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 her black teeth, and said: "It's so cold, why get up in the cold? Or is it because the bed is strange and you 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, listening to her tell the story of Canh Mot of the Thai Pieng Van people...

After pounding the rice, Aunt Quyet’s hands turned purple. She put her hands on her cheeks to keep warm. She said: “In a moment, eat hot ot soup, add some wild chili peppers, it will warm your stomach and spread throughout your body, and you will not feel cold anymore”. The Thai Pieng Van people also call ot soup “canh dau”. I don’t understand? “Canh dau” originated from straw fire, let me tell you.”

While lighting the fire, my grandmother told me: When I 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 fields. 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 them. My grandmother 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 our conversation, Mr. Quyet came up from the stilt house, speaking happily in the cold: "Grandma, my father and I just trapped some squirrels, and this afternoon we'll have squirrels to cook with mot 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 his conversation with mot soup as his grandmother. He said that in the old days in the old village, every time people went to clear fields or went to the stream to catch fish, they always scooped up a bowl of mot soup to bring along to eat. The Thai people used large, old bamboo (or reed) tubes to hold mot 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 the mot soup was even cooler when eaten cold. 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 mot in the basket, then cover it with straw, and the mot soup would still be hot by noon. Each family brought a few bamboo tubes and a tray of rice, enough for three or four people to eat for the day.

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

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 stewed in a big pot for family food, mainly used to cook mot fish soup. On occasions when the family had weddings or engagements of their children or grandchildren, people would 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 only takes about 30 minutes to cook a large pot of ot soup that can feed dozens of people. But preparing the ingredients to form 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 colander 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 mixture on your fingertip and it feels smooth, then scoop it out into a woven bamboo colander (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.

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 basket of vegetables that had been drained on a tray, reached up to the kitchen loft to get a very carefully wrapped bag. He said: "In this bag is the powder of the dotted seeds. Eating a dish with dotted seeds is very precious. When there are distinguished guests or on Tet, people only use dotted seeds." Mr. Quyet used a rice spoon to scoop 2 spoons of dotted seeds into the pot of dotted seeds and stirred them well. A strange aroma, the first time I had tasted it, it was fragrant. He held a bunch of dried dotted seeds hanging on the kitchen loft and boasted: "Dotted seeds are very precious, not only used to make delicious soup but also used as a spice for other dishes such as stir-frying, boiling... Dotted seeds are also used to treat headaches, flu, stroke, broken limbs...".

Mễ Quyết scooped a bowl of ột soup and invited me, her voice gentle: “There are two ways to eat ột, dip ột in wild vegetables, or pour ột with rice, that is the way the Thai people eat”. It has been a long time since I have seen the delicious, attractive ột 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 Văn people!

Thu Huong