Another season of goby eggs has come to my hometown in the West. In the 9th and 10th lunar months, alluvial water floods the fields. This is the season when goby eggs are spawning.
Stepping out of the house, looking around at the strong wind, everywhere you could see the red, pungent color of alluvial water. The villagers called it the season of vermillion water.
According to my grandfather's explanation, the reason it is called the red water is because the water is red, like the color of poinsettia leaves glowing red in the afternoon.
It seems that the egg goby fish are compatible with the red water fish. They flock to live in clumps of water hyacinth roots, in sugarcane leaves leaning over ditches, or in rotten bushes.
Fish even crawl into coconuts that rats have hollowed out and float on canals and ditches.
Egg goby fish hide and lay eggs, giving birth to young, wriggling and squirming like ant eggs.
I remember when I was a child, every time the water season came, there was always a dish of goby fish and eggs on my dining table.
That was the result of a hard day's work for my mother. Early in the morning, just waiting for the water to rise up to her neck, my mother and the aunts in the neighborhood gathered to go fishing.
Dried and candied goby eggs - a specialty of the West during the red water season - flood season - rising water season. In the 9th and 10th lunar months, red alluvial water (so called red water) floods the fields. When the red water appears, it is also the season for goby eggs to spawn.
Women in my hometown are very good at this, so they just need to set foot in the ditch, scoop up a few baskets and they will have all kinds of sand goby, star goby, coconut goby, sedge goby, etc., especially egg goby.
The hard-working hands of the country women were extremely agile, just putting the basket into the bushes, quickly waving it back and forth, and in a moment there was a bowl of goby eggs.
Everyone went fishing until the tide turned low, then went ashore to go home. The big pot was always full of fish.
Mom carried the pot to the back of the water floor, carefully selecting each type of fish. Coconut goby, sand goby, star goby, shrimp, silver shrimp, Mom brought to the afternoon market to sell because these aquatic species were quite expensive. Mom kept the egg goby to prepare food for the whole family.
Because goby eggs were very cheap at that time, people could see them everywhere, even children only needed to put a basket to catch the water hyacinth roots and the goby eggs would jump around. Therefore, their value was not high, they were mainly used for eating at home.
Even though we had to eat goby eggs for a long time, sometimes for a whole month (after the season of red water), we still did not get tired of it. Because through our mother's skillful hands, goby eggs could be prepared in many different dishes.
When cooking cauliflower soup (mixed vegetable soup), my mother would dry it with pepper to give it a spicy taste. When my father picked a basket of raw vegetables from the garden, my mother would fry goby eggs in flour and eat them with fish sauce.
Sometimes, my mother stir-fried goby fish with galangal leaves or braised it in thick coconut milk to dip with lotus or sesban flowers.
What I love most is the feeling of eating the fragrant yellow eggs of the goby fish. Crispy, fatty, sweet, crunchy, how delicious! That flavor is unmistakable. Although the fish doesn't have much meat and many bones, because it's soft, you can chew it all when eating.
If you want chewy fish and crispy eggs, braised goby eggs with pepper is the best dish. This dish is served with boiled water spinach, sweet potato leaves, and water mimosa flowers. All of these are grown in the backyard so it doesn't cost much.
So, with just a simple bamboo basket to catch fish, my mother raised us to be adults. I left my hometown to live elsewhere, study and work.
The goby fish seasons gradually faded from my mind. Then one day, I happened to be walking in the market and saw a country woman sitting on her sandals selling goby fish eggs. My childhood memories came flooding back. I suddenly remembered, is the season of red water fish back?
I picked up the phone and called my mother: "Does our hometown have goby eggs this season, Mom?". My mother sighed, her voice full of worry: "Why are you asking that now? The fish lay eggs this season, but they are rare! I was going to buy some to cook with pepper for you to eat, but I haven't seen any for a few days."
Then my mother said, with the indiscriminate extermination, not allowing them to reproduce, and the polluted water source, the fish gradually became scarce. The season of goby eggs is only a memory. The season of red water has come again, but it is sad to see the goby eggs disappear somewhere.
Source: https://danviet.vn/nuoc-son-o-mien-tay-la-nuoc-gi-sao-he-co-nuoc-son-la-ca-bong-trung-loai-ca-dac-san-boi-di-de-20241025150855762.htm
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