The following dishes are of the Vietnamese West styles which most tourists hardly ignore when they stop by Can Tho.

Mam hotpot

Mam hotpot eating with sesbania flowers. Photo: Thanh Vien

The Westland of Vietnam is the homeland of Mam hotpot. However, Can Tho is considered as a place to turn this simple dish into a delicacy. This hotpot is cooked with fish paste and like an interference harmony of Khmer cuisine with primitive southern migrants.

In Mekong Delta, any dishes from stock, stir fry, soup ..., are eaten together with flowers or vegetables. Among these, the more vegetables are added the tastier hot pot is, especially shoots, young leaves and indispensable cotton. The list includes yellow burrhead, spinach, water-lily, violet sesbania flowers, pumpkin flowers, psophocarpus beans, flammulina velutipes, neptunias, banana flowers, sesbania flowers. All these ingredients represents a typical flood season.

Saigon also sells this kind of fish soup, but nowhere has flowers growing in flood seasons like in the Mekong Delta. The Mekong Delta people often joke that there is nothing as cool as a cup of this hot pot which is full of vegetables, shrimp, eel, sutchi catfish, ... and is noisily eaten on rainy days.

High heat cooked fish sauce with mixed countryside vegetables

The taste is more delicious when it is eaten with different kinds of vegetable. Photo: Thanh Vien

High heat cooked fish sauce used to be considered as “food of the poor” of the native people. When the life is destitute, people just need to put a pan on the fire, pour a little fish sauce into a pan, and sweep back and forth with chopsticks. When the fish sauce is condensed and clinged on to the pan with fragrant smell, this high heat cooked fish sauce is done and we can eat with rice soup or with vegetables and white rice. The way people make this dish is used to name itself.

This high heat cooked fish sauce is served in restaurants nowadays. However, it is improved by adding many ingredients such as dried shrimp, chopped meat or just simply fish sauce with grilled and grounded onion. This dish which is dusted with a little pepper is also a sauce for a plate of many kinds of boiled vegetables.

Especially, this dish is more delicious if it is eaten with the rice crust at the bottom of the pot. It is easy to make people feel homesick as holding a piece of crispy rice crust at the bottom of the pot which is added a few stalks of vegetables placing on top a little high heat cooked fish sauce on their hands.

Sweet and sour sutchi catfish soup with sesbania flowers

The dark violet color of sesbania flowers make the soup strange-looking. Photo: Thanh Vien

Perch fish braised in clay pot

Perch fish braised stink of pepper. Photo: Thanh Vien

Due to its increasingly rareness, perch fish is usually fed by people, so its taste has grass smell with its thick organs and friable meat. When bailing ponds or ditches, if luckily people can catch some genuine perch fish. Although it is tiny, it will bring over with fragrant smell if grilled or cooked with brine.

For perch fish or other kinds of fish, the most delicious way to cook is braised besides making soup. The process consists of marinated fish with fish sauce, chili, pepper, garlic, onion, then put the pot on the fire. To have delicious and tasty fish, we should braise in a clay pot to keep the sweet of fish meat and water down to an appropriate level. Dusting some pepper on the surface, braised perch served with the rice crust on the bottom of the pot is the most tasty.

Snail baked with pepper

Don’t waste water inside baked snail as eating the dish of snail baked with pepper. Photo: Thanh Vien

Beside perch fish, snail is also a produce that the nature grants for farmers in all regions, not only for people in the Mekong Delta. Snail is baked right after the order is placed because it is done very quickly.

Snail is baked on coal grates when the heat is absorbed and its cover will be detached. Then, the cook can add grounded pepper (or salt and pepper). When the water inside of snail is boiled, it is ready to serve. Before baking, some people also marinate snails with spices to make the dish more delicious.

Fried rice cup cake

The quintessence of culinary of Khmer people is contained in the  Fried rice cup cake. Photo: Thanh Vien

One of many specialties of Tay Do is fried rice cup cake. Fried rice cup cake originally comes from Khmer people, and it is sold along the road in many provinces of the Mekong Delta. This dish has the same ingredients and recipe as pan cake, but it is thicker with more pie inside.

The pie of the fried rice cup cake is mixed with green bean, minced meat, chopped manioc, and then poured into a mould of flour which has the size of a bowl. Then, the cake is dipped into oil pan, fried until the color turning into light yellow, and put some tiny shrimps on the surface.

The greasy taste of flour is blended with tiny shrimp’s sweetness. The crust is crispy and does not make people feel lose appetite. This fried rice cup cake is eaten in the same way as pan cake by rolling with vegetables and dipping into chili garlic sauce.