Bitter Cabbage Salad with Anchovies

Bitter eggplant, known as Prén Botang by the Ede people, is a wild tomato that grows a lot in the forest and upland fields. Later, this type of tomato was brought back to be planted in the backyard of their home, which produces fruit all year round. This fruit is similar to eggplant but smaller, it has thorns, green color with white stripes, especially this fruit has a very characteristic bitter taste. The people here often use bitter eggplant to prepare many unique and attractive dishes, the most typical is the "bitter anchovy salad". Of course, anchovies are a type of seafood, not found in the mountains. But the strange thing is that bringing dried anchovies in the sea mixed with bitter egg salad in the mountains produces an extremely delicious dish.

To prepare this dish is also simple. Fresh bitter tomatoes just need to be sliced thin, then soaked in water mixed with a little salted lemon and then added white eggplant to reduce the acrid substance. If you want the eggplant to be crispy, just soak it with ice cubes for an hour. Anchovies are soaked in warm water for a few minutes to soften and reduce fishy. Then peel the black intestine and separate the bones (if it is a small, clean anchovy, it is not necessary to peel it). Then bring the pre-prepared dried anchovies, put them in a roasting pan to bring out the smell and seasoning to taste. The most important is the sauce, this is the part that determines the success of the dish. Because the sauce is used to pour the salad, mix it with lemon juice (vinegar can be used instead). To make fish sauce delicious, you should mince the garlic and then put the chili in the bowl. Pour in delicious fish sauce and add half a lemon, put in a bowl and mix a little seasoning powder and sugar. Then take two tablespoons of boiling water, mix to dissolve the mixture, pour into a bowl of fish sauce, stir well, if it is salty, just add another tablespoon of boiling water to taste.
This dish, although simple, contains the national soul of the indigenous people. The mild acrid taste and crispiness of the bitter tomato add the chewy sweetness of dried anchovies to the salty and sour taste of fish sauce with lemon, making the dish more attractive. This dish can be eaten or eaten with rice and raw vegetables. But the most popular is still to eat with rice paper, bite a piece of rice paper and then put some salad in it and bring it to your mouth to sip, bringing the feeling of crispy crunchiness and then melting in the mouth, it's really enjoyable.

In the cold air of the mountains and forests of the Central Highlands, eating a plate of bitter anchovy salad and then sipping a little Amakong wine or Can wine is nothing.