Dessert served during a rainy day

Illustration: DANG HONG QUAN

It was corn porridge, made with a few small, kernel-less ears of sticky corn gleaned from our garden. We usually called it "toothless corn" because the kernels were so sparse. To make enough porridge, Mom had to dig up some waxy potatoes from the garden as well. The corn and waxy potato porridge was chewy, sweet, and creamy with rich coconut milk.

It's also a banana dessert, if you're lucky enough to have a bunch of ripe plantains in the garden. The riper the bananas, the tastier and sweeter the dessert. My mother adds sweet potatoes or cassava, also available in the garden, to cook together.

Sweet banana dessert has the sweetness of bananas and the richness of sweet potatoes. Add coconut milk to the top of the bowl, or a few thinly sliced ​​pieces of coconut and crushed roasted peanuts, and the dessert becomes wonderfully fragrant and delicious.

It also includes a refreshing dessert of young pumpkin and mung beans, as the garden has several pumpkin vines bearing fruit.

It's a pot of mung bean or black bean sweet soup with sticky rice. The beans are harvested in the summer and stored in glass bottles in the kitchen cupboard. "Chè bà ba" contains peanuts, mung beans, tapioca pearls, sweet potato starch, and a few cassava roots.

On special occasions, like the full moon festival, my mother would soak glutinous rice and grind it into flour to make glutinous rice balls in sweet soup. This dish is so formal that we rarely get to eat it often. But with this dessert, everyone loves those little "che-dung" balls, which are just small, plain balls of dough without filling.

The prolonged rain prevented any market trading. The rice and grain wouldn't dry properly. But my mother found ways to create a warm and cozy atmosphere for us, allowing us to gather together, share meals of sweet soup and porridge, and learn to be considerate of each other, even when we were all still wanting more.

Making sweet soup on a rainy, stormy day was also a lively affair. Everyone had something to contribute to the pot. Some peeled coconuts. Some grated coconut. Some squeezed coconut milk. Some peeled sweet potatoes. Even the youngest had to run errands: fetching sugar (thanks to which I always asked my mother for a small piece of sugar to suck on - back when we used raw cane sugar); soaking tapioca pearls and sweet potato starch...

The pot of sweet soup was placed on the stove. Mom sat watching the fire, stirring constantly to prevent it from sticking to the bottom. We children huddled around her, chatting and telling stories, or inventing games to play while we waited for the soup to cook. The soup bubbled and simmered, its aroma filling the small kitchen. We scooped it out, waited for Mom to offer it to our ancestors, and only then were we allowed to eat it.

A cup of hot tea, with the rain still falling outside, is both warm and sweet, delicious to the last bite.

During those rainy days, Mom would take out all our clothes to check if any were torn, frayed, or missing buttons so she could mend them. Then she'd tell me to take out my old, black-covered book of folk songs and read her some of her favorites. The scene of us huddled together on the old bamboo bed on the porch during the rain, Mom sitting beside us busily sewing, still warms my heart to this day.

I remember eating bowls of sweet soup that Mom made on rainy days, and thinking about how she "suppressed negative emotions," it makes me feel so much affection for her. Back then, we kids didn't understand the sadness adults felt during those long, persistent rainstorms.

I only heard my mother lament, "What a relentless, destructive rain!" but I didn't pay much attention to her sighs. She was sewing and cooking inside the house, but her mind was probably preoccupied with the garden: the fruit trees rotted easily, the flowers fell off easily, and the garden would have a bad harvest that year.

The prolonged rain prevented any market trading. The rice and grain wouldn't dry properly. But my mother found ways to create a warm and cozy atmosphere for us, allowing us to gather together, share meals of sweet soup and porridge, and learn to be considerate of each other, even when we were all still wanting more.

Now, when it rains heavily, I imitate my mother, grabbing my basket and going to the market to find some garden corn, stopping to buy a packet of coconut milk, and then setting up the stove to cook sweet soup. The pot of sweet soup I cook drifts away, its aroma fading away, perhaps lacking the lively atmosphere of everyone doing this and that, the bustling and cozy sounds in the small kitchen.

The smell of burning wood and the black smoke clinging to the bottom of the pot are completely gone. My son would hardly dare to peel a piece of raw cane sugar like I used to, to take a bite and feel overwhelmingly happy.

But surely, the warm smell of the kitchen on a rainy day, with the simple dish that anyone can cook, will remain in the child's memory in its own way, no matter what era it is.

That sense of belonging, so private and unique, keeps everyone in the house coming back home. Home, I believe, remains the ultimate safe haven for every life, for everyone, no matter who they are.

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/mon-che-trong-bua-mua-dam-20240929095957036.htm