Diners can choose from a variety of savory dishes with white porridge, pineapple porridge or bean porridge … priced from 10,000 VND.
More than 23:00, the night market of Long Xuyen (An Giang) is still lit with carts. Here, most of them are cars with the word “pineapple porridge” as if they wanted to promote the best-selling porridge. Not only An Giang, western provinces such as Tien Giang, Dong Thap, An Giang, Tra Vinh, Can Tho, Bac Lieu also popularize this rustic dish.
Unlike porridge with names associated with ingredients that are cooked with meat such as fish porridge, heart porridge, rib porridge … this country has white porridge, pineapple porridge (sticky leaves), bean porridge (including red beans, black beans).
Hearing the name of the porridge seems sketchy, many diners miss the Western buffet specialty. Because eating with white porridge is a long list of salty foods to separate as a “buffet” counter: from lean meat with pepper, roasted shrimp, braised fish, braised goby fish, braised anchovies, dried fish, dried snakehead fish … to salted duck eggs, braised duck eggs, herbal eggs, pickled fish sauce, watermelon (pickled radish), cotton rub. Diners choose one or more side dishes.
Locals cook porridge from whole-grain rice, add pineapple leaves to create green color and flavor, cook with black beans, red beans to add more flavor. Porridge is not thick and lumpy, so that when scooped up, it still sticks together.
Pineapple leaves, after being washed, crushed and squeezed to get water, poured into white porridge and cooked together. To create turquoise color, not bad or patchy, depends on the recipes of the cook. To make the porridge fragrant, the cook adds a handful of fresh pandan leaves to the pot, and simmers until the rice seeds bloom, then pick them out. In particular, the cook does not season with fish sauce, salt or pepper, including vegetables such as onions, cilantro, bean sprouts … To enhance the deliciousness of the dish, coconut milk is the only spice used. Coconut milk is condensed, added sugar and a little salt, let cool.
Diners pour a cup of coconut milk on a bowl of hot porridge, stirring with a spoon. Someone slowly scooped up each spoonful of porridge, used chopsticks to pick up each piece of salty food on the spoon, then ate. Someone poured all the dishes together into the bowl, sagging quickly, as if everything would cool.
The owner of Quynh Anh porridge for 10 years sells this specialty at Long Xuyen night market, often serving his own cup of coconut milk, not pre-mixed like the way Western restaurants do. “Many skeptical customers make the restaurant mistakenly serving a cup of coconut milk. Most of them wonder why they eat sweet foods with savory dishes. After I confirm not mistakenly, and customers see locals eating, they hesitate try, “said the shopkeeper.
On the table of diners, around the porridge bowl are small dishes or dishes containing food, one dish each. Porridge charged according to bowl, food with plate, eggs charged by fruit.
Normally, a bowl of porridge costs 10,000 – 20,000 VND to eat with any salty dish, if you use more salty dishes, you will add 5,000 – 10,000 VND per plate. To eat, each diners can use up to 30,000 – 60,000 VND a portion. Depending on the side dishes, diners can either be vegetarian or savory.
This dish also follows Western people who have entered the culinary paradise of Saigon for a long time. Diners can identify the place of sale through the words “white porridge, pineapple porridge, red bean porridge”. Porridge is usually sold in glass carts or small shops when it gets dark until late at night, such as a porridge shop at Hang Xanh intersection .
vnexpress