Flavor Boulevard

Mother said “you shall not eat meat on the first day of Tet“. And I said “yes, Mom.”

It has been our family tradition that the first day of the lunar year is a vegan day. It’s not unique to our family of course, most Vietnamese Buddhists eat vegan on certain days of the lunar calendar, the number of days depend on the amount of devotion to practice the precept of not killing. To refrain from all of the festive food is also a step to train the mind against the worldly temptations. Normally, that would be difficult if I were at home, given the excess of pork sausage loaves, braised pork and eggs, banh chung banh tet, roast chicken, fried spring rolls, dumplings, et cetera. But I’m here by myself, it’s like expatriation on top of expatriation. To refrain from meat has never been so easy. 😉

My quick and simple vegan lunch: steamed rice with muối mè (a mix of sesame, salt and sugar, similar to furikake but Vietnamese 😉 ), steamed bok choy, shisozuke umeboshi (salted plum with pickled shiso leaf) and pickled cucumber (a kind of tsukemono), an orange, a cup of mung bean milk from Banh Mi Ba Le and a cup of rose water. (In my recent San Jose trip, I found out that Chinese people take a particular liking to the bok choy outside the food realm. They make huge glass (or plastic?) bok choy that resembles chubby gold fish, except green and white, to put on pedestals for house decorations. Pretty cute, actually!)

Rose water is the simplest way to healthily flavor your water that I learned from a friend: pour dried rosebuds (easily found as an herbal tea at any tea shop) into cold water, let the water be for a while, drink, refill the water. I use a small sieve to filter the rose petals when I pour my glasses and to keep the rose in the water pitcher, but eating a few petals wouldn’t hurt. I thought about making little temaki (rice cone wrapped in toasted seaweed) but that might taste too salty with all the pickles and muối mè.

Snacks: vegan Biscoff cookie given to us by Abbot Thich Huyen Viet at the Lien Hoa Buddhist temple in Houston (these are surprisingly tasty!), a Pink Lady apple, Miyaki Komedawara okoshi (basically, peanut and rice sweets) and a pot of Vietnamese lotus green tea.

For dinner, I’ll probably have a few bánh u tro (sticky rice ash dumpling with red bean filling) and a packet of Vifon Vietnamese vegan instant noodle, then wait until 00:01 am to have a bowl of Dreyer’s double fudge brownie ice cream. 😉 (That’s right, refraining from ice cream is still difficult…) Happy Lunar New Year!

Its popularity might have declined over the years in Vietnam, but to the Vietnamese expats, mứt Tết remains one of the few links home to resurrect our new spring festival atmosphere on foreign lands. As far as I know these candied fruits are unique to the Vietnamese New Year (Tết), just like the tteokguk and the yakwa to the Korean Seolnal. They are holiday gifts to friends and family, offerings at the altars to ancestors and deities, little snacks for children, tea confections for adults, and vegan treats for those who refrain from eating meat at the year’s beginning.

Mứt can be divided into two types: wet and dry. Visit any beef jerky (khô bò) and salted plums (xí muội) stores in Vietnamese shopping malls in the Tet season, you’d see a swarm of mứt in glass jars, the wet kinds wrapped in crunchy paper and the dry kind laying bare. The two most common wet mứt are tamarind (me) and soursop (mãng cầu). The former is kept in its scrawny form, with a few rope-like fibrous strings along the fruit’s length, which is to be discarded when eating, of course.

Tamarind mứt should be amber brown, chewy, and a little more sour than sweet. Tamarind is notorious for its medicinal effect, so be careful not to consume too many sticks at once. A similar chewy wet mứt is the soursop, but it’s always milkish white, doesn’t retain the fruit’s shape, and people tend to put too much sugar in the churning process.

On the dry side you can find some twenty common kinds, spanning both fruits and non-fruits (nuts and roots): coconut, persimmon, lotus seed, tomato, ginger slice, carrot, winter melon, apple, lemon, guava, water chesnut, etc. I’m particularly fond of the crunchy, aromatic coconut ribbons which as a kid I liked to hold in my mouth for hours to melt off all but the coconut itself; but this year I refrained from buying them to try the other kinds instead.

