Dong Thap Specialties

Rats stir-fried with citronella and pimento

After hunting rats, people boil water in a pan and dip them in hot water. After that shed their skins to display white rat meat and hang them for drying off. Eleminating their heads, tails and legs etc. Then chop the rats into proper parts for eating and mix them with garlic, sodium glutamate, sugar, salt, five-taste flavour, soya sauce etc. for 5 minutes for penetration. While mixing, someone else sets a pan on fire for becoming hot. Then put cooking oil and garlic into the pan. Turn the garlic to become yellow and smell. After that, add ground citronella and pimento to the pan and stir-fry continuously until they become dry. At this time put the chopped rat into the pan for stir-frying. When it is well-done, spread pepper and peanuts on the top. It is more delicious to have the dish while it is still hot.

Green peas gruel cooked with snake

Dong Thap Muoi is famous for many tortoises and snakes. When catching a snake, strike its head until it is dead and use boiling water to scale the snake. Then disembowel it and pull out its liver. And chop the snake into smaller 10-centimetre parts and stew them until they become overdone and take them out. After that, pour rice and green peas into the snake stewing pot. Flavour the gruel when it is well-done and then split snake meat into as little parts as we do to chicken and mix them with lemon and persicaria. Ladle gruel into each bowl and add a little snake meat into each bowl. Spread ground pepper and onion and mix them up. Everytime we eat the gruel, we feel healthy after having it because this dish is to make our livers healthy and our bodies antipyretic and also is rich in nutrition and tastes good.

Eal sausage simmered in coconut juice

Chop eal meat finely and mix it with minced pork, peziza, Chinese vermicelli and spices such as sugar, fish sauce, unground pepper. Use a small spoon to toss them and then ladle the mixture of chopped meat into eal skin which is shed before as we do to pork sausage or dog sausage. After stuffing the mixture, circle it and put it into a pot. Chinese Onion is peeled and cut into 4 pieces (if the onion is small) or 8 pieces (if the onion is big). Then put them on the mixture.

Pour the coconut juice into the pot until it floods the mixture and then set the pot on slight fire. When the coconut juice is boiled, we add sugar and fish sauce properly into the pot. After that lift the pot to another place and ladle it into a plate and ground spread roasted peanuts over the top.

Gecko stir-fried with little or no water

After catching geckoes, people cut their heads and dip them in boiled water and then scale them. Chop the geckoes into small parts and mix the chopped parts with dai hoi and tieu hoi. Set a pan on fire and put oil and garlic into it for a moment. After that put the gecko meat into the pan and stir-fry them; then pour the coconut juice into the pan and set slight fire for adhering the meat to the spices and coconut juices. But don’t set hot fire for its deliciousness. When the coconut juice moves down, carry the pan to other place and spread ground roasted peanuts over the top.

Rice pancake folded in half (and filled with a shrimp, meat and soya bean sprouts) with sesbania sesban flowers

Rice pancake folded in half with sesbania sesban flowers is easy to make. First, mix rice flour with water until we use a chopstick to dip in the mixture and lift it up to see if the wet flour drop one by one, the mixture then is ok. The best is to mix the flour with coconut juice to be more tasty. After finish mixing, people often squeeze chopped saffron or carry powder “Indian cook” to create nice yellow color. Then stir-fry sesbania sesban flowers with sliced pork and proper spices such as salt, sodium glutamate, pepper and sugar. After the first preparation stage, you will start making pancake. The most important thing to have a scented crispy pancake with yellow color is to set a fire and to be skillful. Another step that is also important is preparation of green vegetables and mixture of fish sauce, garlic and pimento. In the country side, it is easy to find vegetables in eating the pancake by going to the garden and pick up some green mango leaves, la cach, dot dieu etc. and prepare a bowl of fish sauce, garlic and pimento mixture. Then we will have a good dish of rice pancake folded in half.


Lai Vung fermented pork roll (sour fermented pork with sweet taste, scent and drunkenness)

Lai Vung fermented pork roll speciality has been famous for a long time with special delicious taste. Leisurely open each layer of banana leaves, you cannot hold back your feeling to the fresh red fermented pork roll with black peppers and some slices of white garlic. The sour fermented pork roll has sweet taste from pork, and sour taste from fermented stuffs. But, grilled meat roll is also a kind of fermented pork. And people often have it before the stuffs are fermented and grill it on frame set on coal fire. It is eaten with rice vermicelli, dill and sauce etc.