Grinding flour for making cakes

In the countryside, if you can't go to the market, life with fields, vegetable gardens, fish ponds, shrimp ponds... is still enough for daily meals. As for life in the city, the social distancing order has "made it difficult" for many housewives, especially busy people who often eat out.

When restaurants, even take-out ones, are closed, and movement is limited, the only way to eat is to "roll" into the kitchen. Many people " discover " their "hidden" culinary ability, which for a long time, partly due to the hustle and bustle of life, partly due to the busyness of making a living, partly because the supply is too available, too convenient, so they themselves are lazier, have no chance to show it!

Staying at home for a long time, friends on social media are bustling with products from the kitchen corner. Some knead dough to steam buns, fry bird's nest cakes, bake bread, make sponge cake in a rice cooker, make rice rolls in a non-stick pan, make vermicelli, rice noodles, vegetable noodles... Except for the "faulty versions" due to clumsiness and making them for the first time, most of them are "okay". There are dishes that I used to only buy, never thinking that one day I could make them myself for my parents, husband and children to eat. It was hard work but the happiness was overwhelming, the feeling of joy was indescribable.

However, there are also families who, although living in the middle of the city, maintain traditional lifestyles and are less dependent on restaurants, so they are not suffering much from social distancing.

Although she has lived in the market for a long time, my aunt still maintains many of the traditional lifestyles of her family from her time in the countryside. In front of the house, although it is small, she uses styrofoam boxes and soil to grow all kinds of plants, a little of each, so the family meals always have onions, coriander, cinnamon, chili, lemongrass, ginger, pandan leaves...

Social distancing, only going to the market once every 3 days, so you have to calculate in advance, write down what you need to buy, go quickly and safely: buy eggs, buy meat, fish, shrimp... divide into small bags to freeze; some vegetables and fruits that can be kept for a long time: pumpkin, squash, potatoes, cassava...; buy an extra bunch of ripe bananas and a bunch that have just "turned over"; stop by the grocery store to buy some green beans, mushrooms, flour, tapioca starch... That way, the kitchen is full, cozy with meals for the whole family, young and old, during the whole week at home to fight the epidemic.

As a housewife, she is good at organizing, so the housework is always in order, smooth, the food and drink in the house are not suddenly lacking, and never wasted because of spoilage. When buying green beans, she puts some in a jar to save for making cakes, cooking sweet soup, cooking sticky rice..., and soaks some to "remove" the bean sprouts. The plump bean sprouts she grows herself, put them in a basket, wrapped carefully, and can be kept in the refrigerator for a whole week without spoiling. Whatever her relatives in the countryside send her, she cherishes and preserves carefully. She peels the turmeric roots, slices them and dries them. She leaves some fresh fish for braising, frying, and making soup, and marinates the rest with spices and dries them. When wrapping small, soft silver shrimp, which are abundant in squares, she also carefully picks the heads and roasts them in advance. If you are too lazy to prepare elaborate dishes, just cook vegetable soup, eat with fried shrimp, fried dried fish, or grilled fish. That's enough to eat up the rice during the epidemic break. If you can't finish eating the morning glory, you can make pickles. If you can't eat all the bananas in a bunch, you can dry them carefully.

Her favorite are the traditional cakes she makes from rice flour milled at home. In her free time, when the weather is good, she soaks rice, takes out the family-owned stone mortar she brought from the countryside, painstakingly carves it, lubricates the new mortar, attaches the handle, then carefully cleans it and sits down to grind the soaked rice into flour. After grinding the flour, she puts it in a cloth bag overnight to dry. She wakes up early in the morning and cuts the flour into slices, dries it and saves it for later use. When she needs to make cakes, she has delicious rice flour at home.

Milling flour is hard work, but the cakes are more delicious than flour bought at the market. Photo: LE TUAN

Previously, many people thought this hard work was a waste of effort when rice flour was readily available in grocery stores. However, during the current pandemic, travel was difficult, flour and cake ingredients were in high demand, and having a stone mortar at home was convenient in many ways. When the dry flour was gone, she soaked the rice in hot water and ground it quickly. With a bunch of dried turmeric, she put it in the mortar with the rice to create a powder with a natural yellow color, which she used to make banh xeo and banh khot.

If you crave something sweet, grind rice with perilla leaves, shape the cake, if you don't have jackfruit leaves or water coconut leaves like in the countryside, you can make the cake, or shape the dough into a bowl or plate and steam it, it's still delicious. Then boil the rice cake, sweet and salty rice noodle soup, steamed banana cake, add tapioca starch to make wet rice cake, rice rolls...

From rice, with a stone mortar in the house, through the skillful and diligent hands of Ms. Tu, countless delicious traditional cakes were born. In the morning, mix the flour, then stir-fry the meat, wood ear mushrooms, and cassava; mix the dipping sauce; finish making the cakes, the whole family has a delicious rice cake meal without having to leave the house. At lunch, if you are bored with rice, soak some mung beans, mince meat, shrimp, and make banh khot; or fry banh xeo with bean sprouts, cassava available in the refrigerator... Eat cakes to change the taste, instead of rice. In the drizzling afternoon, craving snacks, if there are ripe bananas, sweet potatoes, and sweet potatoes in the house, mix flour to fry banana cakes, fried potatoes; if you are bored with grease, make steamed banana cakes...