Stirred tapioca flour. Photo: BAO PHUOC

Tapioca starch or stir-fried tapioca starch is a dish that is closely associated with my childhood. When I was a child living in the countryside, on cold rainy days, my family gathered around the charcoal stove to warm up, with fragrant sweet potatoes buried in the red fire, a warm scent wafting in the air and my grandmother's stir-fried tapioca starch that I can never forget. In the past, there were few snacks, so the dishes of that time were all unforgettable memories. On rainy nights, with a hint of sadness, it was even more unforgettable.

Nowadays, not many people are fond of this dish. Stirred tapioca flour is interesting because of the way it is made and the happy, family atmosphere it brings, but the flavor cannot be compared to shrimp-fat-meat-filled tapioca flour or mung bean-fat-meat-filled tapioca flour. This is a “pot-scraping” dish. In the past, when there was a lot of tapioca flour or leftover tapioca flour but not enough money to buy shrimp and meat for the filling, people boiled and stirred the flour to eat to quickly feel full. Stirred tapioca flour is suitable for the long, cold rainy winter days of Hue , each piece of dough is hot and crispy. I like the feeling of “working with my hands and chewing”, “working” a little bit for a meal is more valuable.

After stirring the tapioca flour evenly in the pot, there will be some areas that are a bit hard, similar to the crispy and chewy Nam Dong (now Phu Loc) pressed cake. Use chopsticks, preferably big chopsticks for a steady hand, to stab the dough and pull it up, roll it up and dip it in fish sauce. The fish sauce is mixed according to taste, you can add garlic, chili, sugar, lemon... for fragrance. The cake is still soft, hot, fresh, blended, soaked in spicy fish sauce, seemingly melting in the mouth, yet chewy and firm.

The way to make this dish is as simple as its name. Put tapioca flour or tapioca flour into a pot, add water and stir until the dough becomes thick. Stirred tapioca flour must be eaten immediately to be delicious, if left for too long the dough will become hard, lose its softness, and will not rise no matter how hard you pull it. Stirred tapioca flour has a slightly different taste from normal banh loc, perhaps because it has just been mixed with water so the cake is more “fluffy” and fresh.

To eat tapioca flour stir-fried, you have to scrape the whole pot, using a spoon to scrape off the "stubborn" layers of flour that still stick to the pot. The flour is transparent, shiny like a giant crystal, very cute. It seems that no one in Hue sells this dish, those who like it can make it themselves, because the recipe is simple, just a snack, a pleasure.

In Binh Dinh, there is a similar dish called “flour noodles, stir-fried”, dipped in fish sauce or eaten with salted anchovies, used in the main meal. In the North, there is also a dish called “cooked tapioca flour” similar to our stir-fried tapioca flour. Tapioca flour and stir-fried tapioca flour are not only found in Hue but are also popular in the Central provinces, but in our country, they still have their own unique and unmistakable flavor.

Thuc Dan