Banh tet - Cake of Southern New Year

During Tet in the South, almost every family has a few cakes and jams, first to worship ancestors, and then to invite guests. Banh tet is one of the indispensable dishes, a unique cultural feature of the Southern people. The flavor of banh tet has contributed to making the traditional Tet warmer.

Every Tet holiday, no matter how difficult it is, many Southern families still gather together to wrap banh tet cakes. On the day of wrapping the cake, from early in the morning everyone divided the work to do. The most skillful person took care of stir-frying the sticky rice and making the filling, someone wiped the leaves, cut the string, and someone prepared a huge pot of water to cook the cake. Everyone wrapped the cake and chatted loudly.

Just like banh chung in the North and Central regions, the main ingredients to wrap banh tet are hometown ingredients such as: sticky rice, green beans, pork fat, etc. However, banh tet is wrapped in banana leaves. instead of dong leaves and the shape is also different from banh chung, round and long instead of square, each banh tet stick is usually about 20 - 30 cm long.

Banh Tet has sweet or salty fillings depending on each family's preference. Sweet tet cakes are often filled with ripe bananas, the sticky rice is often mixed with black beans or red beans to add color to the cake, and to make the cake more flexible and fleshy.

To have delicious banh tet dishes, families in the South often prepare quite thoughtfully and meticulously. Delicious sticky rice, not mixed with ordinary rice, wash clean and drain. Shelled green beans and cooked until pureed. Grate dry coconut and squeeze to get the juice. Crush pandan leaves, filter the water and mix with sticky rice to get the aroma and green color or boil the whole leaves with coconut milk to get the aroma.

After that, the drained sticky rice is stir-fried with coconut milk to create a fatty and fragrant taste. Cut fatty meat or pork belly into rectangles according to the length of the cake and marinate with a little salt and sugar before making the filling. Cooked and pureed green beans to make the filling are shaped according to the length of the banh tet.

Once the cake is wrapped, it will be passed to the person guarding the pot of water to arrange it evenly into pairs into the pot of boiling water over a red fire. This last step is very important, if the water is too little to cover the cake and cooks unevenly, the sticky rice will be considered a bad batch of cakes and according to folk beliefs, that family will have a difficult and unlucky new year. According to the old secret, after pressing the cake from the pot, immediately put it in cold water to cool and turn green, then press to remove the water and immediately hang it in a cool place to soften the cake. Delicious cakes like this. This will keep it outside for a week without spoiling.

During the three days of Tet, banh tet becomes the main dish to replace rice. Just a plate of pickled sauerkraut, radish, radish or sweet and sour water spinach, a few rounds of banh tet and a plate of meat braised with duck seeds can become a delicious meal. At the end of the three days of Tet, tired of the sticky taste of cooked sticky rice, housewives will switch to hot and crispy fried tet cakes, which are equally attractive.

For a long time, Banh Tet has become a unique flavor of the Southern New Year. When mentioning Tet, people often mention a typical cake called Banh Tet, just like the Mid-Autumn Festival has moon cakes! Many people also say that banh tet is derived from the word "banh tet" which means a type of cake made during Tet to serve for worshiping and celebrating Tet. However, the flavor of banh tet is not the same everywhere but is extremely rich. If banh tet is in the city. In Ho Chi Minh City, it is purely made of sticky rice and green beans, but in the West, banh tet becomes multi-colored with five-color banh tet, pandan leaf banh tet, and gac tet cake; On Phu Quoc island, there are banh tet with molasses, while people in Can Tho have banh tet with black leaves. Some places also have banh tet with ash water, mixed banh tet, etc. Tra Vinh also has Tra Cuon banh tet which is quite famous.

Banh Tet during Tet is also a meaningful New Year gift. When giving two poles as a pair, it is both beautiful and in accordance with the custom because the New Year must be in pairs, even pairs, to wish the couple happiness and prosperity.

Banh Tet is not only delicious and attractive, but it has gradually become a unique cultural feature of the Southern people. On Tet, enjoying delicious banh tet with your family can fully appreciate the traditional Tet atmosphere of the nation. The green color of the leaves, the aroma of sticky rice and pandan leaves, and the sweetness of the bean paste create a cake of Southern New Year, an unforgettable flavor for each of us Southerners./.