Pieng Van soup

(Baonghean) - At 5am, Mrs. Luong Thi Quyet (55 years old) in Pieng Van village, Dong Van commune (Que Phong) woke up and almost finished pounding 2 kilos of rice to make canh mot. Seeing me awake, she put down the pestle, smiled brightly, revealing two rows of black teeth, and said: "It's so cold, why get up in the cold? Maybe it's a strange bed and I can't sleep?". Having said that, she raised the pestle again and pounded it loudly on the wooden mortar. I helped her pound the rice and listened to her tell the story of canh mot of the Thai people of Pieng Van...

After pounding the rice, Mrs. Quyet's hands turned purple. She put her hands on her cheeks to keep warm. She said: "Later, eat hot rice soup, add some wild chili, it will warm from the stomach to the whole body, then you will not feel cold anymore." The Thai people of Pieng Van also call rice soup "canh ngao". I don't understand? Rice soup originates from straw fire, let me tell you."

While lighting the fire, she said: When she was still in the old village (Pieng Van village is nearly 5 kilometers from the center of Dong Van commune, when building Hua Na Hydropower Plant, Pieng Van migrated to the new village 2 years ago, also named Pieng Van village), the people grew a lot of rice on the fields and farms. The rice they ate this year was still left over for the next year. There was also a lot of straw, people used straw instead of firewood, and also used straw to line the buffalo and cows during the cold winter. The straw never ran out, so the people rarely used firewood. Every time they cooked the soup, the straw burned fiercely, the fire rose up to the lid, when they opened the lid, the soup boiled, and the flour splashed all over their faces, sometimes the sticky flour stuck to their skin and burned their skin. Me Quyet remembered the day she first became a daughter-in-law, the first time she and her husband cooked soup. When Mr. Quyet opened the lid to add rice flour, he told his wife: "Stay far away, or else the rice flour will jump on your face and burn you." With his left hand, he reduced the straw fire, and with his right hand, he stirred the flour. The flour jumped all over his face. He bent down to stir constantly to prevent the flour from clumping... Every time he cooked rice flour soup, the people could never forget the blazing straw fire and the gurgling sound of the boiling pot of soup...

While Mrs. Quyet and I were engrossed in conversation, Mr. Quyet came up from the stilt house, speaking happily in the cold: "Grandma, my father and I just caught some squirrels, this afternoon we will have squirrels to cook soup, a farewell meal for the journalists returning to the lowlands." He sat down by the fire, warming his cold hands over the stove. Mr. Quyet was as engrossed in talking about soup as his grandmother. He said that in the old days in the old village, every time people went to clear fields or go down to the stream to catch fish, they always scooped up a bowl of soup to bring along to eat. The Thai people used large, old bamboo tubes (or reeds) to hold soup, which was both convenient and kept them warm in the winter. In the summer, there was no need to wrap straw around the bamboo tubes because cold soup was even cooler. The lid of the bamboo tube was also the lid of the bamboo eye, which looked very beautiful. On cold days like this, take a large handful of straw, put it in a basket, put the bamboo tube containing soup in the basket, then cover it with straw, and the soup would still be hot at noon. Each family brings a few bamboo tubes and a tray of rice, enough to feed three or four people for the day.

One day, this family cooked fish, another family cooked meat, and they ate together, very lively. In the evening, when the bamboo tubes were empty, the basket was full of wild banana hearts...

In those days, the movement of pounding rice to make mot was also fun, the village had no electricity, people gathered to pound rice on moonlit nights by the Hinh stream running through the village. The stream had many fish. Men pounded rice, women caught fish. People rarely sold the fish they caught, most of them were boned, the fish meat was braised in a big pot for family food, mainly used to cook mot fish soup. On occasions when the family had weddings or engagements of children or grandchildren, people crowded together to pound rice, pound lemongrass, and cook mot happily. That tradition still exists today.

To have a delicious dish of ot, it takes a lot of effort! The preparation time is 4 times longer than the cooking time. Cooking time is only about 30 minutes to cook a large pot of ot soup that can feed a dozen people. But preparing the ingredients to make a pot of ot soup is very meticulous and elaborate. The ingredients include rice, fish or meat, lemongrass leaves, vegetables, wild pepper, chili, vegetables, and white salt. After cleaning the rice, wash it with clean water, then soak it in warm water for about 30 minutes. Scoop the rice out into a sieve to drain the water, then put the rice in a wooden mortar. The mortar is the size of a bowl, pound it very small and smooth until you can rub a little bit of the rice on your fingertip and feel it is smooth, then scoop it out into a woven bamboo sieve (or pot). Next, pound the lemongrass leaves. Cooking a pot of ot soup that can feed more than 10 people requires about half a bowl of dried lemongrass. Just pounding 2 kilos of rice flour and half a small bowl of lemongrass powder alone takes nearly 2 hours.

A bowl of salt and chili is indispensable. Tiny green and red chili peppers are mixed with white salt and sprinkled with wild pepper. Mrs. Quyet said that when eating soup with this spice, it is spicy, fragrant, and rich...

Me Quyet in Pieng Van village makes a soup dish.

As Mrs. Quyet ladled the soup into each bowl, she said, "Later, we will eat soup with wild vegetables, mustard greens, lettuce, coriander, and chives grown in the fields." Mr. Quyet put the drained basket of vegetables on a tray, reached up to the kitchen loft, and took a very carefully wrapped bag. He said, "In this bag is the powdered seeds of the dot plant. Eating a dish with dot plant is very precious. When there are distinguished guests or on Tet, people only use dot plant powder." Mr. Quyet used a rice spoon to scoop 2 spoons of dot plant powder into the pot and stirred well. It had a strange aroma, the first time I had tasted it, it was fragrant. He held a bunch of dried dot seeds hanging on the kitchen loft and boasted, "Dot plant is very precious, not only used for a delicious pot of soup but also used as a spice for other dishes such as stir-fries, boiled dishes... Dot plant is also used to treat headaches, flu, strokes, broken limbs..."

Mễ Quyết scooped a bowl of ot soup and invited me, her voice gentle: “There are two ways to eat ot, dip wild vegetables in ot soup, or pour ot soup with rice, that is the way of eating of the Thai people”. It has been a long time since I have seen the delicious, attractive ot soup of the Thai people. It is not only a delicious dish, cool in the summer, warm in the winter, but also a lovely culinary culture of the Pieng Van people!

Thu Huong