Are you bored with grease, complicated, fussy dishes? Don’t hesitate to sail along the Mekong Delta to discover many amazingly different dishes which are light, simple yet quite impressive!
Trai Quach – (wood apple) in Mekong delta
wood apple in Mekong delta -source: internet
Normally, a wood apple tree at the age of seven-year-old quach tree will start producing fruit, which resembles a gray plastic ball, with numerous tiny dots on it. When maturing, trai quach spreads a faint aroma, which is still enough to attract and fascinate people even though not as strong as trai thi. Indochina travel services
Place to eat: Cau Ke District, Tra Vinh
Noodle made from sliced flour
Noodle made from sliced flour -source: internet
Made from rice flour with soup carefully cooked with duck meat and served with ginger fish sauce, noodle made from sliced flour is a truly specialty of the western area of Vietnam. People will use rice flour, mold according to each person’s own recipe and then slice them into pieces is the reason why this dish is named “sliced flour” noodle.
Place to eat: Ben Tre
Grilled larva (đuông dừa)
Available in Mekong Delta, especially in Ben Tre, “Đuông”, which are the larva of beetles, often living in the inside top soft part of areca species trees, are keen on eating the cotyledons inside the top of coconut tree.
Grilled larvae -source: internet
After mating season each year, the beetles select a strong coconut tree, carve a hole and lay eggs. Larvae are incubated from those eggs, live inside the top of coconut tree and devour the inside. Normally, in each coconut trees, there are about 100 larvae, which will gradually make the tree die. To find the larvae, the owner has to chop the body of coconut tree. Each larva is as sizable as a thumb of human being.
Although previously đuông is a popular dish; now, it has become rarer, more valuable and expensive as the number of đuông has significantly decreased.
Clamped by two bars of bamboo, the larvae will be grilled on firing coal with continual turning up and down until all the larvae are well cooked. Then, the cook will unfasten the bars and place larvae on a plate. To make fish sauce, take a tamarind and bury it in the firing coal to make it cooked before peeling the covering of tamarind, putting it in a bowl and pouring in some sugar, monosodium glutamate and of course, fish sauce. Enjoy the grilled with the ready tamarind fish sauce mixture.
Duong dua deep in fish sauce -source: internet
Normally, grilled larvae are enjoyed with chili, cabbage, lettuce, cabbage, balm-mint and basil. Use vegetable to cover a grilled larva and enjoy with delicious tamarind fish sauce. With only one bite, gourmets can enjoy fragrance of grilled larvae, sweetness of vegetable, the pungency of chili and sourness of tamarind fish sauce. Enjoy it with some alcohol or soft wine. Laos travel tours
Larvae have another way of cooking. Buried in fish sauce for a while before being covered with wheat flour and deep fried, these larvae are eaten with tomato and lettuce.
Place to eat: Ben Tre
Stir-fried gecko
What to eat in the Mekong Delta -source: internet
The stir-fried gecko with little or even no water, which perhaps a tough dish for many others, is still a popular dish amongst local people. The bodies of geckos are chopped into small pieces and then mixed with pimpinella anisum and illicium verum. Marinate these gecko pieces with these two spices for around half an hour. After that, the cook will heat the pan and pour in some cooking oil, wait until the oil is hot, fry sliced onion and garlic.
Place to eat: Dong Thap, Ha Tien, Kien Giang, Long Xuyen.
See more:
- WHY STICKY RICE IS THE TRADITIONAL CUISINE OF LAOS
- VIENTIANE TO LUANG PRABANG FLIGHT
- VISITING BUDDHA STATUES IN LUANG PRABANG
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