Vietnamese ham - speciality from North

How can I translate this into English, is it ham? or is it sausage ? I prefer to call it ham as I feel our traditional chả which made of lean pork or beef, more similar to ham, but we can call it sausage too.
I said chả - speciality from North because in Hà Nội the variety of chả is much richer than in South, and the quality is also different - better!

             Vietnamese ham shop in Lý Tự Trọng - Giò chả Minh Châu, popular spot with good quality ham.

 What's chả ? This's a special dish made of well-pounded lean pork, potato starch with some other ingredients such as garlic, peppercorn, fish sauce... And it depends on what kind of chả, some other secret ingredients may be added, such as young rice for fried chả cốm (tasty but sticky!) or special spice like aromatic dill to fried beef ham (chả bò) or cinnamon to famous chả quế (cinnamon ham). 

                   Chả bò - fried beef ham with an extra flavor from dill.

But here we are not talking how to prepare a good quality, irresistible chả, it would be a big secret that we may never learn from the makers, esp. in North, when it's a generation-to-generation family business without leaking out to the outsiders.

                 Chả cốm - ham with young rice, tasty but a bit sticky due to young rice (?)  

Sticky rice: tradition and celebration (xôi vị)

One of my very first posts about street food was our famous sticky rice, it's also in the list of 10 foods that Vietnamese can't live without, but along with the other sticky rice dishes, we still have another sticky rice speciality that we prepare mostly for celebrations: either death anniversary, wedding ceremony or the newly-born baby party, birthday party...it could be thousand reasons for us to celebrate! Why? Because this dish is not only good, tasty but also beautifully, colorfully presented. We call this special dish - xôi vị (literally means tasty sticky rice, my guess!).

Xôi vị is very rich in taste and beautiful in color. This dish represents the unique mixture of different flavors, colors: rich coconut, aroma from pandan leaves with its special green color, piquant smell from magenta plant which also gives the dish a beautiful purple. the yellow from sweet mung bean paste as filling in the center and slight aroma from star anise!

Xôi vị is also special due to its shape, it's not like the other sticky rice dish, xôi vị should be molded. either in square shape with some characters on the top as "Double Happiness" or "Good Luck", or in round shape and always topped with aromatic roasted sesame.

The preparation requires time and skill, how to make the sticky rice shining, not too wet, not too dry, not too sweet, not over tasty with coconut flavor and the beautiful color also - everything should be in a good portion. That's why no wonder "xôi vị" is one of very few sticky rice dishes in the menu for the important traditional celebrations.

   
The other version of xôi vị - the combination of sweet gourd and magenta sticky rice and sweet mung bean paste in the middle and on the top. This well molded xôi vị could be a good gift to friends, to loved ones in any occasion, eps. during Tết (Lunar New Year) with a wish for The Best of Luck!

Now the question where can you get this beautiful and tasty dish? My simple answer is - right in the heart of Sàigòn - Bến Thành market. Very delicious, very good-looking dish and surprisingly very good price! Please do check my post about the cake of 9 layers of clouds to find out where is the place in that famous market.

    Beautiful xôi vị in sale display in Bến Thành market, together with the other traditional cakes

Cake with 9 layers of clouds (bánh 9 tầng mây)

First thing first - I love the name of this cake! Nine layers of clouds! It sounds very nice in Vietnamese - bánh chín tầng mây. When I first heard this name - I was really curious what's is the cake with 9 layers of clouds!?
Then I found that the cake has another name - more original. And it may make you laugh, because the original name of this cake is totally a contrast to the title of this post. "Cake of pig's skin" or bánh da lợn, that's a real name, which is very popular, very close to us, and of course also very down-to-earth!

