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

Hoàng Lan

Tiền Giang, is a culinary paradise for foodies, not only for its attractive and tasty dish such as Mỹ Tho pork and shrimp noodle soup (hủ tiếu), but also snakehead porridge with wild bitter vegetables (locally known as cháo cá lóc rau đắng).

A local elderly chef, Hồ Văn Khởi, 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, cháo cá lóc rau đắng is easy to make even though once tasted it is an unforgettable dish, said Khởi. However, he added that the base ingredient, a standard bowl of porridge, requires certain skills and experience.

Tiền Giang’s snakehead porridge lures interests of foodies. — Photo mia.vn

Khởi 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 cháo cá lóc rau đắng 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 Khởi, 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.

Almost all visitors to Tiền Giang say they try snakehead porridge with wild bitter vegetables (locally known as cháo cá lóc rau đắng) when visiting the province. — Photo mia.vn

He told Việt Nam News on how to cook the dish:

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,” Khởi said, 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, Khởi said.

Ingredients of the dish include field snakehead, rice porridge and forest vegetables. — Photo thuhugo.93

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.

Khởi also told Việt Nam News how to best enjoy the dish:

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.

Natural field snakehead is sweeter and more fragrant compared with raised snakehead. — Photo chotong.net

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

Herbalist Bùi Văn Thành 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,” Thành said. — VNS