As advertised by the lady of the store, the scarlet kumquat mứt (mứt tắc) is “good enough to die for”. I’d say its texture is fresh, its color attractive, it’s not too killingly sweet (always a plus for these candied pieces), and it’s a thousand times better than the cherry they put in your hot fudge sundae. 😉 Word of mouth is it can help with digestion and lowering body temperature, and if you drink too much alcohol perhaps pack a few of these to detoxicate (or just don’t drink!).

The sweet potato mứt (mứt khoai lang) are warm yellow inch-long sticks without powder sugar coating, as dense as a medium boiled egg yolk and as sweet as the root itself. In a blind taste test, the first bite makes you think it resembles sweet potato, then the second casts some doubt because it’s denser and more consistent than sweet potato. It has the same medicinal effect as tamarind, but to a lesser degree.

Mudpie’s favorite of the five is labelled pomelo (bưởi), but it’s most likely the pomelo skin, sun-dried and pan-sweetened and powder-sugar-coated like American candies. It feels so light almost porous, the center has a subtle citrus pinch that would marry well a cup of hot chrysanthemum tea.

In the end, there’s no telling which kind of mứt everyone would like best, but there’s always some kind somewhere to each person’s liking. When you buy mứt, ask for a sample before settling on a 1-lb pound package, you can’t judge a mứt by its cover. Usually they cost $3-5 per half pound, and each little bite-size is packed with enough sugar that it’s best, though it may appear cheap, to buy $1-2 each kind, and buy many kinds. 🙂

Where I get my mứt this year: Eurasia Delight (inside Grand Century Mall)
1111 Story Rd Ste 1028
San Jose, CA 95122
(408) 293-1698

…1. The kumquat branches bear their multitudes of gold baubles, the tangerines and pomelos swell and shine, the dragon fruits and rambutans are happily sought for because of their festive shapes and colors;

…2. The white grey front patio of Grand Century Mall and its adjacents is blushed with firecracker remnants, and if you’re there at the right moment, your ears would be blasted by the continuous loud popping of an ignited long Chinese squib, its color matched only by the ruby peach blossoms in full bloom;

…3. The usually dormant stores that sell Vietnamese beef jerkies and dried plums awakens in a sudden selling frenzy: tasting, weighing, packaging, paying, people queuing…

… mostly for the dried candied fruits known as mứt Tết.

…4. It takes 30 minutes to get in and out of the mall and market parking lots in San Jose and then park on the neighborhood street, because parts of the lot are reserved for Chinese chess, fruit stalls, music stalls, peach blossom trees,…

… cotton candy and green waffles, sunshine orchid corners, still, everybody is in a good mood;

…5. The Buddhist nuns and pious pagoda goers gather to wrap and steam hundreds of banh chung banh tet, pickle jars of cucumber, carrot, củ kiệu, cabbage, daikon…

… all of which are vegetarian, in small quantity, usually tasty, and always more expensive than anywhere else.

As independent of religions and politics as the mark of spring is, you know it’s Tet where the flag still flies.

Bánh chưng and bánh tét to the Vietnamese Tết are like turkey and ham to the American Thanksgiving. The holiday feast just wouldn’t feel right without them. Although I have blogged about these sticky rice squares and logs before, the lunar new year has come back, and so are they. Sticky rice can be uberfilling in large quantity, and like all festive food, it’s not recommended that you feast on these dense beasts day after day, as satisfaction would turn into tiresomeness. But once a year, or maybe twice, a couple slices of banh tet sound so much more interesting than cereal, rice, even noodle soup.

Banh chung and banh tet have rather similar ingredients, especially when they’re made by Vietnamese Southerners. Both are wrapped in leaves (although slightly different kinds of leaves), and boiled for hours in water that is sometimes spiced with lemongrass. After cooking, a heavy weight is put on banh chung to drain the water, while banh tet are rolled around to perfect the cylindrical shape. I remember we used to hang pairs of banh tet in my grandfather’s kitchen, taking one down everyday during the week of Tet to whip out a nice settling meal with thịt kho trứng (pork and egg stew), dưa giá (pickled bean sprout),  and spring rolls. There are the savory kind with meat and mung bean paste, and the vegan kind for those who want to practice self-control on the first day of Tet. In Houston, my mom usually gets the savory kind from Giò Chả Đức Hương, where we also get our cha lua supply, and the vegan kind from Linh Son pagoda. I branched out this year and tried a meaty log from Huong Lan Sandwiches 4 in Milpitas.

