SOC TRANG – Back to Cu Lao Dung at the end of Hau River, visitors can enjoy many rustic dishes from flowers and willow fruits.
The cork tree was given the beautiful name “water willow” by King Gia Long because the appearance of both the tree and the flower is very elegant. The tree leans over to reflect the water; The flowers are delicate and delicate, white with a touch of purple and pink, when falling like a white silk carpet covering a water area, they have the merit of saving the king from hunger.
But Westerners are still used to calling this cork tree. Bamboo is a species of tree that grows naturally on the banks of rivers and canals in the West, helping to keep the alluvial soil, a familiar image of people in the river area like a village bamboo rampart for people in the North and Central region.
Coriander is often processed by Westerners into a variety of rustic dishes such as cork flowers mixed with pork, silver shrimp, and choke fish. Coriander fruit can be eaten raw and dipped with fish sauces made from seafood. Ripe coriander fruit is used to cook sour soup, braised fish or pickled with sweet and sour fish sauce to dip sweet and sour vegetables, boiled water spinach… But in Cu Lao Dung, cork flower and guava fruit, cork plate are also dipped with fish sauce. chicken gizzard.
Cu Lao Dung gizzard fish is not expensive, is caught in the bottom from June to September of the lunar calendar every year, looks strange because of its yellow-orange color, the head is iridescent like ornamental fish. There are many ways to make fish sauce, the Chinese keep the fish with salt, the Khmer keep salted or marinated with jaggery, and the Vietnamese add sour salt and chicken gizzard fish sauce also follow this sweet and sour secret.
Sitting on the boat surfing to the sea mouth to catch the sunset and while the sun is about to shine in the golden afternoon before sunset, stop at the old cork beach to pick young cork fruits and flowers that have just bloomed, neither bud nor full bloom. , bring to the kitchen, wash, the fruit is thinly sliced, the flowers are small and then dipped in chicken gizzard sauce.
The slice of cork fruit is sour and acrid, the bitter and sweet flower of the coriander is sweet with a small piece of yellow fish sauce, which is sweet and sour, and stings the tip of the tongue. One piece or many pieces sipped with wine or eaten with rice, it seemed that all the flavors of the countryside with the atmosphere of the wild times rushed back.
Cu Lao Dung is the easternmost district of Soc Trang province, located at the end of the Hau River, with two estuaries Dinh An and Tran De pouring into the East Sea in nine estuaries of the Mekong River. The island is gifted with many things by nature: 25,000 hectares of alluvial soil, rich seafood, and a hundred-year-old natural cork forest. The tree species choose a landslide along the riverside, alluvial soil to grow to keep the soil, now blooms in the rainy season to fall into the white river.
Visitors can travel by road 47 km along the South Song Hau national highway from Can Tho city or go from Soc Trang city center about 20 km along Highway 60 to Cu Lao Dung. But more specifically, choose a 20-minute ferry ride from Tra Vinh through a tributary of the Hau River to discover Cu Lao Dung, boating through canals to see cork flowers in bloom. Follow vnexpress