Eat the fifth day dish

The incense offering for Tet holiday should be carried out from 11am to 1pm on March 3, 2018. — Offerings on the 5th of the lunar month of Quang Nam people. Photo: Illustration

“Tet half year”, with special dishes on the offering tray, all carry the meaning of praying for peace and eliminating illness in the family.

Drunk... on rice wine

Doan Ngo falls on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month, and is often called by Vietnamese people as the Insect Extermination Festival. Probably because of the humid days in the middle of the year with unpredictable sunshine and rain. The weather can easily make people cough, get sick, and plants are damaged by insects.

So in the countryside, on the 5th of May, at around 12 noon, right at the stroke of noon, people often go out into the yard, rinse their mouths three times to get rid of insects, drink a bowl of rice wine to get the insects drunk, and then eat a piece of ash cake to kill the insects. People believe that these things not only repel insects on trees, but also eliminate diseases in the body.

Each place has different worshiping customs. If the North often has vegetarian offerings with banh gio and fruits such as plums and lychees; the Central and Southern regions have savory offerings with duck meat, millet sweet soup... But every region has rice wine.

The sticky rice used to make rice wine is the best brown sticky rice, carefully selected. The sticky rice is pounded just enough to remove the husk, but still retains the opaque yellow layer of bran. Mother uses it to make rice wine.

The sticky rice with wine was steamed twice. Once until it was just cooked, my mother took it down to the basket to cool. When it was less hot, my mother added cold water to the sticky rice and put it back on the stove to steam a second time.

When it was ripe enough, my mother scooped the sticky rice onto a large tray and waited until it cooled completely before putting it in a basket. She added a layer of sticky rice wine and a layer of yeast. When finished, my mother washed a banana leaf from the garden and covered the fermented sticky rice wine.

The rice wine has a fragrant aroma of sticky rice, mixed with the scent of wild grass and trees, and a sweet aftertaste that is easy to drink, not as strong as other wines. Therefore, both children and the elderly love it. Just sipping the rice wine while slowly chewing the accompanying rice wine is enough to make you intoxicated.

Sticky rice cake, duck meat, millet sweet soup

Banh ú tro is a must on the 5th day of the lunar month. This is a traditional cake on Doan Ngo day in the Central and Southern regions, with another version in the North called banh gio.

The cake is triangular in shape and wrapped in palm leaves or dong leaves. The freshly cooked banh tro is hung in bunches on the stalls, looking plump like a ripe star fruit on the branch. The cake has a bland taste so it is often eaten with thick molasses or sugar.

The cake is golden yellow like amber, with a hint of lime scent, and the rustic taste of grass and trees. It is sticky and soft. Therefore, ash cake is not a food that should be eaten in a hurry. It trains you to eat slowly and chew thoroughly, to keep your stomach full for a long time when the harvest season has not yet come.

The offering tray on the 5th day of the lunar month cannot lack duck meat, because it has a cooling effect, helping to balance the blood and yin and yang in the body in the unpredictable weather. Duck is also in season at this time, so it is fatty, has delicious meat and no bad smell, becoming a favorite dish of many people.

The elderly also cook millet sweet soup for the offering tray. Made from only peeled mung beans, millet, sugar, and vanilla, the sweet soup balances the offering tray with its sweet and chewy taste. Served with grilled sesame rice paper, it is the perfect combination of the crunchiness of the rice paper, the softness of the sweet soup, and the spicy ginger flavor.

According to researchers, traditional medicine mainly uses plants. Therefore, on the occasion of the Duanwu Festival, people also pay attention to fruits on the offering tray, such as plums, lychees, and sour, astringent fruits to kill insects.

In many families, lychee and plum are almost mandatory fruits, because they represent the Summer Solstice. Not only that, they use these fruits with the hope that the house will be full of fruits, growing and flourishing. They pray for a bountiful harvest and wish for the family to grow more and more, with many children and grandchildren.

The small offering tray is filled with the hope of peace and reunion. The food that children always looked forward to when they were young has now become a kind of ritual. Time gradually erodes the excitement of childhood, but somewhere in our hearts, we always look forward to good things in the next half year.

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