Back to home garden vegetables

It's really interesting to come home, look around and visit the garden, see what vegetables are hidden under the shade of the trees or on the fence, and pick those lush green stalks with your own hands.

The succulent branches of crab legs, dotted with clusters of small grapes, swayed in the wind. The most enjoyable thing was to trot into the kitchen, helping mom cook, chattering away about the “poor old days”.

Back then, after every market day, my mother would use her small amount of money to quickly buy some fish, shrimp, and prawns, then run to the garden to pick the remaining vegetable shoots to cook a big pot of soup, and quickly braise a pot of fish with salty fish sauce.

It can be said that the soup cooked by my mother has many variations! Sometimes, there are green amaranth, purple amaranth, Malabar spinach, and if there is squash at home, then you can add squash too. Even though it is just one recipe: fresh shrimp, crushed, seasoned with a little salt and spices, then put into a pot of boiling water before adding the garden vegetables. But the flavor of the soup is always deep, light, and refreshing.

My sisters and I also really like simple dishes that combine the salty, bitter, sour, and sweet flavors of water spinach, bitter greens, and pennywort salads.

Growing up a bit, I became addicted to boiled pennywort, sometimes sweet potato leaves, water spinach, squash shoots, gourd shoots... The natural sweetness of the vegetable blends with the salty, spicy taste of the braised dish eaten with a bowl of sweet potato rice, both rich and memorable.

Recently, the trend of traveling to gardens, to the suburbs and countryside has become popular again. The distance between regions is shortened, many people enjoy country vegetables and remember them forever, ready to buy them as gifts for relatives and colleagues.

The urban meal is therefore richer with sweet green color.
Eat seasonal homegrown vegetables: in spring there is amaranth, mustard greens, in summer there is pennywort, water mimosa, bitter vegetables... When the weather gradually turns to autumn, the street markets start to see more water mimosa.

Watercress can be made into many delicious, rustic dishes. People often mix watercress with herbs, boiled purslane... and dip it in braised fish sauce or braised meat. But the most popular is still crab salad.

Homegrown vegetables are rustic ingredients so processing is very simple, especially with watercress. If you are too fussy, the flavor will be "hybrid" and not delicious.

Crab salad is no exception to that rule. Fish and meat salads are often meticulously prepared with many steps, but with watercress, you only need to wash and drain.

Cut the vegetables into bite-sized pieces or leave them whole, add a little sweet and sour fish sauce, thick tomato sauce, season to taste, then just squeeze in some lemon juice and add the roasted peanuts.

Each green crab claw, when chewed, immediately feels the crunchy texture and the sweetness lingering on the tip of the tongue. Mixed with that is the fatty taste of roasted peanuts, the mild sourness of lemon, tomato and the spicy taste of herbs, garlic and chili...

Nowadays, country garden vegetables often appear on the menu of luxury restaurants, from stir-fried dishes, mixed dishes to soups. Maybe the vegetable dishes at parties are more elaborate, not as simple as in the poor countryside, combined with stylized beef, sardines, dried shrimp, fresh shrimp, crab, scallops... But I am sure, in my heart, like many people, I still like the simple, rustic flavor of home-cooked dishes the most.

Source: https://baoquangnam.vn/ve-voi-rau-vuon-nha-3142291.html