This type of 'grass' grows wild only in the spring. In the past, it was fed to chickens and ducks, but now half a million/kg still competes to buy it

This specialty grass is not only used as food but also has medicinal effects. It is becoming increasingly scarce, so the price is sky-high .

There is a vegetable that cannot be planted or cared for. It grows in rice fields, dikes, and hidden in rotten stubble. When the rice crop ends, it looks more like a "weed" than a vegetable. From the stem to the leaves are covered with a layer of silky white hair, very smooth to the touch. That's the vegetable.

Spring is when this strange vegetable appears most abundantly. The previous year's seeds were buried in the soil, and when they encountered the spring rain, they automatically emerged, layer after layer of clusters overlapping the clusters after, green around the newly harvested stubble.

Vegetable chunks.

Cucumbers are easily confused with weeds in the fields

In the past, it's unclear whether it was due to natural rice cultivation methods, fresh air or a balanced ecosystem. Cuc cuc grew in the fields . When one batch was uprooted, another batch appeared. Old people recounted that in the spring, women went to the fields to glean vegetables to make sticky rice and soup to eat; They were so abundant that they only chose the kind of rice cake (neither young nor old) to make the dish, but the old stems were scattered in the yard, and the chickens and ducks ate them "to cool their intestines".

Nowadays, kale is much rarer, people have to hunt for it , order it in advance, make an appointment in advance, and be lucky to buy it. On e-commerce platforms, people also sell frozen, vacuum-packaged kale, 1 tael costs 45,000 - 50,000 VND, which is not cheap at all.

Vegetable chunks or sticky rice chunks can both be used for cooking . Khuc te is often cooked in soup, sticky rice log is used to make sticky rice and banh khuc. But when it comes to rarity, it's difficult to be picky, as long as it's fresh and in season, you'll be happy.

The ingredients to make Banh Khuc are simple, but the flavor is memorable.

This wild, small, weed-like vegetable is loved because it is an indispensable ingredient for sticky rice . This sticky rice is popular, but it's also complicated to make, so it's considered a specialty of Hanoi and the North.

The leaves must be washed, crushed, mixed with glutinous rice flour, and kneaded thoroughly to make a crust. Some people only use the juice, some people add the whole leaf stem to enhance the flavor, each method has its own delicious taste. When making green beans to make cake filling, you must choose the type with yellow and fragrant pulp. For meat, choose pork belly with a little bit of fat, marinate with pepper, salt and fish sauce.

Each ball of sticky rice dough mixed with Khuc leaves is spread out thinly, filled with green bean and meat filling and then balled into a ball, about the size of a baby's fist. People put the sticky rice on the stove, roll the cake through the sticky rice and then steam it, until the sticky rice grains stick to the fragrant sticky rice cakes and become clear, the aroma of the cake exudes a sweet smell. .

The finished product is delicious when the outer layer of sticky rice is pure white, the green sticky rice cake is the color of green leaves, embracing the fatty yellow bean filling from the meat marinated with spicy pepper, so soft it almost melts. It's as if the delicacies of the world converge here.

Nowadays, partly because Khuc leaves are rare and expensive, it is difficult for people to enjoy this dish in its original form. Many vendors are known to sell sticky rice, but in reality they are stuffed with old cabbage leaves, spinach leaves, chrysanthemum leaves, sticky rice leaves. for color, but the flavor is incomparable.

Not only in Vietnam, some East Asian countries also eat Khuc. In Japan, people have the custom of eating porridge with seven vegetables, including porridge, on the seventh day of the first lunar month to have good health in the new year.

In Taiwan, there is also a delicious cake made from Khuc that grows in the Alisan mountains, similar to Banh Khuc, just pounded Khuc leaves, mixed with sticky rice flour, covered with filling and then steamed.

Sometimes people eat Khuc leaves as boiled vegetables.

Rau Khuc also has other beautiful names such as "Buddha's ear grass" (Buddha's ear grass), "Qing Minh Thao" (Qing Minh grass ). According to Oriental medicine, the taste is sweet, slightly bitter, neutral, non-toxic, and enters the lung meridians. The plant has the effect of dissolving phlegm, eliminating wind and cold, treating coughs with lots of phlegm, asthma, colds with fever, pain in tendons and bones, lymph nodes, ulcers, treating pimples.

Even though kale is now becoming scarce and expensive, it still lives innocently somewhere, bought by people in the spring, cherished and made into nostalgic food. From a rural grass, it has become a specialty for city people.