                 Famous traditional cake with 9 layers of clouds (bánh 9 tầng mây) 

I like both names - if "cake with 9 layers of clouds" emphasizes the quality of beauty, the intensity of emotion to this special traditional sweets - simple, nicely tasty but requires a perfect skill to make 9 thin layers (actually 11 layers as I count on the actual cake, but number 9 should be a good number!) with only two favorite flavors: sweet green mung beans and flavorful pandan leaves.

              or another name - less poetic but more folkloric - pig's skin cake (bánh da lợn) 

While the other name - more original - Pig's skin cake or bánh da lợn,  very good comparison between the cake texture and the image of the animal that many Vietnamese families in the country side consider as one of family members, a popular image in our folklore. We knew this cake and loved it since our childhood, until now!

              flavorful with pandan leave, sweet mung bean, nicely sticky and very tasty. 

Talking about this cake, I take a trip down memory lane when I was a little kid: someone in our neighborhood prepared this cake by using the mold made from the bottom half of Coke's can (due to the cane's bottom shape gives the cake a nice look!) and what I loved the most: to watch how my neighbor did one layer after another: the green one first with pandan leave flavor, then the yellow one with sweet green mung bean and the white one with coconut flavor, then she started with the green again... we couldn't wait until all of us could take the first bite of this tasty, yummy cake!

               on sale display with another traditional sweets at Bến Thành market. 

               Cake with 9 layers of clouds is glutinous soft, so always handle with care!

Bánh da lợn or a poetic name - bánh 9 tầng mây remains a favorite traditional cake for many of us. Nowadays I noticed that the cake is widely sold in the streets, small bowl size, much less layers, and each layer is thick, so it could be over rich. It seems not many foreigners hear about or taste this unique cake: sticky, not very sweet, strong pandan leave flavor, slightly oily from the outside (oil has been used during the preparation, to avoid the cake sticks to the mold).

                              The only place at Bến Thành market selling a terrific good bánh da lợn! 

So in case anyone want to taste this cake - a super good quality, please come to Bến Thành market - there is a tiny stall in small connection between the meat section and the grocery section - selling this cake but very quickly sold out so please go there before 8:00 am, hight recommendation!

Lunar New Year and traditional sweets

Very sorry that I didn't update my blog for almost a month, my sincere apology!
Sometime we have different priorities in life, but in 2013, not promise but I will try to post something new, interesting, especially during our Lunar New Year, which is only few weeks away from now!

Tết that we call our New Year by Lunar Calendar!
This year is a year of snake, I don't like snake and no one like it, I don't like either the number "13" but it could be my lucky number! Let's hope!

Tết is always very special time for everyone, especially for kids, it's simply big holidays with a lot of freedoms: free from school's home works, free to eat, to play, to gamble, free to do many things that they are probably not allowed to do, if not Tết. But for us, Tết is a big burden now! The preparation could take away from us a lot of efforts until the last moment - New Year Eve or Giao Thừa. So some time we have no longer good feelings about this traditional celebration. "Tết is coming, I'm tired!", that sentence we may hear more often nowadays.

             A stall selling "mứt" in Bến Thành market. The choice seems less and less.

However Tết still brings to us sweet memories...time to go back home, to gather with loved ones, to share different untold stories and to cheer another new stage in our life.

Talking about Tết I never forget the traditional sweets (or simply "mứt"). This's something that we should have at home during Tết. I still remember when I was just a young boy, around 15 year old, I went to market to buy ginger, coconut. sweet potato...to make "ginger sweets" (mứt gừng), coconut sweets (mứt dừa) by myself ...without any instructions from my mother. "Mứt" probably originated from our neighbor as I notice that in China, or some other Chinese speaking areas in South East Asia, like Chinatown in KL (Malaysia) or in Bangkok, people over there have something very similar.

           Most favorite mứt: coconut with different flavors: green with panda leaves, yellow - durian. 

Mứt is fruits stirred in sugar for hours...until it's ready, i.e either dry or wet as jam. The wet sweets (or jam) - we usually call "mứt dẽo", not only sweet, but sticky and a bit sour! This's a kind of preserved fruit which is very popular everywhere around the world! What kind of fruits can be preserved for "mứt"? It should be a long list! Most popular are coconut, ginger, winter melon, pineapple, water chestnut, sweet potato, lotus seeds, tamarind, soursop, star fruit,...etc. There was a time some mứt made of tomato, carrot, plum, dried pineapple. green papaya...were very popular, but now I couldn't find anywhere in the market.