EARLY SPRING TEARS

Lunar New Year is one of the major holidays of the Vietnamese people, this is an opportunity for the whole family to gather and reunite after a year of work and study. Every Tet holiday, everyone prepares delicious dishes such as: braised meat, stuffed bitter melon, cakes, jam... and the indispensable flavor of banh tet.

Every time Tet comes in Vietnam, it is also the time when Banh Tet cakes come to every home and wrapping Tet cakes also becomes one of the indispensable Tet customs of every Southerner, the image of Banh Tet cakes Tet is no longer simply a dish but has become a typical symbol of traditional Tet. Tet banh tet of Southern people is divided into 2 types: salty tet banh tet and sweet tet banh tet. Salty banh tet is a type of banh tet filled with green beans, fat, bacon, and some places also add salted duck seeds. Sweet tet cakes include ash water tet cakes, banana-filled banh tet, green bean-filled banh tet... Salty tet cakes are popularly made during Tet.

To get a delicious banh tet, choosing ingredients is extremely important, Southerners are very meticulous in choosing: Sticky rice, beans, meat... Sticky rice is delicious, flexible, not mixed with plain rice, and is often eaten. Soak in water for a few hours, knot carefully, and drain. Especially add coconut milk squeezed from shredded dried coconut and pineapple juice mixed into the sticky rice to create a fragrant aroma for the cake. Green beans also choose those with round seeds, soak for 2 to 3 hours, then peel the skin thoroughly, cook and add spices: salt, sugar to increase the taste of the beans, after cooking, then pound them. Meat. Fat or pork belly used to make the cake filling is cut into three-centimeter square pieces, the length fits neatly into the banh tet, marinated with a little salt, sugar, and onions, then dried in the sun for a few hours to firm up before wrapping. Banana leaves are intact leaves, not torn to prevent the cake from "sizzling" when cooking. People often choose banana leaves, because they are larger, more flexible than other banana leaves and have a very beautiful green color. , banana leaves are dried a bit to make them tough so they can be easily wrapped. When wrapping a cake, you need to know the technique of wrapping the cake with skillful hands to get a beautiful, symmetrical cake.

First, arrange the banana leaves horizontally and vertically, then spread the sticky rice evenly on the banana leaves, then layer the green beans on top, add a piece of meat along the length of the cake in the middle and then start rolling together. Fold one end of the cake, start compressing the folds tightly, do not wrap loosely because loosely wrapping the cake will easily be damaged, finally fold the other end and tie the string, the string must be tied in a certain direction, the remaining string must be tied. The leftovers are used to connect with other cakes to form a pair, according to folklore, "There are pairs, there are pairs", so Tet cakes on Tet when given as gifts or New Year wishes are all a pair. After wrapping, put in a pot of boiling water on the wood stove to cook, choose a very high pot to put the cake sticks in, add water to cover the cake and continue to cook on the wood stove. Every now and then you have to visit and refill the water. The cake cooks continuously for about 6 - 8 hours, at which time the ingredients such as rice, beans, and meat are all cooked, mixed, absorbed into each other, becoming delicious and unique. According to the old secret, after taking the cake from the pot, immediately put it in a bowl of 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 whole week without spoiling. Usually on the morning of the 30th day of the twelfth lunar month, when worshiping grandparents, the cake is cut into slices and then placed on a plate to worship. After offering the cake, only then can the children and grandchildren eat it. Enjoying Banh Tet also requires sophistication and sophistication. You absolutely should not use a knife to cut it. Instead, people peel the skin and then use string to tie the cake to cut into thin slices. The cake is considered cleverly wrapped when it is evenly rounded and the filling is in the middle.

In addition to savory tet cakes, Southern people also pack sweet tet cakes to eat more. Banh tet on Tet with ash water is a type of cake in which sticky rice is soaked in ash water, the filling includes green beans stir-fried with grated coconut. The cake has a strange aroma, a slightly black color, and is very delicious. Call it banana tacos because the filling is made with bananas. People choose ripe bananas as the filling. When cutting the cake, the filling is dark red and naturally sweet. In Ben Tre, there is also a type of banh tet without filling. The cake is made entirely of sticky rice mixed with black beans or peanuts and coconut milk, very fatty and fragrant. In Tien Giang, with this type of cake, add crushed ripe bananas to the mixture of beans, sticky rice, coconut milk, and black beans before wrapping. When cut into pieces, the cake has many colors, is very eye-catching and has the sweetness of bananas, the nutty taste of beans, the fatty taste of coconut milk, and the sticky taste of sticky rice.

Today, although the market for banh tet is rich, for Southerners, banh tet is an indispensable item in the traditional Tet holiday. Banh tet is quite familiar to people in the South, but the way to make banh tet is not the same everywhere. If in Saigon, banh tet is purely made of sticky rice and green beans, then in the West, banh tet becomes multi-colored with five-color banh tet, pandan leaf banh tet, green leaf banh tet... contributing to the diversity of banh tet. Southern tacos are both delicious and aesthetically pleasing.

Banh tet in the South has some very delicious and famous types such as: banh tet in Tra Cuon (Tra Vinh), banh tet with cam leaves (Can Tho) and banh tet in Tien Giang. Tra Cuon banh tet originates from Kim Hoa commune, Cau Ngang district, Tra Vinh province. The sticky part of the cake is green, filled with green beans, and inside is fatty meat and salted duck seeds. The sticky part is green because it is made from the juice of crushed yam leaves mixed into it. This is said to be the way to make banh tet of Khmer people in Tra Vinh. According to Can Tho people, banh tet with green leaves originated from the Huynh family in Binh Thuy. This family has made the cake more unique by cooking the leaves to get water, then mixing the water with the sticky rice. Therefore, when the outside is cut, the cake has a charcoal purple color, the filling has the yellow color of beans, the pink color of meat, the white color of fat and the red color of salted duck eggs, looking very beautiful and graceful. Tien Giang banh tet is filled with pork belly, dried shrimp and duck seeds. Because the sticky rice is soaked in pandan leaf water, the cake has a light aroma when eaten.

During the three days of Tet, banh tet becomes the main dish to replace rice, with just a plate of pickled dishes, a palanquin, a few rounds of banh tet and a plate of braised meat with duck seeds to make a delicious meal. At the end of the three days of Tet, you will get tired of the sticky sticky rice taste and will change to hot and crispy fried banh tet which is equally attractive with puffy, fragrant fried pieces. Just like that, at the end of Tet, banh tet completes its mission in a joyful and warm way at the offerings to grandparents and family meals. Therefore, no matter how many years passed, Southerners still never forget the taste of Banh Tet in the first days of the year. Present as a cultural feature of the Southern people since the time of reclamation and establishing hamlets, the first residents of this land knew how to wrap banh tet with rice to give thanks to heaven and earth and to their ancestors.

Banh Tet cakes look simple but are imbued with the philosophy of the Southern people about people and life. Banh tet is wrapped with many leaves like a mother wrapping her child. Eating banh tet makes you think of your mother, living with your mother, like a sister. I support each other and were born from the same mother. Not only that, green Tet cake with yellow stamens reminds us of the greenness of the countryside, of animal husbandry life, of the happiness of the neighborhood - village... reminds us of people's dream of "settle down and settle down" for a season. A peaceful spring for everyone. All of these meanings promote human labor, the harmony of heaven and earth, of humans with nature, and towards ancestral origins./.