Article, photo: DUY KHI
Never before has home-grown cuisine continuously created a "trend" (trending trend) on social networks like now. From the mangosteen chicken salad that "makes the storm", comes the phoenix flower salad, strawberry skin salad, custard apple and even deep-fried paper cotton, young durian stewed with meat... Video clips are flooded on social networking platforms. The workshop guides you on how to prepare, process, and enjoy, attracting hundreds of millions of views and interactions from the audience. The "fever" of Southern cuisine becomes hot and every "trend" has passed, another "trend" has emerged.
Strawberry salad with shrimp skin and meat.
Thanks to these new culinary trends, farmers benefit when the price of agricultural products, typically raw mangosteen and young custard-apple fruit, increases greatly and sells well. The specialty of the Southern garden is also known by many people, spreading to the Central, the North, and even abroad.
There are also many people who are concerned that this is just a temporary and unsustainable trend... Or there are public concerns about the impact on the agricultural crop in the West. But perhaps, that concern is "a bit far" when recently in the ripe mangosteen season, there are still many sellers, with large quantities and stable prices. Because such "trending" times are nothing compared to the planting area and annual fruit output of gardeners in the South.
Calmly think, the Southern region in general, the West River in particular, is the capital of fruits and vegetables and is also the "cradle" of the homegrown cotton and leaf cuisine. From a hundred years ago, on the rice tray of the Southern people, there were many kinds of cotton: crazy cotton, water lily, cotton, etc. and all kinds of leaves that seemed to be wild grass such as chives, sardines, cold rice. , burnt rice, sand, cassava buds, peach buds (peach / cashew nuts), mango buds, trumpet buds... These types of cotton and leaves are not born for food, nor are they for specialties. , but all due to human exploration, discovery and experience. It is not only the "improvisation", or the situation of "heaven born elephants give birth to grass" but also the creativity in Southern culinary culture. Apparently, hundreds of years ago, our grandparents also knew how to "catch the trend" and passed on to their children artistic styles such as shallots, vegetables dipped in braised fish sauce; Water lily eaten with braised fish sauce or sour cork fruit with raw fish sauce, acrid bananas with dill sauce… All make up the Southern aesthetic, a style of eating, a unique style of enjoying cuisine.
Returning to the current culinary "trend" of young people, perhaps it is not too much to worry if it is not offensive and does not harm health. Cuisine is a constant, borderless creation. Maybe thanks to that, the list of Southern culinary specialties will be supplemented with "strange but familiar" dishes. Besides, this novelty, trendy also creates a unique tourism product for visitors, with any season!
