Fragrant palm oil of my hometown

If you take the train to my hometown, you will hear the street vendor calling out: “Cố ốm đi, ten thousand per kilo, fatty golden coc”. Remember to buy some and invite your friends to enjoy it together, otherwise you have missed out on an interesting dish.

I remember when we were little, my sisters and I used to wait for our mother to come home from the market to ask for gifts, each season had a different kind of gift. At the end of February, there would be palm fruit, my sisters and I would share the bag of palm fruit that our mother bought, eating noisily, our faces still stained with the color of the palm fruit. Sometimes my mother would buy fresh palm fruit and bring it home to steam by herself. As we young people used to tease each other, choosing palm fruit was “an art”. Good palm fruit is taken from a palm tree that has never had its leaves cut off, because people usually grow palms to use leaves to roof houses and make brooms. If the palm tree has had its leaves cut off even once, the palm fruit will be stunted, the seeds will be large and very astringent, losing all its characteristic flavor. Choose long palm fruit, small seeds, thick core, press with your finger to see a rich yellow color like chicken fat. The older the palm, the more delicious and fatty it is.

Before braising, wash the palm and shake it with sharp objects such as bamboo or broken glass to remove the outer shell of the palm to reduce the acridity. To braising the palm, you need to know the technique, use well water and heat it up to a moderate temperature. Braising the palm for 15 to 20 minutes, when squeezing, the palm will feel soft, the water will be golden and shimmering like chicken fat. Braising the palm has a thin, dark brown shell, the palm core is yellow, the thicker the better. If braising with boiling water, the time will be faster, remember to cover the lid tightly when braising. Pay attention to the time to match the boiling temperature of the water, otherwise the palm will become hard and acrid and inedible.

The braised palm can be eaten alone to enjoy its rich, fatty flavor, or dipped in fish sauce, chili, or salt. It can also be eaten with rice...

In addition to eating the palm fruit, people in my hometown also choose the fruit with thick, fatty flesh and then scrape off the skin to make pickles. Palm pickles have the salty taste of salt and the fatty, nutty taste of palm. They can be eaten with rice or as a snack, both are delicious.

If you visit any family in my hometown, when you see the melon dish on the dinner table, open your heart to enjoy and accept it. Surely you will never forget its taste even if you eat all kinds of delicacies in the future.

Source: https://baodaklak.vn/du-lich/202503/thom-bui-co-om-que-toi-7c7007a/