Their banh tet measures about 7 inches long, making eight thick nice slices, each has a chunk of fatty pork in the middle, pink and spiced with pepper. The sticky rice coat here gave its leaf wrapping a bit insecure sliminess when we first unraveled, but all was well. The banh tet smelled great, the sticky rice has a tight but soft texture. The seasoned bean paste is just salty enough to intrigue. In some way, banh tet is better than banh chung because every bite guarantees a bit of everything. No piece will miss the meat completely and no bite will get all the meat, the stuffing is even throughout the whole banh.  It was honestly good by itself without condiments. Huong Lan Sandwiches had not failed me.

And neither did Thao Tien. When we got there last week in our quail quest, Thao Tien’s employees were busy running a small table pyramidized with banh chung and banh tet. They locate nicely in front of the Grand Century mall, passed by hundreds of people Tet shopping that day. Seeing the sale went like hot cakes (the sticky rice cakes were actually still warm), we were too eager to snatch one home that we forgot to check the tiny white sticker on the side. Surprise, we had grabbed a bánh tét chuối (banana banh tet).

It’s solely vegan. The sticky rice coat is made interesting with dots of black beans on shiny green background. The core is sweet, mushy banana in a reddish purple hue. This is just the usual ivory banana that always ripe too soon, but somehow slow cooking in a compact block of sticky rice wrapped by banana leaves makes the fruit change color. Chemical reactions? It still tastes sweet, with a hint of bitter (for lack of a better word) like a guava skin. And it looks beautiful to me.

The banana banh tet also goes well with my rotisserie chicken from Safeway, minus the guilt of defeating the whole vegan purpose thing. Thao Tien’s logs are also shamelessly long, almost two times bigger than Huong Lan’s. I will be eating banh tet every day for the rest of the week. Happy Tết to bánh tét and me!

Address: Hương Lan Sandwiches 4
41 Serra Way, Ste. 108
Milpitas, CA 95035
1 bánh tét with meat: $6

Thảo Tiên restaurant
Grand Century Mall
1111 Story Road #1080
San Jose, CA 95122
1 vegan banana bánh tét: $10

Being a blatant ruthless carnivore all year round, I know that going vegan one day of the year won’t help me redeem myself in hell, but I still follow my mom’s tradition on the first day of Tet. No cheese, no animal milk, no bone marrow, no lard, no skin, no fishy business. It’s the first day of the new spring, everybody deserves to live, so we believe it’s nice to spare the lives of yummy things that can move. Or at least we should try not to cause their deaths. That means I have to find a vegan restaurant in Berkeley. Mudpie was estatic. (Mudpie has been fighting to go to Herbivore down the block for months, and I’ve been “gently” suggesting other places all this time.) Mudpie went online and picked his order even before we got there: the Indonesian noodle salad with tamarind dressing (pictured above).

When we got there the place was packed to the roof. Lucky for us, we got the last free table, and some folks who came later had to wait for at least an hour to be seated. If you wonder how I knew how long the wait was, it’s because that’s also how long we had to wait for our food. I had nothing to do within that hour except looking at other customers and eavesdropping on their conversation. The table arrangement is quite efficient, everyone’s utensil is within everyone’s neighbor’s reach. We ordered a yerba mate tea to sip boredom away. The hot kind comes in three choices: organic (plain, no sugar, no milk), organic latte, and chai spice tea; the chilled bottle kind is flavored with either raspberry or mint. The plain kind wasn’t anything spectacular. It’s just commonplace bitter like any other unflavored tea. I don’t want to sound snotty, but yerba mate is just another overhyped foreign substance, worthy of seeking after only for its novelty and cultural value.

