Back to home garden vegetables

*This purslane salad is a simple yet flavorful dish.*

The feeling of coming home, admiring and exploring the garden, checking for hidden vegetables under the shady trees or on the fence, and picking those fresh green leaves with your own hands—that's truly delightful.

The succulent branches of the crab claw plant, dotted with tiny clusters of seeds, swayed in the breeze. The best part was running around in the kitchen, helping Mom prepare the food, and chatting excitedly about "the days of poverty."

Back then, after the market day, my mother would take the vegetables and fruits from the garden to sell, and with the meager money she earned, she would quickly buy some fish, shrimp, and prawns from the fields. Then she would rush to the garden to gather the remaining vegetable shoots to cook a large pot of soup and quickly stew a pot of fish with salty fish sauce.

It's safe to say that my mother's garden soup comes in a variety of variations! Sometimes she uses green or purple amaranth, spinach, and if she has loofah, she adds it too. Even though it's just one recipe: fresh shrimp and prawns are pounded until smooth, seasoned with a little salt and spices, then added to boiling water before the garden vegetables are added. Yet, the soup always tastes rich, light, and refreshing.

My sisters and I also really enjoy simple dishes with a perfect balance of salty, bitter, sour, and sweet flavors, such as salads made with water spinach, bitter greens, and centella.

As I grew older, I developed a fondness for boiled pennywort, sometimes sweet potato leaves, water spinach, pumpkin shoots, gourd shoots… The natural sweetness of the vegetables blended with the salty, spicy flavor of the stew, eaten with a bowl of rice and sweet potatoes – a truly rich and memorable experience.

Recently, there has been a resurgence of tourism focused on gardens, suburbs, and rural areas. The distance between regions has shortened, allowing many people to enjoy the delicious country vegetables, creating unforgettable memories and prompting them to seek out and purchase them as gifts for family and colleagues.

City meals are therefore enriched by the sweet, refreshing green color.
Eat seasonal vegetables from your home garden; in spring there's amaranth and mustard greens, in summer there's centella, purslane, and bitter greens… As the weather gradually changes to autumn, purslane starts appearing in many markets and streets.

Purslane can be prepared into many delicious, rustic dishes. It's often mixed with other herbs and boiled purslane, and dipped in fish or meat stew sauce. But the most popular dish is still purslane salad.

Homegrown vegetables are a simple, rustic ingredient, so they can be prepared very simply, especially purslane; if you overcomplicate the cooking process, it will result in a mixed flavor that's not as delicious.

Crab claw salad is no exception to that principle. While fish and meat salads are usually meticulously prepared with many steps, crab claw salad only requires washing and draining.

Break 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 squeeze in some lemon juice and add the roasted peanuts.

Each vibrant green crab claw offers a delightful crunch and a lingering sweetness on the tongue. This is blended with the richness of roasted peanuts, the subtle sourness of lemon and tomato, and the tanginess of herbs, garlic, and chili...

Nowadays, vegetables from rural gardens often appear on the menus of upscale restaurants, from stir-fries and salads to soups. Perhaps the vegetable dishes at these parties are more elaborate, not as simple as in the countryside, and are creatively combined with various meats like beef, sardines, dried shrimp, fresh shrimp, crab, and scallops... But I'm sure that, in my heart, as well as in the hearts of many, the most beloved is still the simple, rustic flavor of home-cooked meals.

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