Bánh chưng - The Symbol of Tết (Vietnamese New Year)

It's been 5 years since I have not been able to celebrate Tet with my family. For me, Tet is always a special time in life that helps to bring my extended family together.

Being away from home for such a long time, I miss spending warm and happy Tet holidays with my family. In the first few years living overseas, I missed home a lot, but over time I got used to the feeling of being away during Tet. I no longer pay much attention to this traditional Tet holiday. It's slowly becoming a normal day for me, nothing special except that I would spend a lot of time talking to family and friends.

Realizing that I had lost my sense of eagerness for Tet, I wanted to do something this year, not only to celebrate Tet but also to help my partner to understand more about this traditional day. I prepared Banh Chung - a traditional cake for this special occasion. Chung cake is made of rice, mung beans and pork (either shoulder or belly is fine), wrapped in a banana leaf in the shape of a square. It is then boiled for several hours until cooked.

I always thought that making Banh Chung was very difficult and required meticulousness. When I was small, because of not being careful when preparing ingredients and wrapping process, Banh Chung did not taste good. I could tell how disappointed my Mum was when she ate the cake. So I think it will be difficult for me to get it right for the first time. Thanks to an online recipe, I was able to create the same taste and I must say it is even tastier than the one I used to have at home.

Here is a recipe for Banh Chung that I learned:

Ingredients for 3 small Chưng Cake

• 500g sticky rice
• 300g mung bean without skin
• 300g pork shoulder with some fat
• Shallots, pepper and salt
• 100g of spinach leaves
• Banana leaves
• A DIY square carton frame. I didn't have a square so I used a rectangle.

Preparation:

• Soak sticky rice and mung bean 8 - 12 hours before cooking so it is faster to cook. Add 1 tbsp of salt to the water.
• Marinate pork with shallots
• Rinse banana leaves and let them dry
• After 12 hours, drain out the water from sticky rice and mung bean then mix 1 tbsp of sugar, 1/2 tbsp of salt and 1 tsp of chicken or mushroom powder. Leave it to dry for half an hour.
• All spinach leaves to the blender with 200ml of water so we can use this mixture to create a nice green colour for the sticky rice.
• Then use a non-stick frying pan to quickly cook the rice, mung bean and meat as below:

• Now it's time to wrap all the ingredients in banana leaves. It was my first time so I couldn't make it look nice. I followed the instruction from here , you can have a quick look at how they wrap the cake.

^{From left to right, following the clock is how I wrapped the cake. It was not the prettiest ones but I tried my best with all the resources I had}

• To cook the cake you can use a pressure cooker or rice cooker. I don't have a pressure cooker so I use my rice cooker and cook for 3.5 hours. The result was amazing. Even though the cake looks not the same but the taste is 100% the same as the ones I had at home with my family. I have to say it tastes so good and I was so happy with it.

^{It was my first time so I didn't know how to portion the meat with the bean. That's why you can see the middle part with no meat}

I don't recommend trying this recipe if you don't have time. It took me almost 3 hours in preparation and 3.5 hours to cook so around 6.5 hours in total for just 3 small cakes. But for me, it was a pleasant time as it reminds me about preparing Tet at my home and the joy to feel that I can make this special cake.

This is a post in my food series blog to aim for raising awareness about the importance of eating real food. You might ask "What do you mean by that?". Eating real food means eating foods in their natural stage, reducing as much as possible processed food and ultra-processed food in your daily consumption. Let's start eating real this year.

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