Visiting the lush area around Can Tho in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, people look forward to local delicacies such as freshwater crab hotpot, deep fried giant gourami, lobsters steamed in beer and braised snakehead fish. Wherever they go, visitors will discover rustic delicacies.
The sauces in this region are both cheap and delicious. This area is known for a wide variety of sauces, including sand-bubbler crab sauce, snakehead fish sauce, leaf-fish sauce and linh fish sauce. All are made using fermented seafood, salt and some spices such as garlic, chili, sugar and pepper. Long ago, the settlers who came to this wild region needed to preserve their food by drying or salting it. Over the centuries, sauce-making techniques grew increasingly sophisticated. There is little more tempting than the sight of a glistening amber snakehead fish served with vegetables, vermicelli, chili and green peppers. Once eaten by the poor, sauces are now popular in every family . In the tidal seasons, swarms of linh fish from Cambodia’s Tonle Sap flood the Cuu Long Rivers. Sauce-makers welcome a new season of producing linh fish sauce, which is a key ingredient for sauce hotpots served with herbs and water lily stalks.
Western Vietnam abounds with seafood and other wild creatures, such as snakes, turtles and crocodiles. Most of these animals are now raised in farms and sold for exotic meat. Unique delicacies include rainbow water snakes, benign, sluggish reptiles that live near canals and are featured in many western dishes. Field mice, which live in the fields and eat rice, are also common. Snakes are often cooked with coconut juice while the field mice are marinated in herbs and sauteed. While many visitors balk at the idea of eating field mice, once they try this dish, they usually agree that it tastes remarkably similar to chicken. Even more exotic are duong worms, a species of fat worms that reside in coconut trunks and Palmyra palms. These worms are a delicacy in southern Vietnam. Duong worms are hard to come by since they can only be obtained when people cut down old coconut trees or Palmyra palms. A dish of duong worms fried in butter is a memorable treat for visitors to this area.
[caption id=”attachment_1357″ align=”aligncenter” width=”500″> 
In this fertile area, many foods are sourced from forests. In the Can Gio and Rung Sac mangrove forests near Ho Chi Minh City, tour guides always introduce visitors to sour lien kim salad made with three-striped crabs. Restaurants in Can Tho and Dong Thap often serve nimtree salad mixed with dried snakehead fish. Nimtrees are in the mahogany family. Nimtree shoots are washed and mixed with dried snakehead fish, sauce, tamarind, sugar, chili and garlic to create a bitter salad. This is an acquired taste, since it is very bitter.
It’s a great pleasure to sit in a. restaurant by the Frontal or Rear River overlooking the water while enjoying local delicacies like honey tea and sweet coconut candies, or crab and prawn hotpot served with dozens of herbs. Trees and herbs plucked from gardens and fields such as baby banana trunks, common knotgrasses, sour leaves, algae, sesbaniasesban flowers, water lilies and pumpkin flowers are all thrown into the hotpot. Each season, this green region yields new ingredients that will captivate visitors’ taste buds.
By Thai A
First on VietnamCP
VIETNAM"s Wild West
First post at: Vietnam Culture
No comments:
Post a Comment