Can Tho Specialties

Visiting Can Tho, you will enjoy many specialities such as: cong cake, gruel with ophiocephalus maculatus, rice pancake folded in half (and filled with a shrimp, meat and soya bean sprouts) etc. All bring specific tastes of this Tay Do homeland.

Can Tho cong cake

Cong cake is made of rice flour. Tenth-month rice is steeped for two nights and then milled. After that put it in haversack for water to run out. It depends on the kind of rice that the flour will be steeped in dilute bittern for 1 night or 2 nights to become better before using. This is the key detail to have a salient product. After that, the rice flour will be mixed with green peas, shrimp, pork mince etc. Cong cake has a low tubular shape or bloating sphere and the is fried brittlely on surface and inside is spongy. When eating it, we should use with vegetables fish sauce mixed with sweet and sour liquid and pickled stuffs.

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

Raw materials for making banh xeo is rice flour mixed with coconut juice, saffron, shrimp, pork etc. Banh xeo is rolled with girdle cake and vegetables (field cabbage, salad, perilla, basil, hung lui, dap ca, green banana, long-sliced carambola etc. It depends on the tastes of tourists that banh xeo can be dip little in fish sauce or soy sauce.

Grilled ophiocephalus maculates

Grilled ophiocephalus maculates (the best is to grill the ophiocephalus maculates in straw), a dish appeared since the day of changing southern waste land into cultivated areas. With charming aromatic flavour, so many tourists coming to Can Tho wants to enjoy it. Gastronomers choose ophiocephalus maculates which are as big as a wrist for being well-done in grilling. Take a piece of bamboo to stab the fish from head to tail and fix the bamboo to the ground with the fish head down to the ground and put straws around it and fire the straws until the fish is well-done.

Gruel with ophiocephalus maculates meat and dang (bitter) vegetable

Place the gruel pot on low fire and then put the raw materials into it. Wait until being well-done, pick the vegetables, fish and dip them little in Phu Quoc fish sauce. Slowly enjoy it and sip a cup of ivory-white rice alcohol with new rice smell etc. By the way, you take a chicken egg and break it and put it into the pot etc. Ophiocephalus maculates meat tastes good and is nourishing. Well-done Dang vegetable, tai tuong (elephant ear shape) vegetable is chewed brittlely with the gruel.

Can Tho sweetened pomelo porridge

Sweetened pomelo porridge is known for a long time and is a sweetened famous dessert across the South delta together with fermented vegetarian stuff roll which is made of pomelo peel. People eliminate the green part of pomelo peel and knead the remaining with salt until there is no mentholation. Then, slice it into fibre shape with square edge which looks like sweet-potato flour fibre and is cooked with syrup and later become materials for the sweetened porridge that is only in Cantho. On the top of sweetened pomelo porridge is a layer of thick coconut juice smelling vanilla. Move that layer to one side, in the mixture of syrup and thick pure transparent wheat flour is green peas which are skinned so skillfully that well-cooked green peas still keep its yellow shape.

Cai Rang fermented pork roll

Cai Rang fermented pork roll with Lai Vung fermented pork roll are the 2 famous specialties in the Mekong delta. These two kinds of fermented pork have different tastes. Lai Vung fermented pork roll consists of much pork skin, tough, with sweet and sour tastes in pink color, while Car Rang fermented pork roll contains more pork than skin, sour taste, untough, sweetened feeling after eating. Most Cai Rang fermented pork roll is wrapped with erythrina variegata leaves or phyllanthus acidus leaves and banana leave. Cai Rang fermented pork takes time to become sour. But when it is sour, it has a smelling of these leaves. Cai Rang fermented pork is a indispensable gift for tourists coming to Can Tho.

Cai Rang grilled meat roll

The most delicious grilled meat roll is the one made of fresh pork grilled above live coals. This dish which is eaten with vegetable tastes delicious. In order to make Cai Rang (Can Tho) grilled meat roll, choose pork which is just slaughtered. Clean the blood with silk or soft paper and eliminate sinew. Use small sticks stab the whole piece of pork for running blood out. Use silk to clean the flood and after that slice it and mix with yellowy grilled garlic, fresh chopped garlic, good condensed fish sauce, a little salt, flavouring powder etc. When the spice penetrates into the pork completely after half an hour, put the pork and a little sugar and ground pepper into a mortar and grind. When the pork becomes viscid and turns white, roll it into balls and stab these balls with sticks. Grill them in the heat of firing coal until they become well-done in yellow and just then apply onion cooked in oil to them. Like other dishes, people in the South like to combine with girdle cake and vegetable to roll. Cai Rang grilled meat roll needs vegetable, green banana, cucumber, carambola etc. (Unlike the grilled meat roll in Hue, people there will use sliced green va fruit with acrid taste to combine with other vegetables in which dill is the one with hot smell, This makes tourists be absorbed in eating without a tired feeling. Fine rice vermicelli must be combined with for the dish.