Published:  15:48 Tuesday - April 03, 2012

Nuoc leo (nước lèo) rice noodleis a special tasty dish of Tra Vinh. To enjoy it, visitors can come to Cau Ke town or the cage market of Tra Vinh city or the area near Ba Om pond.

Nuoc leo rice noodle of Tra Vinh is made of prahok sauce after suppressing the fish bodies to obtain the first extract. The cooked snakehead fish is smoothed well then treaten with citronella and chili. Tasty nuoc leo must be transparent, fresh and sauce good-smelling.

Raw vegetables contains sliced musa balbisiana (a kind of wild banana) trunk then mashed in cold water, lemon is squeezed on raw vegetables to make it milky white. From a handful of thin-lined rice noodle, an amount of raw vegetables, some pouf herbs, some scoops of nuoc leo and some slices of pork or snakehead fish…, you will have a wonderful bowl of nuoc leo sauce rice noodle! From the main recipient prahok sauce, Khmer people and Vietnamese have improved the dish by cooking it with ribs, straw mushroom in order to make nuoc leo fresher.

Nuoc leo rice noodle is also good-looking because of the design. Musa balbisiana(a kind of wild banana) trunk is smoothed well with some bean sprouts. Good rice noodle is put below. Prawn, cuttle, oyster, cooked clam form the top layer. The sauce is spoiled in small fire, treated with enough spice and some citronella, saffron, galingale for more good-smelling. Enough amount of sauce is irrigated onto the bowl of rice noodle. Depending on personal taste, the diners can put shrimp sauce, lemon juice and chili more. However, many people who are sophisticated in cuisine enjoy the rice noodle with nuoc leo and raw vegetables only because they consider this way of enjoying the only one to feel the real taste of nuoc leo rice noodle..

Especially in Cau Ke town of Cau Ke district (Tra Vinh province), nuoc leo rice noodle is served with cong (cong) cake. Cong cake has a similar shape with cong (one kind of kitchen stuff for oil and wine scooping, measuring) which is made on the recipe of xeo (xèo) cake. The recipe includes rice powder mixed with a little of yellow saffron powder, coconut juice, the filling is made of well-cooked gram, one or two bac dat (bạc đất) tiny shrimps on the surface. After finishing preparation, cong cake is deeply fried. At some places, pork is roasted to be served with nuoc leo rice noodle.