Missing the bowl of sweet potato dessert | QUANG NAM ONLINE NEWSPAPER

My grandmother's taro garden, the pot of hot, fragrant sweet soup in the middle of a summer moonlit night. This simple image may not evoke any special emotions for anyone, but for me, just mentioning it brings back all the memories from long ago.

Taro dessert. Photo: N.Trang — Taro dessert. Photo: N. TRANG

I remember the days when I was a child, clinging to my grandmother, following her from the garden to the market, I learned very deeply and thoroughly about any plant my grandmother planted. Like taro, every rainy season, after the market closed, my grandmother would buy a basketful of taro and bring it home to propagate and plant in the backyard.

My grandmother skillfully tilled the soil, planted the tubers underneath, then spread rotten straw on top to keep the moisture, the plants quickly grew green and healthy. Perhaps that's why by the beginning of summer, behind the house there was a lush garden of taro.

Sometimes, when a sudden storm came, the taro leaves shielded the chicks. Sang and I playfully picked the leaves together. Then we waited for grandma to dig up the tubers, wash them, and cook sweet soup. Each of us ate them heartily.

As soon as the potatoes were dug up, Grandma immediately scooped up a bucket of well water to soak them to loosen the dirt, then scrubbed them clean. She bent down to light the stove, cooked the taro until it was soft and chewy, then peeled it, cut it into eight or nine small pieces. Once again, Grandma put the cooked taro into the bowl of fragrant sticky rice and added enough water to cover it, and simmered until the sweet soup was thick.

At this time, grandma took the pot down and placed it close to the tripod so that the sweet soup would be more tender and the sticky rice would expand more. The sugar was grated and beaten, mixed with a bowl of crushed fresh ginger, and grandma cooked the sweet and sticky sugar water. The sugar water, sweet potatoes, and sticky rice were mixed together, and after a few minutes of simmering, grandma had a perfect pot of sweet potato sweet soup.

Grandma’s sweet soup is usually cooked on the full moon or the first day of the lunar month. Grandma whispered to me: “First we worship our ancestors, then our children and grandchildren enjoy it…” Hearing that, my heart was moved, each wisp of incense smoke that my grandmother lit in front of the altar seemed to entwine with the hearts of both of us. The youngest Sang was still young, just waiting for his grandmother to quickly finish worshiping so he could eat.

For me, those summer full moon nights were very beautiful, very memorable in my life. I never got tired of eating my grandma's taro sweet soup, I ate it until I was full. This sweet soup did not require a spoon, I just scooped up a piece of rice paper and put it in my mouth, all the flavors like sweet sugar, fragrant ginger, fatty taro, sticky rice melted on the tip of my tongue.

Grandma was a good eater. Whenever she cooked a pot of sweet soup, she would make a big pot, add a pot of green tea and put it on the porch. Besides her children and grandchildren, whenever she saw neighbors walking past the sweet soup stall in front of the alley, Grandma would wave her hand and invite them in to eat sweet soup.

Since when, I understood that the village love and neighborly affection are connected by simple, rustic things like that. And even after that, when my grandfather rested under the ground and the green grass, whenever someone gave me a bag of taro, I immediately felt the love and nostalgia for the bowl of sweet soup from years ago...

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