Vietnamese cuisine now, in this place, is not only limited to pho and spring rolls. Buying a meal with a strong Vietnamese flavor, especially during holidays and Tet, is very meaningful to Vietnamese people...
1. She chopped the chicken with a blunt knife.
"Clack, clack, clack"
Each knife strike was firm, using force to compensate for the sharpness. The boiled chicken pieces were juicy with golden skin, fragrant, shiny thanks to the grease, mixed with fresh turmeric crushed with a "panh xo" braided from the tips of the onion shoots, neatly arranged on an ivory white porcelain plate, the pattern evoked a warm reunion season.
A corner of New York City, USA - Photo: KT
The tiny kitchen was covered with old copies of the New York Times. Time had stopped in the distance. A large pot of broth was simmering on the weak electric stove. The dried bamboo shoots had been boiled many times, and were shredded into thin, thread-like pieces.
Each sprig of chopped coriander was placed next to the basket of soaked cellophane noodles, waiting to drain. She chased us all out of the kitchen. Even the hostess only dared to linger, waiting for orders to happily rush in to bring the prepared food out and set it up in the living room.
Outside the wind was howling. It was a cold winter Saturday morning on Manhattan's Upper West Side, and Columbia University students were probably still sleeping in after a hard week.
A day that is not Tet - not yet in Vietnam, and certainly not in America.
There was a bit of hustle and bustle in Chinatown, somewhere far away. Yet the small apartment was warm and fragrant with the smell of Vietnamese food.
“Just for fun,” the host laughed, explaining the sudden gathering of “five hundred brothers” scattered across New York on a weekend that couldn’t have been more normal.
My sister took the winter break so she flew from San Francisco to the East Coast to visit. Her friends in New York were all from Hanoi or had been in the North for a long time, so she had more opportunities to show off her cooking skills with familiar dishes: fried spring rolls, braised pork, ball soup, kohlrabi, carrots carved into flowers and stir-fried with oyster sauce, and fragrant shiitake mushrooms.
A large, well-marinated grouper was placed in a large bowl, sprinkled with dill, tomatoes, and onions.
I, a resident from Quang Tri, had nothing to contribute, just a box of homemade pickles with a few garlic cloves, took the train from East Village to add to the sour fish dish, and yet I was showered with compliments.
Author of the article in New York, USA - Photo: KT
“I can’t remember the last time I ate pickles. Are they crispy yet?” my sister who studied in the Midwest exclaimed. Where she lives, going to the Asian market is really difficult. I took the opportunity to open my phone to show off the “famous” pickle recipe that my mother passed down, as well as the secret to choosing delicious meat and fresh fish. “It’s simple, just go to the market, turn on Messenger to call Mom, and whatever she points out, I’ll buy it. When I get home, turn on Messenger again, follow the instructions as Mom instructed, and you’ll have “delicious dishes that will last a long time”, guaranteed to be perfect,” I said excitedly.
Everyone nodded and then fell silent for a long time - partly because they missed home, partly because they felt sorry for their mother who had to wake up in the middle of the night just to help her naive child on the other side of the world learn how to make pickled vegetables with the right Quang Tri flavor.
Everyone sat around the makeshift feast. The mini electric stove was still humming nearby to keep the braised fish and pickled cabbage hot, with its familiar aroma. If we were in the countryside, we would be sick of meat from the endless year-end parties from one house to another. But here, the faint smell of braised fish and pickled cabbage wafted through the small kitchen, like a throwback to old memories.
When everyone was full and about to put down their chopsticks, the older sister stopped them and hurriedly ran into the kitchen to bring out a pot of steaming vermicelli with bamboo shoots and chicken gizzards.
“Eat some noodles to lighten your stomach,” she said, then quickly scooped them into bowls, each one a little at a time. The host must have painstakingly “mobilized” some from somewhere during her two short years of studying abroad.
We shook our heads, not understanding the logic that we should eat more to lighten our stomachs after we were full, even though we suddenly felt incredibly warm inside. Warm not only because of the family atmosphere and delicious food, but also because of the feeling of being protected by someone whose words were as familiar as our mother's.
2. “Help me keep it a secret, go get the stuff alone!”.
The message came from your roommate’s high school best friend. He wanted to surprise his only friend who remained in the US after COVID-19 by staying up all night to catch the opening of a new Vietnamese restaurant’s Tet gift shop.
Familiar dishes and desserts such as beef noodle soup, grilled pork noodle soup, banh khoai, vermicelli with fermented shrimp paste, beef cake or fried rice cake are gradually capturing the desire to explore of sophisticated diners in the second largest city in the United States.
Tet dishes of Vietnamese students studying in New York, USA - Photo: KT
Vietnamese cuisine now, in this place, is no longer limited to just pho and spring rolls. Buying a Vietnamese meal, especially during holidays and Tet, is very meaningful to Vietnamese people. Interestingly, we have to witness increasingly fierce "cutting in line" when lining up to enjoy Vietnamese cuisine from friends in other countries. Only 15 minutes after opening for sale, all orders were placed. And then there was a long week of waiting to receive the goods.
The excitement made me blurt out the plan to my housemate and so after the only snowstorm of the winter, in the minus 10 degrees Celsius cold, the two sisters took the train to the north of the city, excitedly going to receive the gift.
The restaurant is small and cutely decorated, located right on the main street. Diners enjoy the restaurant with all skin colors and ethnicities, the long line waiting to receive Tet gift bags is all Vietnamese.
All the gifts were put in a woven bamboo box, with a red paper with the menu and English notes. As for the big pair of banh chung - the staple dish of Vietnamese cuisine during Tet - because it was so big, we had to carry it by hand, swinging it around with pride.
We went home, opened all the food and laid it out on the table to take pictures to thank our thoughtful and hard-working friend from far away. The New Year's Eve meal was warm and sumptuous with specialties from all three regions: braised pork, braised pork with eggs, sour shrimp paste, pickled onions, sticky rice with gac fruit, fermented pork rolls, spring rolls and Quang Tri tapioca dumplings.
On the first morning of the new year, I woke up early to take out the banh chung and fry it in cooking oil as people taught online. My housemate looked in, seemingly suspicious, at the pan of sticky rice, beans, and meat.
“Trust the progress,” I tell you.
“Trust in the process” - that is the catchphrase of young people in New York, roughly the same as “all beginnings are hard” in my country. What a reasonable phrase to comfort each other on New Year’s Day.
3. I put on the old modernized ao dai my friend gave me over my thermal suit and wrapped a big fur scarf around me.
“How is it, not bad?”- I asked my roommate.
“Very pretty,” she smiled and clicked away as I posed next to the printer to send home my report to my parents. It was cold outside but sunny and dry. After the storm, the snow melted, slimy and flowing down the drain like a small stream.
I walked to school. The ao dai was like a secret hidden under the floor-length cloak.
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In New York, it is February 1st.
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Dao Khoa Thu
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