Nguyen gambled away her li xi, small red envelopes containing crisp new bills, in a popular dice game called bau cua tom ca. When she was young - and picky - she avoided the requisite sticky rice cakes at big family feasts and ate only her favorites, like fried cha gio spring rolls and tender steamed banh beo rice cakes. “It’s the one tradition that I understood and loved.”Ĭhristina Nguyen, 36, the chef of Hai Hai in Minneapolis, went rogue during Tet even as a child. “I learned to make banh chung, to pay homage to my Ba Noi,” she said, referring to her grandmother. Ha, 41, now deviates from the standard of preparing everything from scratch, purchasing some dishes from local Little Saigon shops.īut she still wants to capture the essence of those times with her family. It’s a state of mind more than a milieu.Ĭhristine Ha, the chef of the Blind Goat and Xin Chao in Houston, spent her early high school years eating banh chung prepared by her paternal grandmother and aunt for their clan of 100, who descended upon their home to pay Tet respects to Ms. Though I don’t live in Vietnam or in a Little Saigon enclave, the Lunar New Year remains strong in my DNA. My family fled Vietnam in 1975 when I was 6 years old and I’ve not spent Tet in the motherland since. That’s as true for me as it is for others in the diaspora. There has been plenty of blending, rule-bending and innovation as people have migrated and emigrated, and celebrating Tet is doable wherever you are, no matter your circumstances. Indeed, but it doesn’t endanger the spirit of Tet. “People now have money but they do not have time,” she said. Que Mai, 47, feels they carry less meaning because they are not homemade. Store-bought Tet treats are now the trend in Vietnam and abroad, but Ms. (The northern region’s version is called banh chung, and the southern and central regions’ iteration is named banh tet.) The die-hards spend the weeks leading up to Tet producing graduate-level projects of hearty cakes of sticky rice surrounding ingredients like fatty pork and buttery mung beans. Cooks prepare classics that are meant to be made ahead, so that they can feast and relax when the moment arrives: versatile pickles, silky sausages, brothy soups, jewel-toned sweetmeats and cozy kho, which are prepared by simmering meat in savory, bittersweet caramel sauce. There is another popular saying that calls for the first month of the year to be a time for eating and idleness.
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