Rice popcorn - a gift of childhood

Burn

Thanh Nga

The days in Chuong My ( Hanoi ) turn to autumn, the rains suddenly come and go. People's hearts are free in the cool weather and suddenly remember memories...

Remembering the “specialties” of my childhood. Rice popcorn - one of the gifts that has embraced my childhood, mixed with the sweetness of rice and sugar.

For those born in Ha Tay (old), now Hanoi, rice popcorn is not just a snack , because it is closely associated with childhood days. The image of little boys and girls being given a cup of rice and a bag of sugar by their grandmothers and mothers, rushing to the house of the person with the “popcorn” machine in the middle of the village, is deeply imprinted in my memory.

On cold, rainy days, the children had to line up to wait their turn for popcorn to take home. A bowl of pure white rice mixed with sugar, and wealthy families would also have some instant noodles or roasted soybeans.

The popcorn machine sounds, the person popping the popcorn will skillfully pour the mixed rice into the tray at one end of the machine. The popcorn machine keeps making crisp sounds with each beat, after a process of grinding, mixing, kneading, crushing the ingredients, the long, hot, steaming popcorn sticks come out from the other end of the tube of the machine.

The holy grail of childhood

Thanh Nga

The machine owner was like a magician in the sparkling eyes of children like me, with gloves on his hands to avoid burns, the other hand holding scissors, he stretched the stick of firewood and cut it evenly and quickly.

Sometimes, when the popcorn was still hot and soft, he would make us popcorn sticks in different shapes, which looked so appealing that some of us kept them and didn't dare eat them.

The popcorn, still hot after popping, was immediately put into a clean sack that my mother had prepared. The sack had to be wrapped in 2 to 3 layers so that it could be tied tightly to keep the popcorn crispy for a long time. When we left, we had two small bags in our hands, but when we returned, each child like me was carrying a tightly tied and still warm sack of popcorn. The smell of rice, sugar, corn, and beans still wafted from the layers of bags in our hands.

With the main ingredients being rice and sugar, diners can add many other flavors. Just adding a little dried corn, instant noodles, peanuts, dried coconut... makes the rice popcorn dish have a different aroma than other places' rice popcorn. In the past, there was a time when the popcorn machine and the image of the rice popcorn bar seemed to disappear. About 2 years ago, when Hanoians remembered those "specialties" of their childhood, from the suburban roads or at some intersections or on the side of the main roads in the city, they saw rows of rice popcorn with a familiar aroma, making us want to return to our childhood, again.