The restaurant’s ginger-cooked vegetable perch is now not as delicious and stimulating to the taste buds as the farmer’s cooking?

Eating the restaurant’s ginger-cooked vegetable perch is not as delicious and stimulating as the old peasant aunt’s cooking.

Our group of old friends had a fun time going to a party, in the menu there is a soup to eat rice – but which soup to choose? The whole group read the restaurant menu together and went up together: “Perch cabbage soup”.

Choosing the right dish made us very happy, because for some reason, Hanoians are becoming more and more “fastidious” in eating and drinking, which is picky, what is the scenery… The picky eater, gourmet of Hanoians, which have been gradually overshadowed in a few decades of the country’s wars and hardships, seem to be “living” again.

Ingredients for cooking cauliflower soup. Illustration.

Since Hanoi’s renovation and strong development, the family has improved, the eating habits of Hanoians “live” quickly, as if it is bad luck to eat and drink. Many people seem to be bored with Chinese food, tired of Western food, but return to traditional ethnic dishes with diverse and flavorful soups such as crab soup, mussel soup, fish soup – and the top of the list. Fish soup can be said to be perch cabbage soup.

I remember the hardships of the American bomb evacuation group, but I and many Hanoians learned a lot more about rural life, left the imprints of childhood joys with baked potatoes on the field, and picked up fallen star fruit by the shore. pond to the kitchen to dip salt…

The most impressive thing is that my sister and I stayed at aunt and uncle’s house on the banks of the Day River dyke, aunt put the hammock to lull the children to sleep singing songs about the food that quickly entered my childhood mind, and still have not forgotten it until now. :

Chicken with lemon leaves

The pig grumbled and bought me onions.

The dog cried standing and crying,

Grandma, go to the market to buy me galangal…

In particular, there is a sentence:

Ginger cooked vegetable perch

If it’s not delicious, don’t criticize it.

Growing up, I knew that the song had both literal and figurative meanings, but back then, I only knew that it was a song that reminded me of a favorite dish.

The meal with perch cooked with ginger is very delicious. Illustration.

At the beginning of summer, when the first showers appear, the perch is in its golden period. Me and the children in the countryside cheered loudly when they went to catch perch to bake with straw to eat, or cook soup to improve the evacuation meal (which was filled with cassava, corn, and noodles). Fried perch that day was just a “dream”, because that day lard was rare.

As a city girl, I’m often mocked as a princess with thorns because I’m most afraid of being stabbed by the perch’s fins – the unusually sharp and tough perch fins are easy to bleed. But I’m very sharp-eyed, doing everything I do. So while the children were busy splashing with the rain and playing, I was usually the first one to notice the crevices of the black perch, which had been washed by the rainwater from the pond, spilled onto the clay yard in front of the house… and cried out loudly. let the children rush in to catch fish, put it in a bamboo basket tied with straw around my back.

My brothers and sisters catch perch very quickly and skillfully, rarely getting stabbed by a fish’s fin – and even if they do, they don’t consider it a big deal. The whole session caught more than a dozen large and small perch brought back. My aunt emptied the basket of fish slowly so that each fish fell out, she used the handle of a knife to beat the fish, then washed and salted and clamped the fish on bamboo sticks grilled with both fins and intestines on a straw stove.

Then, she quickly peeled off the skin and scales of the fish, taking the fish meat and keeping it separate. Then my aunt asked her older cousin to pound fish bones to filter the water, add a little salt, and cook on the stove.

As for the aunt, the fruit counter took a bamboo basket to the garden, prune a bunch of big cabbage leaves in the rain, and added a ginger branch in the corner of the garden. She went back to the pond to wash both cabbage and ginger (at that time, washing rice, washing vegetables, washing dishes, bathing and washing dishes were all in the pond, just let the water be done – fortunately no one was poisoned, but now that I think about it, I panic. …).

When the pot of fish bone broth boils, when my aunt is finished cutting it, I add the vegetables and drop it in with a little salt (fish sauce is rare, so I don’t put it in the soup). The pot of boiling soup gave off a strong aroma, the aroma rose even more when the aunt dropped the smashed ginger branch.

The children, both children and grandchildren, eagerly gathered around the kitchen. My aunt added a few handfuls of noodles (provided by my parents from the city) into the soup, stirred well and then cooked – it was considered a childhood party on a rainy day in early summer.

Later, when I returned to the city, my sisters and I grew up, and my mother used to cook perch soup.

My mother taught me and my sisters to shock the fish with salt, let it sit for a while, wait for it to die, then clean the scales, cut open the fish’s belly, rub the salt and wash it. Then bring the pot of water to a boil, add a little salt and let the fish boil.

When the fish is just cooked to the surface, you have to quickly take it out of the small aluminum basket, fan the fish to “go slightly”, and then remove the fish meat very gently so that the fish is lean, not crumbly – especially the fish with eggs. must be lighter.

Then fish meat and fish eggs are marinated with fish sauce and pepper. The crushed fish bones are mixed with fish broth, decanted to get clear water to make a traditional ginger-cooked vegetable perch soup.

A bowl of perch with cabbage soup cooked with fragrant ginger. Illustration.

Ca Mo has a long vessel, small round stalk, smooth leaves, bright green color, and is cooked as sweet as a stick, selling whole bunches in the market.

The greengrocers always arrange horizontally, vertically, layer by layer very cleverly, but never bundle – because the bundle is to break the cabbage leaves.

Cauliflower has a flat stem, green leaves, a slightly curly leaf tip, a wavy shape, incense sticks with a mountain chicken crest, but the leaves are thin and the plants are small, much shorter.

In the market, cabbage is bundled with bamboo sticks, flattened, cooked with a richer soup but has a bitter taste. But those who are used to eating become addicted, demanding to eat both the leaves and the cabbage – quite bitter.

When the soup is cooked, drop the fish meat, fish roe that has been marinated with fish sauce and pepper in the soup pot, drizzle with a spoonful of Cat Hai fish sauce to make it rich, smashed with fresh ginger to give it a fragrant soup.

In the hot summer, the tray of rice has a bowl of cabbage soup with perch served with roasted shrimp and pork belly, accompanied by a few pickled eggplants (or a few pieces of chopped eggplant with seeds, ginger, garlic, and chili sauce), then Dad I don’t regret praising my sisters for being good at cooking, and it’s not long before I keep up with my mother.

…Back to the party of friends.

When the restaurant brought up a bowl of vegetable perch soup with ginger, it also smelled of ginger. But tasting a spoonful is scary, because the piece of fish meat is bursting, full of mud and the lack of sweetness of the main noodle…

The restaurant’s ginger-cooked vegetable perch is not as delicious and stimulating to the taste buds as the farmer’s aunt or my mother used to cook.

To find out, some restaurants cook new and traditional dishes – like the ginger-vegetable perch soup – they cook with commercially farmed tilapia, not the famous Lightning lagoon perch variety. in the old folk song:

Watermelon, Lang basil, Dam Dam

Dam Set perch, West Lake ginseng

The fish traders in the market place orders, then slice raw fish meat, pack it, and deliver it to the restaurant to store it in the refrigerator. When a customer calls, the kitchen cooks quickly, pounding a few branches of big but pale Chinese ginger to cook…

And I suddenly longed for the delicious smell of grilled perch with straw when my aunt cooked soup in the countryside, with only a few large grains of salt – but how delicious it was.

Still know that in the city where to get grilled straw perch – but still remember how… delicious Hanoi food.