountain nights

River moss wrapped around lemongrass and wild herbs then grilled over charcoal until crispy - a Tày and H'Mông delicacy harvested from clean mountain streams, with an earthy, mineral flavour unlike any vegetable dish in the lowlands

Five-colour sticky rice coloured naturally with forest leaves and flowers - red, yellow, green, purple, and white - steamed in bamboo baskets by Tày women for festivals and market days, as beautiful to look at as it is to eat

Steamed rice rolls from Đồng Văn ancient town - thinner and more delicate than the lowland version, filled with pork and wood-ear mushroom and served with a tangy dipping sauce, eaten at tiny stalls inside the old stone quarter

Small free-range pig roasted whole over wood fire - so called because farmers carry the tiny pigs under their arms to market, the meat is lean, clean, and intensely flavourful

Buffalo meat dried and smoked above the hearth for weeks - deeply chewy and intensely smoky, seasoned with mắc khén and wild ginger, torn by hand and eaten with sticky rice or corn wine at H'Mông homestays along the loop