More than just a simple dish, this beautiful floral masterpiece is a walk of summer flavor.
In recent years, natural flowers blooming in the summer have also been used to prepare delicious dishes, not only limited to popular dishes but increasingly favored in the menus of high-end restaurants.
Soap flower salad – a delicious and unique dish
Cu Lao Dung – Soc Trang (now Can Tho city), home to the largest flooded cork forest in the Mekong Delta, was once known as the cork land of the West. This place is also the origin of the beautiful, strange and mouth-watering dish of cork cotton salad with a very Western style: cork cotton salad with raw fish sauce mixed with garlic and chili, extremely rich.
The cork tree – a tall woody species that is compatible with the mud and water of river banks, has long been considered a strong shield for river banks, preventing landslides, retaining soil, retaining silt, and keeping a space of nostalgia in the hearts of people far from home.
Bunches of cork flowers cling to the branches and leaves, pointing down, showing off a bunch of purple pink stamens mixed with lovely white, swaying in the inviting wind. Cork cotton is not fragrant, only has a slight pungent, astringent smell.
The buds have green sepals and sepals, tightly wrapped in a bunch of smooth, beautiful stamens like silk threads, surrounding the main pistil in the middle. When the cork bud is about the size of a tamanu fruit, the petals will gradually open, the stamens will open, and long, delicate strands will show off their beauty.
The stamens are very fragile, if only the wind blows or bees and butterflies roam around, they will fall to pieces at the base. If you want to pick cork flowers to make salad, you have to go to the river at 3-4 am, hold down the bunches of buds, pick them neatly and bring them back. At this time, the cork bud has just stirred, the second layer has just appeared, and has not yet fully opened up, it will still lie obediently on the stem.
Soap cotton seems to go well with many types of meat, shrimp and shrimp, so all over the country there are some really delicious cork cotton salads: chicken and cork cotton salad, cork cotton clove shrimp salad, cork cotton shrimp meat salad, beef corn salad with cork cotton… Or when you’re tired of salad, eat a bunch of cork cotton with a fragrant piece of fish sauce, smelling the smell of copper carrying so much pity and harm!
Soap salad also goes well with swallows from Quang Tri. That day, I encountered the cork flower swallow salad and couldn’t resist its inviting appeal. With its refreshing properties, the slightly astringent taste of cork cotton is really sensitive in stimulating the taste buds, increasing deliciousness, and reducing the greasiness of high-protein dishes.
Poinciana flower salad
People say happily when looking at the eye-catching plate of Poinciana flower salad on the table: turns out, I’m eating it all summer!
Poinciana flowers – the bright red sparks of summer no longer have to fall and wither quietly somewhere. When chefs invented the poinciana flower salad, these brilliant flower petals once again bloomed on the dining table.
The delicious taste of poinciana flower salad is therefore ranked at the top of the menu of luxury restaurants, only after lotus dish.
Poinciana flower petals are fragile, when preparing a salad, the chef must cherish each petal, otherwise the beautiful petals will only be left with a bruised handful. After being harvested, poinciana flowers will be pre-processed to remove the acrid taste, skillfully mixed with other vegetables such as carrots, papaya, herbs before being added to main ingredients such as shredded chicken, mushrooms, beef, boiled shrimp, crispy pig ears…
A plate of sweet and sour poinciana flower salad is rustic but has the intimate beauty of the Southern summer. Poinciana flowers are also a food that vegetarian restaurants are favorably including in their summer cuisine menus, lasting until the end of the Vu Lan season.
Summer flower salad is not only a simple filling dish but also a rhythmic harmony of nature. Flower petals also remind people to appreciate the closest natural foods.
Silent gifts of heaven and earth, if people know how to exploit them properly, they will become delicious dishes, the quintessence of local cuisine, even though they are very rustic and poor.
