Shepherd's favorite dish
This season in Hai Duong, eggplants are sold in abundance in the market. In the countryside, eggplants are grown in rows in home gardens, along rice fields, along village roads... Under the lush green leaves, eggplants with large and small fruits grow crowded together on the branches, most of them are white, a few are green or purple.
There are few people who do not know about eggplant, even children born in the city. But besides the pickled eggplant served with crab soup cooked with jute leaves, shrimp soup cooked with Malabar spinach, perhaps many people do not know or have never enjoyed the dish of fish cooked with eggplant. Only those who were born and raised in poor rural areas know.
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I remember decades ago, sometimes when I went to herd buffaloes, my friends and I would take the opportunity to find and uproot some tamarind bushes growing along the dike at the village entrance, and bring them back to ask my mother to cook fish scraps with eggplant. In my hometown, tamarind or tamarind leaves are indispensable ingredients to prepare this dish.
Every time she saw me coming home with a handful of tamarinds in my hand, my mother would take a bamboo basket to the field in front of the house, bending down to catch fish in the small water trough in the rice field. In no time, my mother would bring back a bunch of small fish, mainly dang dong (some places call it long tong fish), sailfish, shrimp...
My mother sat in the well yard, meticulously scaling and squeezing the intestines of each small "tin hin" fish, washing it with rainwater, draining it, then marinating it with a few grains of white salt, fish sauce, and minced fresh turmeric.
In the summer, the eggplant and herb beds in my garden are lush green. My mother picks the eggplants that are not too young or too old. I follow her to the garden and help pick perilla leaves, piper lolot leaves, coriander, fresh chili peppers, and tomatoes to make spices for the dish of shredded fish cooked with eggplant.
My mother cut the eggplant in half, soaked it in rice water mixed with salt to remove the sap, then washed it many times with rainwater and drained it.
Mom took the jar of fermented rice from the cupboard, scooped out a spoonful into a small bowl, added a little fish sauce, a little shrimp paste and gently mixed it into a mixed spice sauce.
My mother fried the marinated fish on a wood stove. While frying, she sprinkled the mixed spice mixture on the surface of the fish so that the spices could slowly soak in. Because it was small pieces of fish, my mother did it very gently when flipping it so that the meat would not break. She just fried the fish until both sides were firm and then took it out onto a plate.
Putting the pot on the stove, my mother sauteed onion, garlic, and chopped chili with lard. A fragrant aroma rose up, spreading throughout the entire poor neighborhood. The onion and garlic had turned yellow, my mother quickly added tomatoes and eggplants to stir-fry until they were cooked, then added a handful of tamarind and slowly poured boiling water into the pot until it was just above the surface.
When the pot of soup boils, spread the fried fish on top, cover and simmer. The process of making shredded fish and tomato soup is almost complete.
Wait for it to simmer on the fire for about 20 - 25 minutes, my mother adds a little MSG, sprinkles chopped perilla leaves, betel leaves, and cilantro into the pot, ladles it into a large bowl, and the dish is complete.
It sounds complicated, but in fact, the dish of fish and eggplant soup is very easy to prepare, and uses all the ingredients and spices available in the garden. Thanks to her skillful hands, my mother has transformed those rustic ingredients into one of the most "country" dishes.
The bowl of soup served on the tray has a bright yellow color of turmeric. When you eat it, you can feel the mild sourness of rice vinegar, tamarind, the fragrant smell of perilla, betel leaves mixed with the spicy taste of fresh chili...
In those difficult economic times, when our families were still poor, we shepherd children rarely had meat. A meal of fish soup cooked with eggplant and white rice mixed with sweet potatoes was already a blessing and a full meal.
Touch... memories
With the economy getting better and better, families in my hometown have the means to buy many kinds of food and prepare nutritious meals.
Then, I don’t remember since when, the dish of fish soup with eggplant gradually disappeared from the summer meals of families. I often go back to my hometown but I still don’t see my mother prepare this dish anymore.
After many years, I recently visited my aunt (my grandfather's younger sister) in the countryside and by chance had the opportunity to enjoy the dish of shredded fish cooked with eggplant. She is nearly 80 years old, lives alone, grows vegetables in the garden and cooks every day.
She doesn't like meat dishes, but prefers dishes made from fish, shrimp, and small prawns. It's not because she's poor, it's simply because she likes to eat food from... the past.
For lunch that day, my grandmother cooked eggplant with anchovies bought from a villager who fished on the river. She said that due to environmental pollution, there were almost no more river fish, sailfish, and shrimp left.
My grandmother and I had only white rice for dinner that day, a bowl of fish soup with eggplant in the "old style" and a plate of fried tofu with fish sauce, but I found it surprisingly delicious. I ate slowly to inhale, to slowly enjoy the dish that I hadn't had for a long time.
The old memories of a difficult time for children in the rural countryside just kept flooding back to me. In that memory, there was my grandfather, grandmother, mother's love, father's love. Even though the family was poor, the family atmosphere was always warm, happy and full of love.
I suddenly had the idea to learn how to cook eggplant and shredded fish like my mother used to do and regularly include it in the family meal menu. My children will be able to eat rustic dishes that are probably not available in luxury restaurants nowadays.
Nowadays, eggplants are mostly used by families to pickle, pickle and eat with soup. Some restaurants or skillful people process this fruit into dishes such as: eggplant stir-fried with betel leaves, eggplant cooked with bones, eggplant braised with pork, eggplant with beef salad...
Source: https://baohaiduong.vn/canh-ca-vun-nau-ca-huong-vi-cua-mot-thoi-gian-kho-412944.html
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