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The Mekong Delta during the floating season, oh how I miss the time I was a student internship. Back then, I stayed with a local family in Dong Thap. In that family, there was a girl who was the same age as me but did not go to school. She stayed at home to take care of her mother, did housework, and went to the market to buy and sell some local products. She had a warm smile and a radiant glow, like the girls in the countryside of the Mekong Delta.
In her house, I enjoyed eating crispy duck pancakes and going to the floating market on the river and tasting different types of delicious cana.
Talking about crispy duck pancakes, ducks that roam freely in the Mekong Delta have lean and flavorful meat due to their diet of fallen rice and earthworms in the garden. When there are guests at home, the duck is prepared in two dishes. The first dish is cabbage salad, and then the remaining meat is finely chopped and used to fill the pancakes. The Mekong Delta has abundant vegetables and fruits, so the pancakes are elevated with a variety of fresh greens dipped in sweet and sour fish sauce, truly delightful.
Although cana fruit is rustic, it has become a part of local folk songs:
“What a rural land it is
Visiting grandparents, bringing enough cana”
The cana tree bears fruit only when the flood season arrives. Due to its low economic productivity, local people only use it for personal consumption rather than widespread cultivation. When there is a surplus, they bring it to the market, but the price is very cheap, mainly for sharing its colorful flowers.
However, for a female student like me, cana is a culinary paradise with its unique sour and slightly bitter taste.
You invited me to go picking cana, and we collected a large basket in the morning. I was eager to eat it right away, so I picked some fresh fruits and rubbed them against my shirt without washing them, then dipped them in chili salt. It was tangy and sour, but incredibly delicious. I only managed to eat a few cana fruits in a breath. What to do with the rest of the fruits? There was no refrigerator in the house. You laughed kindly and said, “Don’t worry, there are still many other dishes to discover.”
We washed the picked fruits, drained them, and prepared two dishes: smashed cana and cana jam. My only task was to prep them because I had no experience in cooking. With a small knife, I cut off the stems, made a few incisions on the fruit’s body to allow the seasoning to penetrate. For the smashed cana dish, you mixed it with a mixture of fish sauce, chili, and sugar, then put it in a jar. For the jam, you soaked it with sugar, a pinch of salt, and chili, but mostly sugar, that’s all I saw, I didn’t know what else was added. After a few hours, the sugar and cana absorbed into a smooth mixture, and I couldn’t resist trying a few fruits. They were really delicious, tangy and sweet, fibrous, truly a favorite dish for girls.
The next day, I enjoyed the smashed cana dish. This dish was delicious in a different way, similar to eating green mango with fish sauce in the city but even tastier. At that time, I ate cana as a replacement for rice and still couldn’t get enough.
Standing hesitantly by the cana basket at the market, I missed you so much, and missed the taste of cana from the past. I also bought a few kilograms to try making it myself, but I didn’t know if I could capture the soul and flavor of the old cana dish.
Du Miên
>> Frustration with the ‘floating season’
>> Field eels in the floating season
>> ‘Unique’ market in the floating season
>> Specialties of the floating season
>> Making a living in the floating season
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