Falling in love with sour fish soup.

While the central region was experiencing a stormy, rainy season, and I was thinking about a steaming bowl of sour fish soup, my older brother, who had just returned from Ca Mau , added a photo to Facebook. The small, delicate fish, with their shimmering white and silver scales, looked so radiant. And here are the water hyacinths, the flowers that keep company with the canals and waterways, always rustling in a vibrant yellow, rain or shine. Even without the flowers, the water lily shoots still evoke in my mind that soulful, deep purple hue.

Then there are the evenly spaced, slightly pink banana blossoms, and the tender green water spinach stalks that curl up as they are split, their crispness immediately noticeable. These are the ingredients that make up the enchanting sour soup that I once enjoyed on a trip to the Mekong Delta.

Ingredients for sour fish soup with snakehead fish

In the Mekong Delta this season, you can order a pot of sour fish soup with snakehead fish at almost any eatery on the street. But I prefer that pot of soup "placed" amidst the flood season in the Mekong Delta: glimpses of women in checkered scarves on small boats, flocks of birds fluttering across the sky, riverside eateries with vast coconut groves submerged in muddy silt, and water lilies gently held by young women…

The young snakehead fish, brought in from upstream, become incredibly sweet from the inside out when they enter the sour soup. You have to bite into each piece of fresh, white fish meat, each tender bone, each bile before it turns bitter… And the genuinely pungent taste of the water hyacinth, the delicately sweet crispness of the water lily shoots, the mature astringent taste of the banana blossom, and the simple, rustic aroma of the tender water spinach stems always blend and spread throughout the dish.

To be honest, my Central Vietnamese palate loves sour soup with the salty taste of salt, the sourness of starfruit, and the flavor of giang leaves… I thought that a typical Central Vietnamese sour soup had become a staple in my culinary taste, at least for me. Turns out that wasn't the case! The sour fish soup with linh fish from the Mekong Delta convinced my prejudiced palate from the very first sip. It was surprisingly sweet. But after regaining my composure, I realized that the sweetness of the sugar was balanced by the refreshing sourness of tamarind, which calmed me down. And I realized that the sourness of the tamarind and the sweetness of the sugar had worked together perfectly. So, after the first sip, the linh fish and the water spinach had won me over. To put it more dramatically, I was completely defeated by the Mekong Delta sour soup.

My older brother, a fan of the writer Son Nam, said: To cook snakehead fish soup, you have to know how to properly extract the sourness from tamarind. That means you have to choose unripe tamarind, boil it, peel it, mash the pulp, and then add it to the soup. If you just throw the whole tamarind into the pot, the sourness will turn into bitterness.

I really like the amber-colored, "original" chili fish sauce placed next to the soup pot. It's the perfect spot for the snakehead fish. Wow! The snakehead fish, taken from the steaming hot soup and then dipped into the chili fish sauce, is so flavorful. The snakehead fish has... built a monkey bridge, sending my memories to my younger sister in Ben Tre, Con Phung. I jokingly texted: Please ship a pot of snakehead fish sour soup to Quang Ngai .

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