A gift for the Mid-Autumn Festival

Enjoying tea and mooncakes on the night of the full moon. Photo: LN

Memories are intertwined with the family home.

Every year during the Mid-Autumn Festival, countless lanterns of all shapes and colors appear along both sides of the streets in Saigon.

As a lucky city child, every Mid-Autumn Festival, my parents would buy me a new lantern, and I would eagerly await the Mid-Autumn night to carry it around with the neighborhood kids.

In the 1990s, although our wallets were rarely full, my parents would always save up to buy a few mooncakes for the whole family to enjoy. Because the Mid-Autumn Festival wouldn't be complete without mooncakes.

We looked forward to it so much, yet every Mid-Autumn Festival night it would rain incessantly. We children would gather in someone's yard (usually mine), showing off our pretty lanterns, jumping around, and chatting excitedly.

Whenever we got tired of running and jumping, we would sit in groups of five or seven in the yard, light small red candles, and arrange them in a circle or a heart shape.

The tiny heads gazed at the warm light emanating from the candles, swaying to the rhythm of "tung dinh dinh cak tung dinh dinh…".

While the children played together, the kitchens of each family were bustling with activity. Once the adults finished preparing dinner, they would call out to the children. We dispersed, each of us heading home to eat.

My family's meals didn't include traditional Mid-Autumn Festival dishes, but every meal my grandmother cooked always had a full spread of savory dishes, vegetables, and soup. The very abundance of our family meals represented a cherished part of my childhood, a memory I can never forget, no matter where I go or what I do. Even with my own small family, I still enjoy cooking meals with a variety of dishes, especially during the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Mooncakes

After meals, adults would often cut mooncakes and call the children over to each get a piece. Back then, famous, delicious mooncakes could be found at long-established brands like Givral, Brodard, Dong Khanh, Nhu Lan, Hy Lam Mon… The fillings included basic flavors such as mixed nuts with shredded chicken, taro, mung bean, lotus seed…

Mooncakes with salted egg yolk filling. Photo: LN

A box of mooncakes usually contains three baked mooncakes and one soft mooncake. My favorite filling is the mixed filling, which harmoniously combines salty, sweet, crispy, and chewy flavors from shredded pork floss, Chinese sausage, candied winter melon, candied lotus seeds, lard, sesame seeds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, melon seeds, along with a hint of bitterness from lime leaves and the richness of salted egg yolk. Sometimes, the salted egg yolk is off to one side instead of in the center of the mooncake, so when cutting the mooncake, the salted egg yolk is inevitably not evenly distributed.

Much later, when I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the Mid-Autumn Festival atmosphere in my husband's hometown in Ba Vi district and enjoy delicious mooncakes, I learned that in Northern Vietnam, traditional mixed-filling mooncakes do not contain salted egg yolk. Northern mooncakes differ from those in the South in that they are less sweet and are enjoyed with a warm cup of tea.

The soft shape of each cake symbolizes the bright moon on the full moon of the eighth lunar month. Yet, I still prefer to believe my childhood reasoning that the salted egg yolk is the moon I used to catch glimpses of, peeking from behind the city's tall buildings.

The gifts and memories associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival are unique to each person. In his village, every year, each hamlet would cut and paste paper and whittle bamboo to make large palanquins. On the full moon day, the villagers would line up to carry the palanquins from the village to the communal courtyard.

In my husband's stories about his childhood memories, there's also the image of a little boy folding dragonflies out of bamboo leaves, making windmills from pandan leaves with the thorns removed, popping popcorn, helping his uncle make sticky rice cakes on rainy days, and then imitating adults by setting out a plate of sticky rice cakes with a teapot, eating sticky rice cakes and drinking tea with the neighborhood children.

Or, as my friend from Teochew told me, her family often enjoys pia cakes instead of mooncakes. These round cakes with their spongy crusts and intensely sweet fillings, paired with bitter tea and the laughter of loved ones, are a reward for her own journey of growing up.

Nowadays, the mooncake market is thriving with a wide variety of rich and creative flavors such as cheese, red bean, mung bean with coconut milk, chestnut, green tea, etc. In terms of appearance, the cakes are further embellished with pink, purple, black, green, and moss green crusts, decorated with embossed patterns and covered in gold glitter, making them incredibly eye-catching.

Of course, because I love food and am curious about the combinations of different ingredients, I enjoy trying most new flavors. However, the taste of the cakes from the old days still evokes a feeling of familiar love, like being a child sheltered and embraced in loving care...

Source: https://baoquangnam.vn/thuc-qua-mua-trang-3141153.html