In the third lunar month, when the loquat trees in front of the house are laden with ripe fruit, Hanoians have a dish called sour soup with shrimp and crab roe. At this time, shrimp and crabs are in season, teeming with eggs. In the afternoons, the vendors selling crabs and fish catch bundles of dark gray, glistening shrimp roe. Crab roe is rarer and more expensive, bright yellow and translucent. The vendors use thin bamboo sticks to cut the roe into tiny pieces, wrap them in young lotus leaves, and sell them to customers.
Green plums cooked in crab egg soup are absolutely delicious. You can substitute the green plums with a few drops of fragrant early-season lime juice. The soup is clear as rainwater, without a trace of oil, refreshing and wholesome. Now that the old markets of Hanoi no longer sell crab eggs, the loss of this crab egg soup with green plums or lime juice leaves many older Hanoians longing for it.
From May to June in the lunar calendar, the season for sấu fruit arrives. In the hot weather, with dry throats and a lack of appetite… seeing a bowl of sấu soup at the table makes you quickly devour your rice with chopsticks. For Hanoians, sấu fruit makes the best sour soup; no other sour soup can rival it.
Hanoi's sour pork soup with sấu fruit is simple. Slice lean pork tenderloin into cubes (or thinly sliced, or minced), blanch in cold water, and skim off any foam. Add a few peeled green sấu fruits, bring to a boil, season with a little good quality fish sauce, then remove from heat and let cool. This makes a delicious, refreshing, and nutritious sour soup. A few pickled eggplants are a perfect addition (pickled eggplants with sour sauce don't taste as good).
The sấu fruit is also used to make delicious crab stew, clam stew, mussel stew, snail stew, and fish stew (fish vinegar stew) in the Old Quarter. In addition, it can be used to make sour dishes with muỗm fruit, quéo fruit, thanh trà fruit, tamarind, dọc fruit, star fruit, chay fruit, tai chua fruit, etc.
Fresh sấu fruit from Hanoi is one of the fruits that makes a delicious addition to sour soup. Photo: Internet
But to be truly delicious, it has to be done the right way: For example, crab stew, fish stew cooked with roasted star fruit; clam stew, mussel stew cooked with tamarind and green tea leaves. This way, the broth is clear and the color is vibrant; the best snail stew is cooked with fermented rice vinegar – giving the dish an unusually fragrant and appealing flavor that makes your mouth water. Or, make sour soup with some kind of seafood, with a few hundred grams of sour bamboo shoots from the forest, or a few slices of taro stem – that's also delicious and provides something to eat with chopsticks.
These days , the fruit of the "gọc" tree, used in sour soup , is rare; if you want to eat it, you have to order a whole bunch of green fruit. You can roast it until charred, peel off the skin, and put the bright yellow, turmeric-colored flesh in a container in the freezer for later use. Fish soup or crab soup cooked with "gọc" fruit loses its fishy smell, and the broth has a beautiful color.
Hanoi's crab soup with lime is also unique. When the soup is boiling vigorously and the crab roe has pushed to one side, squeeze a few limes directly into the pot through a strainer. The broth is clear and not bitter at all, contrary to what many people think. A little tip: don't squeeze the limes too hard; if you squeeze too hard and drain all the water, the lime essential oils won't be released, and the soup won't taste bitter.
In autumn or early winter, Hanoians enjoy various sour soups that suit the mild, cool weather. These include soup with pickled cucumbers and small fish, braised snails, braised eel, braised frog with banana, grilled tofu, pork belly, sour fermented rice, shrimp paste, and garlic and chili.
Hanoi also has a dish of water spinach soup cooked with sour tamarind leaves. In the summer, when the fruits like the muỗm, quéo, sấu, and thanh trà haven't yet grown large, Hanoi's sour soup is made with tamarind leaves. Water spinach broth infused with tamarind leaves is lighter than water spinach infused with tamarind fruit (even if the tamarind fruit is carefully peeled, it still has a slightly bitter taste). In the past, old women used to carry baskets of tamarind leaves to sell. Each bunch of leaves only had a few small clusters, enough to make a medium-sized pot of sour soup. Tamarind leaves fall quickly and are difficult to store, so if they didn't sell them all after a round of the market, they would sell them off to the vegetable vendors. The next morning, they would carry another basket of fresh tamarind leaves to sell.
The chay fruit is delicious boiled with vegetables or used in sour soup. In the past, the old-fashioned chay fruit used the peel for chewing betel. The ripe chay fruit, with its reddish-pink flesh and dark red seeds, is used for boiling vegetables, making soup, or eaten fresh when fully cooked. Adding vinegar to boiled water spinach or sour soup creates a mild sour flavor and a light pink color, making it very appealing. Pouring a ladleful of this soup over rice and slurping it down is incredibly satisfying.
There's also sour soup made with fermented rice, although the broth isn't as clear as that made with rice vinegar, it has a fragrant aroma and a very mild, pleasant sour taste. Especially noteworthy is the sour soup with snakehead fish, cooked with the whiskers of the fish, which is seasonal. In this dish, the fish head (the fish's head) is left with its whiskers intact. After cooking, it's served in a bowl with the head placed in the center, along with ripe starfruit, a few pieces of yellow taro stem, and a broth with a hint of yellow mixed with a few pieces of green onion and dill. Enjoying this with a glass of wine is so delicious that all fatigue and hardship seem to disappear. The lean fish meat is given to the children to eat.
Quick-pickled eggplant pairs very well with Hanoi-style sour soup. (Image from the internet)
Source: https://giadinh.suckhoedoisong.vn/canh-chua-cua-nguoi-ha-noi-rat-ngon-an-quanh-nam-nho-su-ket-hop-tung-loai-qua-trong-cac-mon-canh-172240526131709239.htm
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