The golden pancakes just finished - Photo: D. TUYET
On the 5th day of the 5th lunar month (Doan Ngo Festival) in the West, every family makes banh xeo, and the aunts and uncles go to the temple to help make banh xeo to treat guests to free food.
The most famous in the Bay Nui area, An Giang is the Banh Xeo Pagoda. Visitors to this area can eat free banh xeo all year round. On holidays and full moon days, the pagoda yard is packed with people, and the banh xeo makers work tirelessly.
Get the whole family together to make pancakes.
When we were young, we didn’t like to eat banh xeo because it had too many green vegetables. Whenever my grandmother and mother were busy in the kitchen, my siblings and I would line up with bowls to wait for the broken banh xeo, the hot corner batches just out of the oven, and run out to the corner of the yard to eat deliciously.
We grew up in our grandmother and mother's kitchen, surrounded by cakes made from flour all year round, such as banh bo, banh duc, banh bao, banh lot... The Mid-Year Tet (Doan Ngo Festival) of course has banh xeo.
The eldest sister in the family was assigned the task of grinding flour, the pure white flour, fragrant with milk, ready at dawn. The youngest child in the family was assigned by their grandmother to pick vegetables, herbs, fish mint, green mustard, lettuce... to separate each type.
Brother Hai will go to the fields along the river to pick young Lagerstroemia shoots, choose the young shoots, free of insects, bring them home without washing, to eat right away.
Making round, crispy, golden pancakes is an art.
She mixed rice flour with coconut milk, green onions, and turmeric powder according to her experience to make the cake. Mom chopped cassava and red radish, mixed them with bean sprouts, shrimp, and meat, and stir-fried them until cooked, seasoned to taste, and made the cake filling.
I've always been proud to be in the position that decides whether the final product looks good or not: the stage of rolling the banh xeo.
After my grandmother and mother cooked the pancakes and put them on the tray, my second sister and I sat on either side to receive them, put the filling in the middle, and then rolled them up like spring rolls. We had to roll them so that the pancakes were even, with a balance of dough and filling, so that there wasn't too much dough left and the filling was gone.
A way to make banh xeo that can make 10 pancakes at once to serve many people.
Homemade pancake eating contest
By rolling like above, each plate will be filled with 6 - 10 cakes, then my sisters and I spread out to bring the cakes to Uncle Hai and Uncle Ba in the neighborhood. At banh xeo shops, each plate is usually filled with two cakes folded in half, not rolled neatly like homemade, it is both fast and the big cake fills the big plate.
The fish sauce for banh xeo has a sweet and sour taste, with the spicy taste of garlic and chili, and is served with pickled radish and shredded radish. The dipping sauce is especially diluted, with enough flavor, so that when dipping the banh xeo in vegetables and eating, you will want to eat more.
At noon, the whole family gathered around a tray of pancakes piled high with all kinds of green vegetables. There was also a pancake eating contest between my siblings and me, and every year my second brother was the absolute "winner" with a record of eating 10 pancakes.
Banh xeo has penetrated the lives of people in the West like that, where grandmother and mother are always busy, where my siblings and I grew up and always wanted to return, even if only to have a satisfying meal together./.
A table full of banh xeo to serve tourists
According to Ms. Nguyen Thi Nga - Deputy Director of the Center for Research, Conservation and Development of Vietnamese Cuisine , banh xeo has long been associated with the Doan Ngo Festival, an indispensable dish for people in the West. This is a dish that symbolizes family reunion, many people make, many people eat. This is the time of the changing seasons, it is raining, green vegetables are suitable for eating banh xeo. |
A family goes out to eat banh xeo on May 5th.
Dang Tuyet/tuoitre.vn
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