Moving on to the food. The Indonesian noodle salad was like a garden harvest. Cucumber slices, pineapple and orange cubes, a few streaks of bean sprouts, lettuce, cilantro, cabbage, onion, whole peanuts, carrots, all partied up in a spicy chili pepper tamarind sauce. It was sour and refreshing. The thin rice noodle got lost in the jungle. For a salad, it scored well. For an entree, it needed more warmth and more substance.

What the noodle salad didn’t have, the “curry-coconut udon noodle” had: warmth and substance. I don’t know why it’s not “coconut-curry,” and I don’t know why it’s called “udon noodle,” because this was not udon. Texture aside, the curry noodle didn’t have what the noodle salad had: flavor. It was coconuty, but a pinch of salt and a few tablespoons of sugar would be a nice boost. After all, vegan food doesn’t have to be unseasoned food.

It’s not clear to me why Herbivore has gained such popularity in the region. The two entrees we got did not make us oomph and aahh. Looking around at other tables, we saw many sandwiches, italians and happy faces, so was it just us not picking the right plates? Being on the verge of disappointment, I almost decided to leave without dessert, but Mudpie and a second thought made me grab the waitress to order a wedge of vegan pie with one scoop of ice cream. We heard that strawberry rhubarb was good, but since it was out, we opted for the olallieberry pie (just because of the name). According to Wikipedia, the olallieberry is half blackberry, a quarter raspberry, and a quarter dewberry. The pie filling was more tart than sweet, which is always nice. The crust was thick, dense, and plain enough to shelter us from a sugar flood.  The mudslide vegan ice cream swept me off my feet with its creamy texture, chocolaty sweetness, and sneaky coconut shavings. If anything, this awesome dessert assortment would draw me back to Herbivore.

Address: Herbivore the Earthly Grill
2451 Shattuck Avenue (the corner of Shattuck and Haste)
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 665-1675

Click for Herbivore’s Menu

An order of 1 curry tofu noodles, 1 Indonesian noodle salad, 1 yerba mate organic tea (plain), 1 vegan pie + a scoop of ice cream set us back by $30. Overall, a decent and healthy catch. But in all fairness, dessert aside, Herbivore is not in the least comparable with Garden Fresh in Mountain View.

The lunar new year comes a bit late this time. The first day of Tet coincides with Valentine’s Day on a Sunday. Can you imagine how big it is for the Asian expats? The other years Tet happened during the week, people have to work, kids have classes, maybe even tests. Who knows what a pop quiz on that first day can do to a child that whole year? Tet in Vietnam is in the spring, but for the expats in the western hemisphere, if Tet comes a bit too early, like in January, then it’d still be coat-and-cold-nose time. So yeah, it’s big this year.

In the past few days it’s been snowing in Texas and everything, but the weather here has gotten fairly springlike. The hills are all fuzzily green, purplish pink flowers blooming on the side streets (I know nothing about botany, but my guess is they are related to cherry blossoms somehow), spring showers come every now and then just to wet your eyebrows. The employment rate may still be low in Cali, but there was no sign of a recession in San Jose last weekend. The parking lots at Lion and the Grand Century mall were packed. It was like Black Friday sale. Cars were moving bumper to bumper trying to get in and out and maybe a spot. We went through maybe 8 songs on the CD while waiting to make a right turn to the other side of the mall. Of course it was also the big Super Bowl day, but we could tell that Vietnamese men and women really paid attention to football.

…Maybe if football looked like bầu cua… Lots of these tables were set along the sidewalk at Grand Century mall, some are games I’ve never seen before. My family used to play bầu cua during Tet, just a small game of dice to pass time. I liked it because of the pictures: a shrimp, a crab (“cua”), a wine gourd (“bầu”, hence the name of the game), a rooster, a fish, and a deer, which are also the six sides of the dice. Ah, sweet memories of the candies I won…

But not everyone was out for playing games, most of the women seemed to come here for the same reason I had: the food. Tet is not Tet without fridgefuls, counterfuls, pantryfuls, freezerfuls, and extrabellifuls of food. Banh chung banh tet are essential, but not the only thing. Lion supermarket had an entire aisle dedicated for pickles and mắm (cured fish, which can be eaten fresh out of the jar with white rice, cooked in a hot pot, or steamed with egg and pork to make a kind of meat loaf). It’s not nước mắm (fish sauce, that goes with banh cuon and bun thit nuong), not mắm nêm or mắm tôm (other kinds of dipping sauces), it’s visible cuts and strips of fish in jars of seasonings. As for pickles, the most popular choice for Tet must be củ kiệu (the bulb of Allium chinense). Its pungency is between scallion and garlic, a fresh change of taste from the overindulgent fatty pork stews, eggs and sticky rice of Tet. See your favorite pickle anywhere?

