Dear Mom,
For the past week we've been seeing wood-fired simmering pots in unused lots and on sidewalks, and today we finally got an inside peek at what's been cooking. It's a holiday food called bánh chưng, and people love the nostalgia of making it together. It's an all-day, all-night affair. The rice is soaked in water all night, then the ingredients are packed into banana leaves and tied tightly. They boil in water over an open fire which has to be tended for 10-12 hours! This results in a sticky-rice-pork packet that doesn't need to be refrigerated for up to 10 days. You can see how this would have developed in times pre-dating stovetops and refrigerators, when markets closed for two weeks and everyone rested from work and ate bánh chưng and hung out with family and friends. Young people have mixed feelings about actually eating it now, but they still speak with excitement about the tradition of making it.
We didn't stay for the long cooking process of the ones we helped to pack, but other friends brought us some they had purchased from a famous place, and we shared it tonight with a Vietnamese friend who wasn't with her family. It was actually pretty tasty!
Enjoy the photo journal below from our day making it with friends.
These are the "small" banana leaves.
She's teaching the process of folding the leaves.
Fold and cut to make a leafy box.
Rice and mung beans and pork.
The rice is carefully packed so it's on the outside of the other fillings: bottom, sides, and top. Then the package is folded up.
On another corner, same day:
