Tien Giang’s snakehead porridge with bitter vegetables, a regional specialty

The Mekong Delta province of Tien Giang is a culinary paradise for foodies, not only for its attractive and tasty dish such as My Tho pork and shrimp noodle soup (hu tieu), but also snakehead porridge with wild bitter vegetables (locally known as chao ca loc rau dang).

A local elderly chef, Ho Van Khoi, said the dish has been cooked for family meals, in shops and inns for hundreds of years.

Different from other specialties, which need elaborate and experienced cooks, chao ca loc rau dang is easy to make even though once tasted it is an unforgettable dish, said Khoi. However, he added that the base ingredient, a standard bowl of porridge, requires certain skills and experience.

Khoi said in contrast with other porridges such as chicken porridge or minced pork porridge, for which rice has to be only cleaned before cooking and then boiled, for chao ca loc rau dang rice has to be continuously roasted and stirred before cooking.

“I often choose new rice, with sweetness and a fragrance and roast it until it becomes a yellow colour, with an attractive scent flying out of the pan,” he said.

The dish needs at least a kilo of field snakehead and because this kind of big fish has less bone, it is easy to peel and fillet to get its meat, said Khoi, adding that in the southwestern region the fish can be found in rivers and canal, so it’s easy to get a catch and to create the dish.

About how to cook the dish, he said: "First clean the fish very carefully, removing all the scales and bones and then cover it with salt to release its fishy smell.

“All the fish innards are kept to be cooked because it is the tastiest part of the fish and together with wild bitter vegetables this is what creates a unique dish,” Khoi added, noting that some chefs often poach it with a little of ginger, salt and broth mix to make the fish soup less bitte.

After poaching in boiling water, the fish needs to be plated and only put it in the pot when rice porridge is well cooked, so as to prevent it from being broken into too small pieces, he said.

His secret is to use purified water to poach the fish. After it is boiled, put the roasted rice into the pot over medium fire until it is well cooked then add salt, broth mix, a little sugar and quality fish sauce.

There are two ways to eat the dish, the first is to mix the boiled fish meat pieces into the porridge and enjoy it, while the second is to order a plate of fish meat which is topped with poached green onion and herbs separately and take a piece of the fish, dip it in a bowl of mixed sauce, take a slurp of porridge which is already mixed with cut wild bitter vegetables.

The dish is more enjoyable when dipping the fish meat in special sauce made of shrimp paste mixed with sugar, lemon, chilli, garlic and broth mix, he said.

It is an excellent tasty dish because the aromas from the porridge mix with the bittersweet flavor from the vegetables, special characteristics which have created a savoury meal and full of taste, said Khoi.

Herbalist Bui Van Thanh said the dish also has great nutritional value, if eating while the weather is hot, it helps to release chesty coughs and will help weak patients quickly recover their strength.

“Many southwestern overseas Vietnamese told me that living far from homeland, they missed the dish so much, particularly during rainy days,” Thanh said.