With wild vegetables, young shoots of wild vegetables, people in Dong Thap Muoi area, Tan Phuoc district (Tien Giang province) in the process of reclaiming and reclaiming land always keep in mind the folk song: Let's go to the land of Seven Villages/ Pick blind wild vegetables and pull out the wild yam/ Blind wild vegetables are dipped in soy sauce/ Wild yam is on the ground where my lover lies.
The name of the land of Seven ancient villages was determined to extend from Cong Tuong to Tram Sap bridge, now in Hung Thanh and Phu My communes, Tan Phuoc district (Tien Giang province), a low-lying area heavily contaminated with alum.
Wild plants such as cajuput, sycamore, reed, sedge, and dung... grow in abundance, including the wild vegetable rau choai (choai shoots).
Rau choai, also known as rau ran or dau ran, is a typical wild vegetable of Dong Thap Muoi region, especially it is easy to adapt to alum soil areas like Tan Phuoc of Tien Giang province.
Rau choai grows all year round but grows more in the rainy season. The more you pick this vegetable, the more new shoots it produces.
To eat rau choai, we only use the young, curved, green shoots, also called chot, or we also use the long shoots like the tip of the little finger, which are also very crispy. In addition, we also use the shoots that have grown a few sparse leaves...
Dishes made from wild vegetables in the daily menu of Tan Phuoc people are also quite rich.
Rau choai, also known as rau ran (dot choai), is a type of wild vegetable that grows wild in the alum-contaminated soil of Dong Thap Muoi in Tien Giang province. Although rau choai is a wild vegetable, it has high nutritional content and is good for human health.
First is a dish of boiled choai with soy sauce for quick meals before going to work in the fields. A meal with boiled choai will be truly complete if there is a plate of fried snakehead fish or catfish with a bowl of sweet and sour ginger fish sauce.
According to local people, before boiling, add a little lemon juice to the pot. When the water boils, add the vegetables and stir for about 1-2 minutes, then remove immediately so that the boiled vegetables will be crispy and green.
A little more elaborate is stir-fried water fern with beef or stir-fried water fern with shrimp. To prepare this dish, first quickly blanch the vegetables in boiling water, then remove and drain.
Fry the garlic and onion until fragrant, then add the marinated beef or shrimp and stir-fry until absorbed. Then add the wild vegetables and stir-fry until cooked. Remove from heat and scoop onto a plate, add some chopped green onions and a little ground pepper, add a bowl of soy sauce or sweet and sour fish sauce and it's perfect...
In addition, the people of Tan Phuoc (Tien Giang province) use rau choai with other vegetables to eat with hot pot and sweet hot pot dishes because of its characteristic bitter, fatty, and slimy taste combined with other vegetables, making diners who love to eat vegetables, or those who want to lose weight, extremely excited.
Rau choai, also known as bud choai, is a wild vegetable that grows wild in areas with dense alum and many types of plants. According to Oriental medicine, rau choai is good for health. Rau choai contains a lot of iron, iron helps replenish blood, rau choai contains a lot of mucus, mucus helps improve bone and joint function and some natural compounds can reduce symptoms of malaria...
There is another way to cook soup with wild vegetables that if not mentioned would be a huge omission, which is the rustic mixed vegetable soup that is very familiar to Tan Phuoc people.
It is called mixed soup because the pot of soup includes many types of vegetables available in the garden including amaranth, water spinach, purslane, longan shoots, squash, Malabar spinach, gotu kola, and conveniently picked a bunch of wild spinach leaves.
To cook mixed vegetable soup, only use young leaves of mixed vegetable that have 5-7 leaves to be delicious. Mixed vegetable soup is true to its name.
Because sometimes we cook mixed vegetable soup with available snakehead fish, if there is no fish left at home, we can put in the pot of soup a few dried perch or snakehead fish, which also have a very unique sweet flavor.
When cooking mixed vegetable soup, add a little fish sauce to make the soup rich in flavor and sweet. Sometimes, just using mixed vegetables with a little MSG will also create a fragrant and refreshing pot of soup.
On dry summer afternoons, in every kitchen there is a pot of steaming mixed vegetable soup. The rustic flavor and the purple-pink color of the soup are deeply engraved in the childhood memories of many children living far away from home.
To have fresh baskets of vegetables, people have to wake up early in the morning when the dew is still on the young leaves to pick the fresh vegetables and sell them in time that morning.
In addition to being sold in markets or along Provincial Roads 865 and 867 in the district, Tan Phuoc wild vegetables also follow diners everywhere, from elaborate parties to treat familiar guests or on the menus of restaurants, hotels, and eateries throughout Tien Giang province.
That's because my hometown's rau choai is a natural, clean wild vegetable with a unique, slimy taste...
Source: https://danviet.vn/dot-choai-thu-rau-dai-vung-dong-thap-muoi-o-tien-giang-doc-dau-mom-an-ngon-hon-thit-ca-20250302145557602.htm
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