Besides their traditional festivals featuring distinctive cultural values, Co Tu ethnic minority people boast rustic but strangely attractive dishes which are indispensable at their traditional festivals and daily meals.

Co Tu people offering a well-prepared meal to the deities

Amongst mouth-watering dishes are grilled pork and chicken, served with wild vegetables and bamboo shoots, ‘com lam’ (rice cooked in bamboo tubes), ‘banh sung trau’ ( buffalo horn-shaped cakes), dried wild squirrel, and wild mouse

The Co Tu people call the cake ‘Avi cuot’, but the name ‘sung trau’ is more popular and easier to remember.

Buffalo horn-shaped cake is one of the important dishes used to worship the deities and ancestors at Tet.

In the minds of Co Tu people, buffalo demonstrates the strength of this ethic community, and in particular, this type of animal is also an offering to the deities in sacrificial rituals, and acts as a bridge of between Co Tu villagers and the divine world.

To make the cake, people have to use a special glutinous rice known as ‘proong’, and use ‘la dot’ (wild leaves) to wrap them.

The cakes are then tied in pairs soaked in water for 2 hours before boiling them for another 3 hours.

Another dish is ‘com lam’ which is commonly served with salted roasted sesame, grilled pork or chicken skewers.

The bamboo chosen should be fresh and young so that the new membrane inside the tube can wrap the rice, adding it a special flavor, fragrance and sweetness.

To prepare the rice, the tube is filled with about 80% of glutinous rice and 10% of water, in favour of water inherent in bamboo, then a little coconut water will be added to make the rice more pleasant. The tube will be wrapped with banana leaves, and then burned on fire until it smells pleasant.

When the dish is done, the singed skin of the bamboo is removed, leaving a thin cover that is also peeled away when served. Enjoying the dish, diners will sniff the blending fragrance of fresh bamboo, banana leave, and sticky rice.

A tube of ‘com lam’ plus fragrant grilled wild boar taken with a sip of ‘ruou can’ (rice wine drunk out of a jar through pipes) is enough for you fall in line with the Co Tu people.

The Co Tu ethnic community has been struggling to preserve its culture and traditional customs, and their traditional dishes, that are on verge of fading away with rapid urbanisation.