Known as the “furnace” region, Phu Tuc has a cuisine adapted to its hot climate. Traditional Jrai dishes often combine sour, spicy and bitter flavours, with bitterness providing a distinctive aftertaste.
Local cooks use a wide range of bitter ingredients, including small eggplants, bitter eggplants, bitter melon, male papaya flowers and leaves, as well as forest plants such as teng leng and la mat bo, also known as trai la péi.
Bitterness is rarely used on its own. It is typically balanced with sour, spicy, salty and sweet flavours, creating combinations that have gradually moved from traditional stilt-house kitchens to restaurants and communal dining tables.
Among the best-known dishes is ca xoc bo, a beef salad that has become a popular item at restaurants and eateries across the region.
The dish is generally prepared with beef offal, including omasum, stomach, small intestine and liver. Pork belly or pork skin may also be added. The ingredients are boiled, thinly sliced and mixed with chilli salt, lemongrass, herbs and peanuts.
But the defining ingredient is beef bile.
A properly prepared ca xoc bo leaves a lingering bitter aftertaste after the initial sour, spicy and salty flavours, along with the nuttiness of peanuts and herbs. The bitterness from the bile is intended to be noticeable without overwhelming the other flavours.
Traditional dishes that challenge the palate
Some Jrai dishes can be difficult for outsiders to approach, but they also carry deep connections to traditional life.
Wé is one example. The dish is made by stewing the offal of herbivores such as buffalo, cattle or goats with bitter eggplant and bitter melon. Partially digested food from the small intestine is mixed with water and allowed to settle before the liquid is extracted and used as broth.
The resulting dish has a thick, soup-like consistency and is sometimes presented on restaurant menus as “bitter offal”.
For first-time diners, its distinctive combination of sweet and bitter flavours can be challenging. For those familiar with the dish, however, the intense bitterness lingering at the back of the throat is part of its appeal.
A more widely accepted dish is grilled meat served with teng leng leaves.
The teng leng plant grows tall and is brought from the forest by local people, who cultivate it in home gardens as a herb. Its leaves and flowers are eaten with grilled pork, beef, goat or fish.
Lightly grilling the leaves and wrapping them around the meat before dipping the combination in lemongrass salt or yellow ant salt adds a subtle bitterness. The leaves enhance the meat’s aroma and sweetness while helping offset its greasiness.
Bitter ingredients also feature in other Jrai dishes, including stir-fried cassava leaves with small eggplants or male papaya flowers, fish soups made with river and stream fish and bitter leaves, and bitter eggplant salad served with yellow ant salt.
A culinary tradition rooted in ancestral knowledge
For Jrai communities living along the lower Ba River, the use of bitter ingredients is also connected to traditional knowledge.
Village elder Ale Seo of Chu Ngoc hamlet recalls that Jrai festivals in the past could last for several days, during which buffaloes, cattle and pigs were slaughtered for communal feasts.
Such celebrations were unusual occasions when people consumed large quantities of meat. At the same time, the region’s hot weather made preserving food difficult.
According to ancestral knowledge, bitter fruits and leaves were incorporated into dishes to balance the flavours and help diners feel more comfortable after large meals.
Ale Seo said he did not know precisely what properties the bitterness from flowers and fruits might have, but generations of Jrai had learned to combine them with food to help prevent bloating and indigestion after overeating.
The practice has continued, carrying forward elements of the lifestyle and culinary knowledge of previous generations.
Rah Lan H’Niên, from Tang hamlet, said the Jrai also collect a variety of wild leaves and flowers with bitter flavours, including djam phí, djam ngây and bồh lpang.
These forest plants have long been used to enhance the flavour of food, she said, adding that elders have also passed down the belief that bitterness helps cool the body and aids digestion.
Today, H’Niên runs a traditional eatery at the Tang hamlet crossroads. For her, introducing Jrai cuisine to diners is not only a way to serve traditional food but also an effort to preserve the community’s culinary heritage.
From forest leaves and bitter vegetables to beef bile and traditional stews, bitterness has become a defining element of Phu Tuc’s cuisine.
These dishes embody more than distinctive ingredients and cooking techniques. They preserve traces of a way of life shaped by the forest, an understanding of nature and generations of knowledge passed down through the Jrai community.