Summer cake soup from far away

Saigon, summer afternoon. Suddenly craving a bowl of snakehead fish soup at home. In the old days, by the roadside, there was a sister sitting with a pair of light burdens, one end was a steaming pot of water, the other was a tray of fish heads, fish hearts plus spices, young vegetables and a bunch of white soup cakes. It is a semi-afternoon burden, anyone passing through the street wants to eat a missed meal (it's a snack to beat when hungry), then stop by and order a team (the upper bowl is enlarged, the lower part is smaller). This kind of "dang" also carries a very own culinary philosophy of the people of that day: when you haven't eaten, you will see a lot for your eyes.

In the countryside of Quang Tri, this dish is called "bedside porridge", which is the noodle soup made of tapioca flour, sometimes mixed with a little rice flour, stretched like bed sheets, intertwined in a bowl. Trau (snake fish) small children caught in the field brought up to sell to her, still struggling. She put it in a jar, started to gradually make "bed porridge" to sell to passersby...

So I took the car to the market. The seller said that Long An copper snakehead fish had just been brought up. Bought two medium sized ones (about 3 ounces each) to bring home. Visit a vegetable shop to buy some bitter vegetables (instead of young vegetables, which are difficult to find in Ho Chi Minh City), green chili powder, a little cilantro. The day before, I went to the supermarket to buy flour (no tapioca flour, had to take tapioca flour instead). Compressed tubers, a type of tuber that is in the same family as onions and garlic but smaller is often grown in the Central region, the day before yesterday her sister sent in a few cans left at home.

Snakehead fish brought back, scaled clean. Cut into thin slices, wash and drain, put in a pan with a little oil onward. Peeled tubers, pounded, put in a quick fry with fish. The compressed tubers will then subtly fragrant, overpowering the fishy smell of fish. A little salt and pepper and a spoon of prepared fish sauce, pour in for about 1 minute to absorb evenly. Turn off the stove and leave it there.

Prepare the dough on a tray, form it into a tiny "hill", and then drill a small hole in the middle, just like… a crater. Pour boiling water in and stir while kneading. Struggling to knead for about 5-7 minutes, the dough is sticky. Pinch out each piece, squeeze it thinly, cut it, and slide it out onto a tray, into fine white strands. Remember to save some sifted flour so that the flour fibers do not stick together.

The pot of broth in the next kitchen is about to boil. In it, also added a little seasoning to taste. The pre-seasoned portion must be left in the fish pan, or it will be salty. When it is boiling, pour in the flour, use chopsticks to stir until the dough separates. Or you can use a mesh spoon to dip the flour into the dough, scoop out the flour evenly into the bowls. That ready-made fish pan, who eats the head and who eats the tail, who eats the heart and eats the meat, so "assign" as you like. Pick up the fish and put it in each bowl, the bottom is the flour, the top is the fish and a few greasy layers of oil and chili powder emerge. Arrange bitter vegetables on a plate, not forgetting a pinch of cilantro for each bowl of banh chung. Green chili or red chili pepper in a small bowl of fish sauce is available.

Then, just put the bitter vegetables in the hot bowl, mix and eat. Outside, the summer sun has softened. In the afternoon, the shadow fell, I thought I was sitting under a bamboo wall and listening to the wind caress every drop of sweat that fell with the bowl of banh chung, it had just flowed smoothly...