Prehistoric roots

I'm fast becoming more than a little impressed with the humble lotus flower. The purple stalk (bong sung) furnishes the vast Bun mam hedgerow and is filled with a crunchtastic zap. It's seeds (sen) litter the ricemungus Com sen from Ngu Vien restaurant and can be procured as a snack snip outside Ben Thanh Market. The flowers are groovy. And it grows in mud. Now, I discover you can gobble the roots of this 'leave nothing to waste' plant.

Trai au (lotus roots) look prehistoric or Stag beetle-esque, doncha think? You crack open the tough outer skin with your teeth and inside you'll find a white pulpy centre. It's slightly sweet, a tad earthy and not unlike a traditional English Horse chestnut.

It seems there's very little you cannot eat, use or look at contemplatively from a lotus flower. Trai au cost bugger all - a 2,000VD bag is more than enough for one root snack head. What a fantastic hardy perennial. Respect. This seller also flogs dried fish, strawberries and when they're in season i.e. now - she also sells Vietnamese blackberries. Not sure what they're called, don't have a pic of them, but they're a bit sour and I'm wondering whether or not they'd work for a blackberry pie or crumble. Hmmm??

Comments

[Suebob]

Holy cats, when I looked at the photo I first thought it was some sort of weird catfish or eelish thing...I feel better knowing the ugly black things with flippers are actually a sort of veg.

[OMIH]

Regarding your pho ga link on the left. Can't say I have noticed much less chicken around. Then again I'm not big fan of chicken here - boiled and then cut horizontally rather than vertically (if you get my drift) so that instead of slices of meet you get a cross section of meat, bone and grizzle.

I know KOTO stopped serving chicken for a while but it seems to be back on the menu and people seem to be eating it.

A friend was told by some embassy type in the know, that when chicken flu starts transmitting from human to human, then she should get the first plane out of here. Sounds a bit wussy really

As ever the worlds media is flapping - two Brits I recently met told me how their families had begged them not to come. But, I am still yet to find a friend, friend of a friend, my mate's mother's brother's maid's half sister's long long cousin twice removed, who has chicken flu.

Much prefer pho bo anyway.

[pieman]

I hear you on the boiled chicken front, that's very much a Hanoi thing. Ruins a perfectly good chicken in my book. But you REALLY should try chicken alley off Tran Hung Dao, Superb.

As for human to human transmission of bird flu, I'd have to agree with your mate there. I wouldn't hang around too long either what with the toad in tow and the speed with which flu can travel. However, at the moment you're way more likely to get killed clipping your toenails than you are from bird flu.

[Lei/cottontimer]

Trai au is called ling jiao in Chinese and is also known as Trapa bicornis (see bottom of this page in the Cook's Thesaurus). It is the root of a water plant, but I don't think it's the same as the lotus plant. I haven't had this delicious snack since Hong Kong so I'll have to keep eyes open for it here! My MIL used to say that my son's smile looked like a ling jiao.

As for chicken, we still don't bring raw chicken or chicken products into the house but will eat it already prepared at restaurants. I just had a delicious omelet at the Windsor Plaza Hotel breakfast buffet in An Dong.

[Shiewie]

The trai au/ling jiao/ling kok is a traditional Cantonese munchy for the mid-autumn festival together with mooncakes, mini yams/taro, pomelo and persimmons.

[anthony]

Lotus roots are great (and I'm not talking tantric here). The Japanese make a kind of deep fried lotus root, chicken, tofu, shiso sandwich tempura thingy called renkonhasamiage and it's tremendous.

[pieman]

I think you might be right Lei, I could be barking up the wrong stalk. I am reliably told that Bong sung and trai au come from the same plant. Now I checked my bun mam post and that said a bong sung comes from a water lilly. So, maybe this is the beast. Your links seemed to suggest it is.

Shiewie, that's quite the root vegetable festival those Cantonese folks have got going on. Lotus root, water lilly root... whatever... sandwich sounds like a zentastic sarnie. Om.

[Michelle]

Hi Pieman, about the blackberries look-alike fruit that you mentioned, are they a little bit tart? And when you eat them your whole mouth gets purplish as well? :) I think it's called "Tra'i Tra^m"...Student's favourite snack fruit and it makes you look like a monster afterwards. Not sure what it's called in English though...

[Reid]

Hi Noodlepie,

I haven't seen lotus roots like that before. Usually, the ones I see are a light brown color and really smooth looking. Is this the same thing?

[pieman]

They are tart Michelle and not very sweet at all. Not as sweet as blackberries I've picked in the UK anyhow. Didn't look in the mirror after sampling one, so I;m not sure about the mouth effect. Although I did see some small children running away from me screaming and the local dogs started howling.

As mentioned Reid in Lei's comments, I think this is water lilly root and not lotus. Must go edit... eventually.

[ondine]

Um, actually those aren't lotus roots.

Lotus roots are long, whitish things that look like a string of white sausages. They have open channels in them so that when sliced they appear as white disks with lacy looking holes in them. These are crunchy and watery-sweet, and used as a vegetable.

The black things you have shown up there are the fruit/nut of the water caltrop (I think that's the english name, anyhow), a totally different plant. They're regarded as a good luck food and often show up on ancestral offering tables in China. I'm not too fond of them - I find them a little bland - but they are very pretty when washed and polished.

Just my two cents.:>

[Shannon]

You're blog is awesome...overwhelming even. Would it be possible to post a "Must Eats: if you have one day at the markets"?

[Jacqueline Church]

live on the edge of Chinatown and eat on the edge of the world...found this devilish looking thing and posted a challenge to my readers...offering them the chance to provide a true or completely made up description. I love Gargoyle Root, though I believe it is actually Ling Kok or Horned Water Chestnut..

Jacqueline AKA The Leather District Gourmet
http://leatherdistrictgourmet.blogspot.com
http://gourmetfood.suite101.com