Ẩm thực truyền thống Chăm

Traditional Cham cuisine

Connected Heritage – A Cultural Heritage project aimed at
Equal development

Traditional Cham cuisine

14/05/2023
TUVA Communication

Ninh Thuan has a semi-desert climate, dry and hot. Cham cuisine is cool, sour and spicy to cool people down. The Cham Brahmins do not eat beef, while the Cham Bani abstain from pork for religious reasons, instead they eat chicken, birds, fish, goat, and buffalo. Vegetables as spices are also an interesting experience in traditional Cham cuisine. Mothers and grandmothers season soup with tamarind shoots, perilla leaves, mix vegetables with young banana stems, piper lolot leaves, and use stir-fried dong leaves, also known as wild curry leaves, to enhance the flavor of dry stir-fried dishes. The kitchen is the space of mothers and grandmothers, where the standards of flavor and secret ingredients are passed down, where they contribute their part to their families and communities.

Stories around the kitchen take place between the cook and the eater, between grandmother and grandchild, mother and child, sister and brother. Each dish presented in this dataset is made up not only of regionally and culturally specific ingredients, but also of conversations while cooking and eating. Cuisine, like folklore, cannot pinpoint the origin of a specific dish. Traditional dishes and the current stories that still take place around these dishes are how the Cham people nurture their traditional culture.

Traditional Cham cuisine was selected and introduced by Ms. Nguyen Nu Huyen Trang, from Xuan Hai commune, Ninh Hai district, Ninh Thuan province. The sisters, aunts, and grandmothers in Trang's extended family participated in preparing and sharing stories about traditional Cham dishes, including her older sister Duong Thi Thang Mu, Dao Thi Doi, Dao Thi Thanh Hien, Nguyen Thi Thanh Sang, Thap Thi Xao, Tai Phuong Nguyen Diep, Tai Thi Ma Sum, Tai Thi Kim Song, and little Tai Phuong Hai Trieu.

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Aia tanut – Goat soup

On every ceremonial occasion, families often hold a ceremony with goat meat. This is an indispensable dish on the banquet tray. Goat soup cannot lack a side salad, called reduce, including young banana stems, betel leaves and wild vegetables. The main flavor of goat broth is sour, created by whole tamarinds and young tamarind shoots. One ingredient in this soup is finely ground roasted rice, which is added to the pot after removing the goat meat to create an extra layer of fatty flavor for the dish. Cham people do not pour this broth into rice to eat together, but will eat rice with goat meat separately, and the soup is eaten with reduce in another bowl.

Aia bai njem bua – Soup or taro soup

The funeral of the Cham Bani people lasts for three days and two nights, with relatives gathering to help in the busy rituals. padhi, taking place sequentially. During those days, the fire was lit, and the taro soup was prepared for the ceremony and the attendees. Called soup, but taro soup is similar to thick porridge, except that there is no added starch. Starting with the taro stalks that are peeled, cut short, and blanched to remove the itchy substance, the ingredients are put into a large pot and simmered, pounded continuously in the hot pot so that the taro can blend together. Cooked with buffalo meat on a wood stove, the taro soup requires time and care in each step to complete. To cook taro soup without itching, each woman gives different advice on how to choose a cooking pot, how to put firewood in the stove, and how to process the taro. It could also be because there are always many people cooking taro soup at the same time, so it is necessary to apply all of the above secrets to produce a standard dish.

Sakaya – Steamed Egg Cake

Starting with very simple ingredients like eggs, sugar, ginger, tofu, the cake Sakaya is a test of the skill and sophistication of the cook. The skill lies in the finely ground ginger to get the juice, the roasted tofu is crushed to taste, mixed with eggs and sugar and beaten well. A batch of cakes Sakaya Success is when the cake rises roundly to the rim of the steamer cup, proving that there are many tiny air bubbles evenly distributed in the cake mixture. If in literature there is Ariya Cam – Bini tells the story of a tragic love story between two lovers of different religions, then the cake Sakaya performed right after the wedding of a Bani bride and a Brahman groom, brought to the groom's house to worship ancestors, to resolve taboos that existed in the past.

Fish sauce – Fish sauce

The hidden factor in most traditional Cham dishes, the factor that creates the typical Cham flavor is chest or Vietnamese name is mam nem. Made from anchovies caught on the same day, fermented with salt in a ratio of three fish to one salt for twenty days to a month, almost every Cham kitchen must have one or two jars. chest to season the dish. The sour taste of the Cham people's dipping sauce for vegetables comes from young tamarind shoots and crushed tamarind, combined with shallots, crushed lemongrass and chili peppers.