Buzz
A visit to Kon Tum without trying leaf salad is like not visiting at all. This single dish adorned with 40-50 types of leaves, ranging from common greens like cabbage, perilla, ginseng, fig, mulberry, scallion, and coriander to rare leaves like mango, guava, sour leaves, cluster fig leaves, and many unique leaves of the Central Highlands.
Enjoying this dish requires finesse, not rushing to grab all leaves but following the proper procedure. First, use cabbage or mulberry leaves as wraps, then add sour leaves and other selected types, wrap into small cones, insert slices of pork belly, shrimp, pork skin... into the cones, add pepper and salt, a bit of dipping sauce.
Porcupine Meat
The Bru-Van Kieu ethnic group has various dishes made from forest vegetables and wild meats such as wild boar, deer meat, field mice. Among them are the dishes made from porcupine, both nutritious and delicious, with diverse cooking styles.
Porcupine meat with its sweet, cool nature is nourishing and aids digestion, can be cooked into many enticing dishes. Grilled porcupine, stuffed porcupine intestine, porcupine bone soup with cornmeal, porcupine wrapped in dong leaves. Each dish is unique, fragrant, thanks to the firm, fragrant porcupine meat, almost no fat, thick but crispy skin.
Bamboo Shoot Sticky Rice
Just a simple dish of sticky rice cooked with familiar forest bamboo shoots, but it has become a familiar breakfast with every resident of Kon Tum.
Making bamboo shoot sticky rice is quite simple and not too complicated. Fresh bamboo shoots, after being harvested from the forest, are peeled, cleaned, and cut into bite-sized pieces. After the initial processing to remove the bitterness, the bamboo shoots are stir-fried with spices to become flavorful. Choose good glutinous rice, soak it in diluted salt water with turmeric powder for color for about 8 hours, then cook until done.
With its distinctive charm in the vibrant colors with a hint of fresh yellow from the forest bamboo shoots, placed on a plate of turmeric sticky rice, bamboo shoot sticky rice entices passersby with its special aroma, causing many to stop just to buy a packet of sticky rice before heading to work. Inadvertently, that delicious dish becomes something to linger for those passing through the streets of the Central Highlands.
Tomato fish
If you ever have the chance to visit Kon Tum, don't miss the opportunity to savor the specialty dish of tomato fish from the Jê Triêng ethnic group, a dish rich in the flavors of the mountains and forests. Making tomato fish is simple but requires accuracy. The fish used for making tomato fish is a type of small flat minnow that lives in the streams and rivers of the Central Highlands.
The longer the tomato fish is kept, the better it tastes because the pieces of fish are infused with the flavors of the spices, making the eater perceive the salty taste of salt, the spicy taste of wild chili, the sweet taste of betel leaves, the fragrant taste of roasted rice, and the sour taste from this fermented mixture...
Kon Tum Fried Grasshoppers
If you ever find yourself in Kon Tum, don't forget to indulge in the specialty of fried grasshoppers to experience its fragrant, nutty, and rich flavor without feeling overwhelmed. While dishes made from grasshoppers might seem unfamiliar to those in the lowlands, for the ethnic minorities of Kon Tum, grasshopper dishes have become familiar and highly favored. There are many types of grasshoppers such as rice grasshoppers, bamboo grasshoppers, and fire grasshoppers, but only rice grasshoppers are delicious enough to be used in cooking.
To achieve a plate of golden and fragrant fried grasshoppers, it requires several cooking steps. First, the grasshoppers are thoroughly cleaned, drained, and then fried in hot oil. This process makes parts like the head, legs... of the grasshoppers crispy while retaining the naturally fatty flavor of the body. Next, to enhance the flavor, spices are added, along with chili peppers, lime leaves, and finely chopped lemongrass to sauté together. When adding the spices, it's crucial to sauté quickly so that the lime leaves retain their green color.
Golden Ant Salad
When in Sa Thầy district, Kon Tum, the habitat of the Rơ Măm ethnic group, you should try the unique and exotic golden ant salad. Many people feel apprehensive upon hearing the name of this dish, but once they try it, they can't get enough.
Selecting just the right size stream fish, cleaned and finely chopped, then squeezed to remove excess water to reduce the fishy smell. Golden ants are selected from a nest of young ants, along with their eggs, which are mashed separately. Mixing rock salt, green chili, and wild pepper with the fish and ants, adding a bit of roasted rice flour to enhance the aroma. When eating, wrap a bite-sized portion in sung leaves and enjoy, the sweet taste of stream fish blends with the fatty flavor of young ants, the sharp spiciness of pepper and chili create an exquisite taste.
Wild Rat Meat
The Jê Triêng people in Đăk Glei district also have a specialty dish called wild rat meat, mainly prepared in two ways: grilled rat meat and dried rat hung over the fireplace. When the rice fields turn golden, it's also the season when wild rats are at their fattest and most delicious, and the locals go hunting for rats. Quickly rolling a bunch of dry straw, setting it on fire to singe off the fur, this method brings out the aroma of the rat meat and preserves its original sweetness.
After cleaning the fur, gutting, removing the organs, quickly rinsing in water, rubbing some salt all over the rat's body, then skewering straight with bamboo sticks, grilling over charcoal until golden, bringing out the fragrance. Enjoy with some sour wild mangoes, a dish of wild salt and pepper, spicy and intense, very suitable. Find some wild herbs, wrap them in banana leaves, pour some water, and grill over straw fire, just a little while and you have a delicious dish.
Bitter Eggplant
Bitter eggplant is a rustic dish of the ethnic minorities in Kon Tum. Bitter eggplants grow in patches along the hillsides, stream banks, small fruits like pea eggplants or elongated fruits, larger than a finger, dark green in color with white stripes along the fruit. In the past, bitter eggplants were wild plants, now brought back by ethnic people to grow in their gardens, the fruits are larger, light green in color, the bitterness decreases slightly, easier to eat and suitable for many people's tastes.
Bitter eggplants are sliced thinly, skewered onto sticks and grilled, when the eggplant turns dark brown, the aroma spreads and it's cooked just right, still retaining some bitter water, slightly chewy, soft, dipped in wild salt and pepper or enjoyed with grilled wild meat is very delicious. In addition, bitter eggplants are also cooked into many stew dishes with shrimp, crayfish caught from the river or braised with eels, frogs, every dish is delicious, exuding a tempting aroma. Those who eat bitter eggplant for the first time may feel uncomfortable with the bitter and astringent taste of this wild fruit, but after a few tries, they will appreciate and remember its unique flavor.
Black Mulberry Sweet Wine
Due to the geographical location of the Kon Tum mountainous region and the climate averaging 10 to 15 degrees Celsius each day, it produces fresh mulberries. The raw material used to produce the specialty black mulberry wine in Kon Tum is wild mulberries, naturally growing in the highlands of Mang Den village, Kon Tum province.
Every year around June in the Gregorian calendar, the ethnic groups of Co-Tu, Xe Dang in the highlands of Mang Den village, Kon Tum province, gather to pick mulberries in the forest. To achieve good quality, pickers must harvest early in the morning when the dew is still fresh. Combining this precious raw material with modern French wine-making technology and specialized yeast for wine production from France, all contribute to giving Black Mulberry Wine a rustic, natural flavor of the mountains yet equally luxurious and characteristic of genuine wine.
Source: Vnexpress
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Reference: Travel Handbook Mytour
TravelHub.comMarch 25, 2016
