Salty pickled melon

There are dishes that, just by their name, you can immediately tell where they are from. For example, pickled melon is from Quang Nam and not from any other place.

Mixed melon. Photo: Nhu Hien

When I was a little kid, every time I saw a few pickled melons wrapped in banana leaves in my basket at the market, I used to think: “They are both salty and sour, not delicious at all, so why do you keep buying them?” But now that I am far away, I sometimes miss that salty and sour taste.

A simple country vegetable stall with bunches of water spinach and banana stalks, a basket of white bean sprouts picked early in the morning from the sandbank along the Thu Bon River, and always a bowl of golden pickled melons to entice. Then the pickled melons are gently put into the baskets to go to the market, following the mothers home. The melons are thinly sliced, rinsed with a few waters to reduce the saltiness, then braised with fish or stir-fried with meat, sprinkled with a little onion and pepper, and the pot of rice is completely gone.

In the countryside, people often braise fish with melon. The sticky rice braised fish is accompanied by salted melon, ripe pineapple, young jackfruit... which was shown to me by my grandmother, and then to me by my mother. Maybe because the family was poor and had many children, and the fish was expensive, so they had to add pineapple and pickled melon to make it enough for a large meal? I'm not sure, but salted melon braised with fish over a low heat to slowly absorb the braising liquid, the melon slices became rich and delicious. Strangely enough, the melon always finished before the fish.

When I first arrived in Saigon, craving for melons, I went to the market to ask, and was surprised when people pointed to the fruit stall. I was “shocked” to see the melons weighing several kilos. Seeing me standing there looking, the owner showed me how to eat them: peel them, mix them with milk and sugar, and eat them like eating avocado. Only then did I know that the tiny pickled melons were only available in my hometown. Looking at the melons of other countries like “little pigs”, I suddenly felt sorry for the dry fields where my parents used to hoe and grow melons. Lacking water, the melon fields had big, small, and flat melons, but my parents picked them all and salted them in a big jar to save for the flood season.

Pickled melons, no matter how you prepare them, will always be a delicious dish. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have meat or fish. Thinly sliced ​​melons, squeezed dry, mixed with garlic, chili, and fish sauce, can also become the main dish for a meal. With many children, every time my mother went to the market, she would buy melons in advance, so that if the house suddenly ran out of food, she could cut the melons and mix them with fish sauce. On hungry afternoons when working in the fields, my father would wear his muddy clothes, scoop up a bowl of cold rice, and sit in front of the porch eating melons mixed with fish sauce and chili. After eating, he would rush back to the fields to plow.

For me, the most elaborate and delicious dish is the melon salad. Thinly slice the melon, wash it and squeeze it dry. Toast some peanuts, pick some herbs from the garden. Saute the peanut oil with the shallots until fragrant, let the oil cool down, add the melon, mix with pepper, garlic, a little fish sauce, a little sugar, then add peanuts and herbs and you have a delicious dish.

In Saigon, there is no shortage of meat or exotic dishes. Yet strangely, I always miss the golden pickled melons at the corner of the market in my hometown. The countryside market with the bundle of sweet soup, the cake, the cool bag of xu xoa in my mother's shopping basket is always the sweet dream of every child in the countryside. The melons that please people far from home also follow the bus, making a journey to the vegetable trays of the city at Ba Hoa market. Those who are far from home like me, when seeing the melons, are as happy as meeting an old friend. I buy them, imitate my mother in the past by slicing the melons, frying the beans, and removing the oil. Using the crispy rice paper, scooping up a piece of mixed melon and putting it in my mouth, my heart is filled with longing...

Source: https://baodanang.vn/man-ma-dua-gang-muoi-3302795.html