Enough salt? Want something sweet? The bakeries in Grand Century were ready to get you. Usually people were there for the green waffle, now they were there for even more green waffles plus boxes of Tet toothsies. They are not candies, they are not jam (if you’re British) or jelly (if you’re American), they are not simple dried fruits, they are not glacé. They are mứt, fruits whole and sliced, quickly stir-fried in sugar syrup, just sweet enough to last a month or two, but the fruit flavor should still be there. The lady told me not to take pictures, but I did anyway.

On the other hand, the flower stands didn’t mind me taking pictures at all. In fact, there were more people taking pictures with these flamboyants than people buying them. It may be too timid a miniature of Nguyen Hue flower market, but its spirit is high, that of both the visitors hungry for a look of Tet and of the buds and petals blooming despite the foreign cold.

The northern đào (peach flower) can make it here. The southern mai doesn’t, but Tet needs a yellow flower, so people in San Jose pick a vine with bright yellow blossoms and call it the “vine mai”. I have no idea what the vine actually is, but it’d make beautiful canopies.

Then firecrackers popped their sporadic crunchy strings of sound. The pavement turned red. Old and middle-aged men in dark jackets gathered in large groups, hunching over little sets of Chinese chess (yes, chess, not Chinese checker!). They don’t make loud acclaims, many just watched the chess pieces and sank in thought. Their greying hair felt another spring breeze, clinging onto the memories of how a festive tradition should be celebrated. Thirty years from now, will the next generation be in their place?

Wellsfargo has always been my favorite bank, for small reasons. Very recently I have one more small reason to like it. I usually go to this Wellsfargo bank on University Dr. Last Saturday morning, I saw these red envelopes (well, not as decorated as the one on the right, but still nice red ones) on the teller’s counter. I asked her how much they cost, and she said they’re free to take. I also overheard the tellers’ chatting about eating opossums. Now that is new. The teller who helped me said her grandfather ate them (but personally she wouldn’t want to find out how they taste). I wonder how they taste, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to get barbecued opossum with mushroom sauteed in melted mozarella cheese topped with grounded peanuts or whatever. Anyway, cultural thoughtfulness, generosity, friendly tellers, interesting conversations to gossip, what else can you expect from a bank?

*Red envelope is called “bao li xi” in Vietnamese.

Linh Son pagoda, Houston, click on the image to see more pictures of the pagoda.

Linh Son pagoda, Houston. Click on the image to see more pictures of the pagoda.
Although not all Vietnamese living oversea can take a day off to go to the pagodas on the first day of Tet, many manage to keep the tradition. Of course there is no strict requirement that one has to be looking at and praying to the Buddha at a certain day, for a certain amount of time, or with a certain prayer. Tet is not a religious based tradition. But many Buddhist and even non-Buddhists like to go to the pagodas on the first day of Tet to have a peaceful start of the new year, to feel spiritually lightened (hopefully enlightened as well) and pure on the important day. Many also choose to eat no animal product on this day, as it’s the new spring and every creature deserves to be happy and live in peace. Nonetheless, vegan restaurants are somewhat scarce in the conservative town, places with banh chung banh tet for sale don’t generally make the vegan version, and to deprive a Vietnamese of banh chung banh tet on a Tet’s day is somewhat cruel. So the pagodas take on the precious task.

Dua mon is pickled vegetables, here packaged in jars, and apparently on sale for $5? I believe I haven’t had dua mon. I’m not big on veggies in vinegar-sugar-salt mix, the only exception to me is pickled bean sprout (dua gia). But perhaps because every house during Tet is so overabundant with meat and glutinous rice, the dua being a bit tart, a bit sweet, crunchy, and light is a nice change in both taste and texture. In fact, with its economic nature and longevity, a big jar of dua on its own makes Tet in poor households.

