As a rule, at the end of the year, I would visit my grandmother’s house and see a row of ginger. The ginger was carefully fertilized with ash, so it grew lush and green. My grandmother was really good, she kept that ginger variety. She kept praising: “What a delicious ginger variety, so spicy”. I was afraid of spicy food, so when I heard that, I frowned: “What a delicious “spicy” Grandma?” She smiled toothlessly: “Dad, ginger has to be spicy to be delicious! If ginger isn’t spicy, what kind of ginger is it?”
Grandma waited until the full moon of December to pull out the ginger, leaving some seeds for the next season to peel, boil in a pot, then use a sharp knife to thinly slice and soak in cold water before making jam. Grandma worked so hard to do all those things, so diligent! When I was young and had nothing to do, I often came home in December to see how grandma made ginger jam. After soaking the ginger for a certain amount of time, grandma took it out and put it in a basket to drain, then put the ginger and sugar in a pan and mixed well. Leave the mixture in the pan for a while until the ginger absorbs the sugar, then grandma put the pan on the charcoal stove, turned on a low heat to slowly melt the sugar. When the pan was hot, wait until the sugar grains completely dissolved into the water, grandma would use chopsticks to stir the ginger to absorb the sugar water again. When the sugar was about to boil, grandma skillfully used chopsticks to scoop up and pick up the ginger in the middle of the pan and pile it on top of the ginger around the sides of the pan. Pick up and pile until the edge of the pan turned into a "dike" of ginger piled high and running around, embracing the empty middle like a deep "well", sucking to the bottom of the pan! When the pan of jam was steaming and giving off a fragrant ginger scent, no matter what she was doing, Grandma would stop and go “watch the pan”. Using a medium-sized ladle, Grandma would regularly dip into the “well” to scoop up sugar water and sprinkle it evenly over the surrounding ginger “dyke”. She would sprinkle it again and again until the water gradually dried up and turned into white sugar crystals that stuck evenly around each piece of jam. Bury some of the ashes so that the stove fire was still slightly warm, and dry the jam in the pan until it was completely dry. When she put her chopsticks in the pan to stir it around, hearing the clinking sound of the dried jam slices hitting the bottom of the pan, Grandma smiled brightly, put down her chopsticks, and wiped her sweat away…
Every year, my grandmother would share a bunch of the homemade ginger jam with her children to eat during Tet. Of course, when entertaining guests at the beginning of the year, my grandmother's family always had ginger jam. Seeing the way my grandmother squinted at the plate of jam, carefully picking up a piece of dried jam, bringing it to her mouth to bite, sniffing and chewing, then nodding and raving about the sweet and spicy flavor before picking up a second piece to serve to her guests, I could understand how much my grandmother loved that traditional dish at the beginning of the year. When guests heard my grandmother say it was delicious even before eating it. And it must have been delicious, because except for those guests who were afraid of spicy food like me, the majority of them nodded in agreement after tasting my grandmother's ginger jam! My grandmother always said, "Tet without ginger jam is not Tet!". Once, I was about to argue, but my father glared at me. When I got home, my father explained, "I'm old; the ginger jam at the beginning of the year is my passion, if you can't eat it, you shouldn't object and make me sad..."
This year my grandmother turned ninety. In December I visited her and saw the empty plot of land in front of the yard. Surprised, I asked, “Why aren’t you planting ginger today, Grandma?” She said sadly, “There’s that other variety, but my hands are shaking so I can’t plant it. Your uncles said, ‘Why bother planting it? Just go to the market and buy it.’”
On the 29th of Tet, I went to my mother’s house and saw her making ginger jam. I asked: “Hey, no one in our family eats ginger jam, what are you making?”. My mother said: “I went to the market and found some good ginger, so I bought some and made your grandmother a plate to eat for Tet…”.
Essays: Y Nguyen
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