When mentioning Ha Tien, many people immediately think of the strange attraction of a cuisine that harmonizes many Vietnamese – Chinese – Khmer culinary styles. Only when you go do you know, you have to try it once to understand why the delicious dishes in Ha Tien make so many diners fall in love with this land.
The appearance of Ca Xiu makes you Many people are shy.
Anyone who sees a ca Xiu feels afraid to touch it with chopsticks. The appearance of ca xiu is quite similar to bivalve seafood shell but also resembles an insect with a long and large antennae. If it were not introduced by a local person, no diner would have the “courage” to enjoy this strange dish for themselves.
Ca Xiu lives mainly in brackish river and estuarine environments with many in Dong Ho lagoon, Ha Tien town. Like Ca Xiu clams, they live under muddy water, so they have long antennae to stick into the ground for the purpose of finding food. Ca Xiu season is in full swing from June to August every year.
No one dares to eat cauliflower, but once they try it, they will see that the flavor of this specialty dish has a very unique charm.
When they catch cauliflower, they salt it with soy sauce. similar to three-knot salt. Since then, shops have bought salted ca Xiu to reprocess to create “unique” dishes for Ha Tien cuisine. In particular, Ca Xiu is delicious and nutritious, especially the beard part (good for men’s vitality). It is crunchy and chewy, so it is very popular with men.
Fishermen wash it after catching Ca Xiu. The mud keeps the tail and makes fish sauce. For every layer of green beans, sprinkle a layer of salt on top. Depending on preference, people can salt with salt water or salt and add sugar to make the fish sauce sour quickly. The process requires workers to have technical experience and ingenuity. Whether the quality of Ca Xiu fish sauce is good or not depends on this method of salting. If you add too few ingredients, the cauliflower will be damaged. If the salt is too salty, the cauliflower will turn black.
Scoop ca xiu onto a plate and eat with white rice, a very strange flavor that you should try when you come to Ha Tien.
The freshest ca xiu is still salted in the morning and stir-fried in the afternoon because at that time the salty taste of the salt has not yet fully penetrated into the meat. Stir fry the garlic until fragrant, add the eggplant and stir well until the spices are absorbed, then season with a little sugar and pepper to taste. When eating, diners just need to separate the outer shell and then take only the meat inside. Indigenous people believe that in the past, on boats going out to sea, they always kept jars of cauliflower to eat with hot rice. This traditional dish has now become a specialty of Ha Tien.
Later, when many people learned about this rustic dish, ca xiu was prepared in more ways. Another very famous dish in Ha Tien that often appears on the menu is ca xiu salad. The way to prepare the dish is similar to mango salad and toad salad.
Salted eggplant is blanched in hot water to reduce saltiness. The chef just needs to chop the mango into fine fibers, mix it with coriander and then sprinkle it with sugar vinegar mixed with a little Phu Quoc fish sauce to create a rich flavor.
Ca xiu always pleases every diner when coming to Ha Tien.
Mix the ca xiu and this mixture together and sprinkle with roasted peanuts and fried onions to create more flavor Taste means the dish is finished. Some people even add chopped onions… for taste. The sweet, salty, sour and spicy taste of the dish makes diners feel more and more attractive the more they eat.
The appeal of a uniquely rich rustic dish called ca xiu makes Hanoi cuisine Tien becomes unforgettable in the hearts of diners. Coming to Ha Tien, every tourist should stop to enjoy a plate of ca xiu and talk about an interesting, poetic trip full of aftertaste of sea cuisine.
Hoang Ngoc (Summary)
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