While western salads are comprised of many kinds of veggies or sweet fruits, Vietnamese salads are usually made of unripe fruits sliced into pieces mixed with herbs. The unripe fruit’s meat is usually sour, blending well with sweet and spicy fish sauce. The most familiar ones are goi du du, made from green papaya, and goi xoai, made from green mango, which can be found anywhere from a street stall to a restaurant. There are other delicious salad dishes made from coconut, jackfruit and fig.

In Vietnam, coconut trees are often seen in the Mekong Delta area, especially Ben Tre Province. Coconut shoots, the white young body on top of coconut trees, are often used in cooking. They have a similar texture to bamboo shoots but the flavor is milder and sweeter. To harvest a coconut shoot requires the chopping down of the whole tree. According to tips from locals, the older a coconut tree is, the sweeter its shoot becomes. Goi cu hu dua comprises scraped coconut shoots, peeled shrimps, sliced belly meat, pig ears, fragrant knotweed, onion and finely chopped peanuts. The dish is served with sweet and sour sauce and crispy prawn crackers.

A tropical fruit widely available during summer, jackfruit is sweet and delicious and often found in different kinds of desserts. Unripe jackfruit can also be cooked as a vegetable. Goi mit, or green jackfruit salad, is a popular salad dish in central Vietnam. A jackfruit is split up, cut into chunks and soaked in cold water so its latex is removed. After that, chunks of jackfruit are boiled until cooked, cut into pieces and mixed with prawns, shredded pork and herbs like fragrant knotweed and Vietnamese basil. The dish is served with rice crackers and fish sauce, adding a little lemon, garlic and chili. The crispiness of the crackers, the freshness of the herbs, and the crunchy texture of green jackfruit are mixed with the sour and spicy flavor of the sauce. Made from natural ingredients that are easily found in a home garden, green jackfruit salad is a simple yet delicious dish for daily meals.

Said to have similar taste to jackfruit salad, green mix with fig fruit has a softer texture yet remains flavorful. Fig is a bell-shaped fruit with a wide, flat bottom narrowing to a pointed top. Its skin is green while its meat is white. Originated from Hue, goi trai va was regarded as a royal dish and is often found at family gatherings or big parties. The fig needs to be big, with a lot of meat, and is then boiled, drained and cut into pieces. Fig salad is more complicated than jackfruit salad with ingredients like carrot, mushroom, and onion besides prawns and shredded pork. A dash of fried garlic and roasted sesame is added before being served. Not only flavorful, the dish is also pleasing to the eyes with various colors: the white of the fig fruit’s meat, the orange of carrot, the red of prawns, and the brown of fried garlic. Nowadays, fig salad is also great appetizer or a side dish to eat with beer.

A dish of goi du du, made from green papaya (Photo: Tuoi Tre)

Goi xoai, made from green mango with dried shrimp

Goi trai va is regarded as a royal dish and is often found at family gatherings or big parties