New Year's Eve Fire

(Baonghean) - There is a culinary researcher who based on observations of the kitchens of the three regions of Central - South - North to find out the character of people in each region. He commented that the most common thing in Vietnamese kitchens is very simple, usually plain rice with fish sauce, soy sauce, vegetables... Occasionally, there is a little fat and meat. People eat two main meals and one snack a day. The small morning snack is usually colorful food such as boiled corn, potatoes, and cassava. People in Nghe An have a specialty of sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are processed into many types; raw potatoes are sliced ​​and dried to cook sweet potatoes when eaten with sesame, peanuts or eggplant. Nghe An is also famous for Thanh Chuong pickled vegetables, which are mainly pickled from young jackfruit fibers with added ginger and onion. The midlands have many canarium and palm trees, eating crispy canarium or palm trees dipped in sesame salt and peanuts increases the fat and protein in the meal. There is a common soup for all three regions, which is tap tang soup, which is both delicious and nutritious. The soup has the shoots of the vông tree and the mulberry tree, which help to nourish the mind and help you sleep. This is a soup that combines many types of vegetables: water spinach, amaranth, Malabar spinach, taro leaves, betel leaves, squash shoots, squash, luffa, etc., cooked with a little shrimp, dried cicada, and field crab, a delicious dish that you will never forget. There is a folk saying: "A mixed vegetable is delicious - A mixed child is smart". By the fire on New Year's Eve, there is a pot of boiled banh chung, the whole family gathers around the fire. The sticky rice to wrap banh chung has been prepared by my mother for a long time. But my mother wishes most for tangerine sticky rice or Hung Yen yellow flower sticky rice, which has a lot of lotus and longan, so the flavor of the sticky rice is multi-flavored, or Nghia Lo fragrant sticky rice that lasts all year long, like no other sticky rice. My father wishes for the leaves to wrap the banh chung to be dong leaves, which grow along the sunny stream at the foot of the old forest. This type of dong leaves is wide, thick, has no holes, and is rich in chlorophyll, making the skin of the banh chung green or jade green. The bamboo strips used to tie the banh chung are made from a mixture of forest trees, long segments, and newly stripped, white and supple, with a fragrant smell of the forest when tied, and when tied, the bamboo strips are secure and do not loosen due to the fire. The firewood used to cook banh chung is also made from oak or longan to have a strong aroma. Because cooking banh chung does not require a big fire, but it is necessary to keep the fire steady so that the black pepper, green beans turn yellow, and the pork belly marinated in fish sauce can soak into each other, connecting the filling of the cake.

Illustration: Hong Toai

Right from the afternoon of the 30th of Tet, we children gathered to watch the wrapping of banh chung. The square and angular cakes were wrapped by my father, hundreds of them exactly the same, looking very beautiful. He always reserved a few small cakes for us as a gift, small but still full of meat and bean filling, still square and tightly tied. And that solemn moment had come. My mother lit the fire. The pile of wood from the previous month was stacked on the dry kitchen cupboard, I could still hear the crackling sound when the fire touched it, starting the sacred ritual of burning. The warm fire shot out strings of tiny beads like a cluster of small fireworks, chasing away the cold, frosty dust of everyday life to purify the soul of the old year into the new year with a pot of banh chung boiling, boiling with joy like children. Banh chung is a complete work of art with the spiritual legend of the nation, encapsulating the spiritual energy of heaven and earth with rural products, and is also a work of complete nutrition. There, the culinary essence of the three regions converges, although the names are different, such as in the South it is banh tet (round), but the quality inside is the same - just a variation to suit each region.

The fire in the last days of the year is also associated with a special ritual, the New Year's Eve bath. The pot of water includes many kinds of leafy vegetables, but especially cannot lack coriander that mother bought at the market. The New Year's Eve bath is also to wash away the old things to welcome the new year's air with new clothes, new age gifts and indispensable new small square sticky rice cakes. After the New Year's Eve bath is the New Year's Eve dinner, the most delicious and sacred meal of the whole year. People from far away return to gather, the New Year's Eve tray from the traditional kitchen cannot lack delicious dishes such as braised meat, beef stew, carp stewed with galangal, pickled onions, bamboo shoot soup, ham, sausage, spring rolls... On the ancestral altar there is always a tray of five fruits and on New Year's Eve, there is an offering of a rooster. Especially, there are many cakes such as square sticky rice cakes, ash cakes, day cakes, honey cakes, jams, sweet soup... The sweetness of the cold day at the end of the year is even more absorbed into us. The sweetness is not only of sugarcane but also of human love to remember the ancestors in the sweet scent of incense.

Now that I am far away, I miss the New Year's Eve fire even more. I miss the smoky wall, the clutter of farm tools, the boiling sound of the pot of banh chung steaming brightly in the flickering firelight. Around me now, I only see the kitchen covered with ceramic tiles, glass, and shiny stainless steel appliances, a space without divinity, holding no memories, a cold, emotionless object with only convenient value. The pair of banh chung bought at the supermarket is already frozen, and I long for the pair of small banh chung stirring with smoke...

Nguyen Ngoc Phu (Ha Tinh)