Fragrant sour soup with star fruit leaves

Sour soup with young star fruit leaves has a refreshing taste and pleasant aroma. Photo: DIEU THONG

I never believed it when I heard that my best friend and her husband, who had good jobs and high incomes in the city, suddenly decided to quit their jobs and return to the forest. So now, I felt even more strange when I was present in their quiet wooden house on the back of the hill.

To get here, I had to go through a winding, difficult road, many sections requiring me to climb up stone steps, other sections requiring me to bend down and weave under old bamboo arches.

After a while of chatting, she talked about this forest, each day she realized more and more the special values of nature. Leaving me alone in the open-walled house, she took her basket and went out to the garden.

When she returned a short while later, she said that since it was summer in the forest, the vegetable patches she had planted had not sprouted any new shoots. They were all stunted and wet. In the garden near her house, there were only a few bamboo shoots and an old tamarind tree showing off its new shoots. For lunch, she would serve her some sour tamarind leaf soup.

I told them about my childhood garden. There were jackfruit trees, guava trees, and grapefruit trees planted in neat rows.

Species like dragon fruit, soursop, and tamarind are different. They grow wild, nestling close to the fence. I only know of their presence when one fine day, my grandmother brings me sweet fruits.

The star fruit tree in the garden is out of fruit season and is now sprouting new shoots. Photo: DIEU THONG

My tamarind tree usually produces new buds all year round. When the buds are old, they start to flower and bear fruit. One batch after another.

To cook sour soup with coccus leaves, my grandmother would choose the youngest shoots, leave the stems intact, wash them, and then lightly knead them. My grandmother said that no one ever cooks sour soup with coccus leaves with meat, fish is almost the only ingredient to go with it. There are snakehead fish, eels, and catfish.

In the summer, use sea fish instead. And no matter how carefully the fish is prepared and marinated with pepper, the finished product still retains a bit of its characteristic fishy taste, so if you want it to be delicious, it must be eaten hot. Grandma told the whole family not to be distracted, to set the dishes, sit down, and when she finished cooking, she would bring it out and eat together right away.

Grandma's warning seemed to be right, because whenever there was sour soup with star fruit leaves, the dining table was always full of members, the atmosphere was warm and cheerful.

Remove the meatiest pieces of fish, dip them in fish sauce and put them in the youngest grandchild's rice bowl, considering it a priority in the family that is always calculated from the youngest to the oldest.

Like now, my friend is the same. She is skillfully giving me a delicious, fatty fish tail. She said that it has been a long time since someone traveled so far to this edge of the forest to visit her and her husband. The new place is still wild and difficult, but the two of them are not lonely.

At night, I slept in the wooden house with a breeze, listening to her steady breathing as she slept. Outside, the sound of crickets, wind... The young tamarind trees had lost a few small branches because of the distant visitor, but soon, thanks to the morning dew and the forest sunshine, the tops of the trees would sprout new, rustling green buds.

Source: https://baoquangnam.vn/thom-lung-canh-chua-la-coc-3156311.html