(ABO) I really like sour soup with young tamarind leaves and tilapia, but that's me now, the eight-year-old me always wondered why sour soup only has two simple ingredients like that but every time my father had this dish, he would eat three or four bowls of rice in a row.
When I was little, every year, about ten times, when I had three shifts off from school, he would invite me to go back to my grandparents' house. My grandparents' house was only about fifty or sixty kilometers away, but in my eyes, it was a very remote area, full of sunshine and sunshine. My grandparents' house was just over there, but running through three or four fields, my grandparents' house had grown from a small dot to the size of a hand. My grandparents' house was full of rice and tamarind, along the pond behind the house were a few custard apple trees. That's it. There weren't as many fruit trees as my garden.
Honestly, I don't like going back to my grandparents' house very much, because there's no candy to eat in my grandparents' house. Every time I go back, the kids in my grandparents' house gather around to pick a handful of tamarinds and give them to me. When I go back, they love it because I bring a few bags of colorful candy to share with them.
Wherever I went in my grandfather's hometown, I saw tamarinds: tamarinds in front of the house, by the alley, behind the summer house, and by the pond. When the rainy season began, the tamarind trees in my grandfather's house would sprout new, green leaves, heavy with raindrops, swaying in the wind. When my father and I got home, my grandfather would rush out to pick the tamarind leaves with a basket and a chair. My aunt Sau's son, Chien, would carry the net to the edge of the pond. He was so small, black, and skinny that he threw the net neatly, rounder than the letter o. When the net was pulled up, the tilapia, skinny from lack of food, flopped around in the net, and he quickly picked them all up and put them in the basket for my grandfather.
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| Illustration photo. |
Rainy afternoon meal at my grandfather's hometown, a bowl of dried braised fish, a bowl of sour soup with young tamarind leaves and tilapia, with a few slices of chili. I stirred the bowl of rice with the braised fish my grandfather picked up for me, imagining the fried chicken thigh my mother used to make and craving it so much. Turning around, my father ate it deliciously, exclaiming in admiration. Every time he came back when the young tamarind leaves were in season, he always ate this dish. Why did he eat so deliciously, I kept wondering.
There were many questions, many doubts that only later, when I grew up, did I have the answers for myself.
Now that my grandmother is gone, I have been busy with work so I haven't been to her house for a long time. My father is still the same, he only goes back to his hometown a few times a year, I wonder if the girls still cook the dishes he likes.
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| A corner of tamarind row on Nguyen Hue street - My Tho city. |
The small town where I live is also full of rows of green tamarind trees, changing leaves, growing new leaves, blooming flowers, bearing fruit, every day I go to work. Now, I often pay attention to the season of young tamarind leaves, I go to the market or find garden vendors, and I always buy a small bunch to bring back to my hometown for my mother to cook sour soup with fish. Now, I can feel the delicious taste of this simple soup, sour and cool, not many ingredients, just a little fish, a handful of young tamarind leaves, a little coriander and a few slices of chili, but it is indescribably delicious. My father still eats and praises it, but he no longer exclaims, in the depths of his eyes there is no longer the joy and happiness like in the past.
The sour soup with young tamarind leaves still tastes as delicious as before, my mother still seasoned it exactly as my father liked it, just like my grandmother used to. But... there are dishes that are delicious partly because of the flavor, but more because of the sweet memories of the past.
Wall Army
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