Palm season

For a long time, palm trees have been closely associated with the lives of the people of the Land of Ancestors, from branches and leaves used to make blinds, brooms, roofs... Then winter comes, when the fruit bunches are ripe, dark in color and shiny, the palm om dish becomes a unique, unforgettable hometown gift that is not available everywhere.

When the fruit bunches are ripe, dark in color and shiny, they can be picked to make "qua om" (Vietnamese palm fruit).

The best palm fruit must be ripe and have a shiny shell. After picking, the palm fruit is put into a large basket and then rubbed vigorously and continuously by hand to clean the shell. The raw palm fruit has an astringent taste, but when processed, the dishes made from the palm fruit have a sweet, fatty taste. The best palm fruit is the fruit taken from a palm tree that has never had its leaves cut off. Because palm fruit grown from trees that have had their leaves cut off are often stunted, have large seeds, are astringent, and lose the characteristic flavor of the palm.

The best om palm fruit must be ripe and have shiny skin.

The way to steam the palm fruit must also be very skillful, the water must not be too hot, not too cold. Because, if the water is too cold, the palm fruit will not be cooked, if the water is too hot, the fruit will be hard, losing all the characteristic fatty flavor. Therefore, the person steaming the palm fruit needs to know the water temperature and the cooking time so that the palm fruit is delicious when taken out to eat. Usually, to cook the palm fruit and keep the fatty flavor, you only need to steam it for 10 minutes to enjoy...

The water used to soak the palm leaves should not be too hot or too cold, or the palm leaves will be delicious and not hard.

The soft, tender palm fruit, when split open, is golden yellow like honey, chewy and sweet to eat, has no worms or astringency, is a good palm fruit. On the contrary, the green, astringent, and wormy palm fruit is inedible.

It is known that palm trees usually flower and bear fruit from around the middle of the 7th lunar month. By the end of October and the beginning of November (lunar calendar), the palm fruits begin to ripen, the color of the shell changes from sky blue to dark green.

Dip the grilled fish in fish sauce, add sugar, sesame salt, peanut salt or chili sauce depending on each person's preference.

Co Om is a unique dish of the Phu Tho countryside.

In addition to the palm dish, people also prepare palm sticky rice and palm pickled vegetables, which are also very attractive. For palm sticky rice, after the palm is cooked, use your fingers to gently separate each part of the golden palm meat. Mix the palm meat with fragrant sticky rice, sprinkle with a little salt, then put it in the steamer, simmer, and steam until done. When the pulp and palm oil have soaked into the sticky rice and turned into the color of crab bricks, the aroma of the sticky rice and the rich smell of the palm fruit have spread throughout the house, it means the palm sticky rice is done. When the sticky rice is cooked, add fried onions and fat to make the palm sticky rice even more attractive.

For pickled palm fruit, after being cooked, the palm fruit is poured into a basket, waited for it to drain, then the seeds are removed and the flesh of the palm fruit is retained. The final step is to put the flesh in a jar or pot, sprinkle salt evenly and leave it for another 3-4 days to have the salted palm fruit to eat with rice.

There used to be a garden of several dozen palm trees. Later, to give land to her children to build houses and develop the economy , Mrs. Ngo Thi Kim Thuan - Huu Do 1 area, Hop Nhat commune, Doan Hung district cut down the palm garden, leaving only a few trees for fruit. She said: The palm trees left are all sticky palm trees, with large, delicious, fatty fruits, and clusters of fruit, each year yielding about 50-60kg of fruit. In addition to keeping them for family consumption and sharing with relatives and friends, the remaining palm trees can also be sold for nearly 2-3 million VND depending on the time. In particular, there are not enough ripe palm trees for customers to order. Many people who try them once want to buy more but have to wait until next year.

The palm fruit is a strange dish, because it is not salty, not spicy, not sour and not sweet like other common fruits. The palm fruit only has the fatty, nutty, creamy taste of the golden flesh, soft as velvet, sticky when chewed in the mouth, mixed with the astringent taste of the thin outer shell. However, whoever has eaten it and liked it will be addicted to that flavor, even though they are far away from home, every time the season comes, they will remember it forever.

Ha Tung

Source: https://baophutho.vn/mua-co-chin-224687.htm