Porridge cooked with perch by tapping through a bamboo basket makes many people curious at the Hanoi Fall Festival 2023.
Ung Hoa, a suburb of Hanoi, is famous for its Van Dinh grass duck dish, but not many people know about the porridge dish with its unique preparation method, which has been associated with the childhood of many generations of people in Cau Bau hamlet, Quang Phu Cau commune.
“Cau Bau porridge seems strange to many Hanoians,” according to Ms. Nguyen Thi Minh (Hanoi), an artist invited by the Vietnam Culinary and Cultural Association to participate in the 2023 Hanoi Fall Festival taking place at Cung Thieu. Children in Hanoi from September 29 to October 1.
She said that in Cau Bau village, there are currently only two artisans who preserve the flavor of tapioca porridge because of “the elaborate way of preparing it even though there are only two ingredients: rice and perch”. To cook a pot of porridge, Ms. Minh uses 3 kg of rice and two kg of fish.
The rice used to cook porridge is Khang Dan rice, often used to prepare popular dishes such as banh cuon, banh te, pho noodles, and noodles. According to Ms. Minh, Khang Dan rice has slender, long, firm grains, rarely breaks or breaks when cooked, and has a naturally sweet taste. Rice is soaked for about 3 – 4 hours so that the grains are hydrated, plump and then drained.
Next is the process of processing a pot of perch water. Delicious fish is natural fresh fish caught in the rice fields of Ung Hoa district, scaled, internal organs removed so the broth is not fishy and bitter, then boiled with crushed fresh ginger. After the fish is cooked, filter the fish meat, pound the bones, filter through a cloth to get the juice, add water and then cook with the filtered fish meat. According to Ms. Minh, this method can take advantage of almost all the sweetness of fish meat and bones, but requires the cook to have their own secrets to remove the fishy smell.
Put the rice in the pot of perch water and cook over low heat until it boils. Use a ladle to scoop the mixture of rice and fish gravy into a bamboo basket and continuously tap to let the mixture fall through the gap. The name porridge also comes from this unique way of processing. The cook will continuously tap and filter until the mixture reaches a moderate consistency.
After completion, the porridge is not too thin, but it is also not thick, smooth and smooth like rib porridge using flour milled from rice. The bowl of porridge still has soft rice grains and small balls of flour that are a mixture of fish meat and rice flour that adhered during the filtering process through the bamboo basket. This is the difference between Cau Bau porridge and other porridge dishes commonly found in Hanoi.
The sweetness of Khang Dan rice blends with the sweetness of perch water and the scent of fresh ginger to create a fragrant, sticky, sweet porridge dish. Ms. Minh said that the porridge has MSG added but not much. 90% of the sweetness of the porridge is natural from rice and perch juice.
Served with the porridge is banh khuc, a popular cake in the Northern Delta region. Banh Khuc is made from crushed coriander leaves mixed with glutinous rice flour for the crust, using meat and lard as the filling, wrapped in banana leaves into a flat rectangular shape and steamed. After being cooked, Banh Khuc has the green crust of Khuc vegetables, the aroma of sticky rice and a fatty meat filling.
Banh Khuc is cut into bite-sized pieces and placed on top of a bowl of porridge, attracting many customers when passing by Ms. Minh’s stall, including Ms. Hoa (54 years old, Hanoi). The first time she enjoyed Ung Hoa porridge and banh khuc, Mrs. Hoa was surprised because she “thought the small balls of flour in the bowl of porridge were just normal rice grains, but did not expect to have perch meat”, but did not see a fishy smell. However, the accompanying banh khuc is “a bit hard compared to the softness of the porridge and has a bit less meat filling”.
Listening to Ms. Minh’s introduction on how to make porridge, Ms. Thuy and Mr. Vinh’s family along with their 6-year-old son also enjoyed a bowl each. According to them, the price of 10,000 VND is quite cheap compared to the effort involved in preparing this porridge, especially the amount of fish and meat in the porridge.
Knocked porridge is a simple gift that can be enjoyed all year round, but winter is the time when this dish sells best. Every day, Ms. Minh cooks two pots of porridge, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. “Each pot only sells for about 1-2 hours,” she said. Although there are still people who love porridge, the image of mothers and grandmothers sitting in the wood stove cooking porridge and children gathering around the pot of porridge slurping is no longer there.
To enjoy porridge, visitors can go to Cau Bau village, Quang Phu Cau commune, Ung Hoa district, Hanoi, about 40 km from Hanoi city center.