Back to the star of Tet food. The square ones are banh chung, the cylindrical ones are banh tet. Banh chung is wrapped in dong leaves, banh tet is wrapped in banana leaves (theoretically). Banh chung declothed:

and quartered:

Mother got to the banh tet before I did, with a knife. I was 5 minutes too late to grab the camera. So here, in all gruesomeness, six “khoanh” of banh tet:

If you’re wondering, yes, their basic structure, except for the shape, is the same. Thick coat of glutinous rice outside, simple mung bean paste inside, since these are vegan banh made and sold at the pagoda. The meaty version of banh chung has lean pork amidst the bean paste, and that of banh tet has fatty pork. The outermost rim of glutinous rice is somewhat greenish yellow, naturally dyed by the leaves wrapping them and the long cooking process, in which they are submerged in water for hours. Banh chung was born in the North of Vietnam over 2000 years before Jesus was born, and especially made for Tet and Tet only. It even has a myth to explain its symbolism. Banh tet was its little brother, made for easy cooking and carrying, more popular in the South, available in one form or another all year long. The rice layer is soft and gummy, the bean paste middle is a little salted and sweetened. It’s vegan, but it doesn’t lack flavor. It’s really really heavy though. One khoanh of banh tet for breakfast and I was full from 10AM until 7PM! I would have been starved otherwise, classes all day, and school cafeterias don’t serve vegan food. That means if you like to keep yourself reasonably full, with 6 bucks you are full for 3-6 days of banh tet, and 4-8 days of banh chung. Pretty good huh?

There are several things to do during Tet in Saigon. It’s not a one-day holiday, it’s a season, similar to Christmas in form and Thanksgiving in spirit. The holiday is lunar-calendar based. It starts on the 23rd of the 12th month, the day to “cung dua ong Tao“, a ceremonious dinner to see off the Household God as he takes his annual trip to heaven. It ends on the 7th day of the 1st month of the new lunar year. In the first week, there are spring flower markets on Nguyen Hue Street and water melon markets in Dakao. Water melon used to be available during Tet only, and there used to be only one kind – the green outside, red inside kind. Now there are yellow, striped, even cubic watermelon! There’s the sound of the gongs and the drums of mua lan (lion dance) in the neighborhood. There are thousands of crimson red Chinese sausages packaged, displayed not so far from deep green banh chung and banh tet. Hmm… it just crossed my mind that the main colors of Tet are also red and green, like Christmas… There is orange from the kumquats, shiny gold from the newly polished copper censers, and yellow from the flowers. Chrysanthemums for small vases on the altars and mai for display in the living room or the garden. My mom used to say, when she took off the leaves of the mai tree (to make room for its new leaves and blossoms), she could feel Tet is coming in the air. For big families with the tradition of making their own banh chung banh tet, Tet comes when they sit around the huge pot of cooking banh, warmed by the fire, chatting the hours away. After giao thua (Tet’s eve), the second week of the holiday starts. It’s the first week of the new spring and the new lunar year. It’s time to go to the pagodas, to be nice with others, to relax and enjoy oneself. That’s why “thang gieng la thang an choi” (the 1st month is the month of fun).

Do I have a month of fun to celebrate Tet now? Hehe, certainly not. I did have over a month of fun and total laziness for Christmas break, however, thanks to Texas A&M’s generosity. But school started last Tuesday; and this Monday, in all splendor of the first day of the new lunar year, the most important day of Tet, I will haul my backpack on the shoulder and go to class from 10 till 5:30. Good start. I will be hardworking and learn a lot the whole year. The Vietnamese living overseas have at most a Tet party on the weekend or the night before. A Vietnamese physics hermit spends giao thua alone with research and movies. But above all reasons Tet is the time to be with family. My family is here, so my Tet is here. 🙂

*The blog title is inspired by Lê Phố’s painting under the same name.
**The painting is Fleurs by Lê Phố, 1960, oil on canvas. Since I couldn’t find a free image of L’approche du Tet online, I thought Fleurs would be an appropriate substitution.