Tra Vinh Specialties

Sap coconut

Sap coconut is also called coconut with thick pulp. Sap coconut is similar to ordinary coconut in form, but its pulp is very thick and sometimes fills most of the inside. The remaining coconut milk is as thick as glue.

Sap coconut pulp is as soft and viscid as condensed flour. In order to tell sap coconut and ordinary coconut apart, we use the back of a knife blade to knock on coconut shell. If it is a clear sound, it is ordinary coconut. But if it is an unclear sound or a heavy sound, it is sap coconut.

A bunch of coconuts from sap coconut tree usually contains 4 to 5 sap coconuts and even no sap coconuts. Sap coconut is used to make vitamin or we scrape the coconut pulp out to mix with milk and ice. One who ate sap coconut once would never forget its scent and fatty taste.

Loi choi with citronella and pimento – Tra Vinh specialty

Loi choi has a cylinder body like a chopstick. People often embalm it with salt and dry in under the sun and then fry it with citronella and pimento. Fresh alive loi choi or dried one which is grilled on coal fire is the most delicious dish. The fat from its body spurt out with good smell. Keep the curved choi loi with its hot fat and raise it to our mouths and bite it. The fatty taste of loi choi fat, smell of citronella and pimento etc. and chewing tough loi choi meat and having a little strong alcohol is interested.

Quach fruit – the gift of Giong land

Quach fruit is as round as a plastic ball that children play. It has grey color with many spots on it. When Quach fruit just turns ripe, it smells a lot. Though its smell is not same as that of decandrous persimmon, it arouses the smell of many people. Leaving it for a few days or a week, it will be soiled soft. Its skin has grey color and is soft. Holding a knife and plit slightly, we can see many tiny spots in violet color. Using a spoon to ladle out into a glass and add sugar, milk and planed ice, we will have a strange-taste drink. A spoon of Quach fruit is put into the mouth, it smell wafts our noses. Its sour taste makes our tongues rapture. The sweet of sugar and the fatty of milk spread our jaws comfortably.


Vinh Kim dried shrimp

Vinh Kim dried shrimp is made of the shrimp caught in cells in Vinh Kim field. The process must have many stages like selecting shrimps, boiling with proper fire, drying under sun in a right way. In order to dry shrimps as required, the drying yard must be concreted. Place shrimps on the yard to preserve its red color without any break and shabbiness. The secret of processing Vinh Kim dried shrimp is to create specific charming delicious flavour

Tra Vinh grilled meat roll

When pork is just splited warmly, the maker has to clean the pork with a clean cloth. After that, the pork is sliced and put into a stone mortar for pulverizing (by hand) not putting into a grinder like other places. The pork is pulverized until it wants to move out of the mortar. The fat is also cleaned by clean cloth and sliced slimly. Mix the spice with pork and and fat (the spice is her secret which cannot present here) and then leave it at a breezy place for the pork to be clear and have nice color. When grilling, he crumples the pork into balls and threads the balls with sticks. Each stick has 5 balls. In eating grilled meat roll, besides its toughness and deliciousness, everything around the dish is important. There must be sour carambola, sliced acrid panama, turnip, carrot, and sliced young ginger preserved in vinegar mixed with sugar (remember that young ginger is integral); salad, dill, sliced cucumber, pickled splitted garlic. To eat this dish we need good soya sauce in which the process must includes sugar and overdone green peas for increasing the fatty taste.