Normal season

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 cut down firmly, using force to compensate for the sharpness. The boiled chicken pieces were succulent with golden skin, fragrant, shiny thanks to grease, mixed with fresh turmeric crushed with a "panh xo" braided from the tips of green onions, 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 distant past. A large pot of broth was simmering on the weak electric stove. The dried bamboo shoots had been boiled many times, shredded into 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 and bring out the prepared food to set up in the living room.

The wind was howling outside. 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 his sudden summoning of “five hundred brothers” scattered across New York on what could not have been a more ordinary weekend.

My sister took the opportunity to fly from San Francisco to the East Coast for a winter break. All of her friends in New York were from Hanoi or had lived in the North for a long time, so she had more opportunities to show off her cooking skills with familiar dishes: fried spring rolls, jellied meat, 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 all the way from East Village to add to the sour fish dish, and yet I was showered with compliments.

The 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 of the US 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” pickling 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 and call mom, whatever she points out, I buy it. When I get home, turn on messenger again, follow the steps as mom instructed, and there you have “delicious dishes that will last a long time”, guaranteed to be perfect,” I said excitedly.

Everyone nodded and remained 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 standard Quang Tri flavor.

Everyone sat around the makeshift feast. The mini electric stove was still humming nearby, keeping 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 New Year’s Eve parties from house to house. 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 soup 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 studying abroad.

We shook our heads, not understanding the logic of having eaten enough to feel full, so we ate more to lighten our stomachs, 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 his 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 the new Vietnamese restaurant’s Tet gift set.

Familiar dishes and desserts such as beef noodle soup, grilled pork noodle soup, banh khoai, vermicelli with tofu and shrimp paste, beef cake or shaken fried 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 not only limited to 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 come from all skin colors and ethnicities, and 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. The pair of big banh chung - the main dish of Vietnamese cuisine during Tet - was so big that we had to carry it by hand, swinging it around with pride.

We returned home, opened all the food, laid it out on the table, and took 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 skeptical, at the pan of sticky rice, beans, and meat.

“Trust the progress,” I tell you.

“Trust in the process” - that is a common saying among young people in New York, similar to “all beginnings are hard” in Vietnam. What a reasonable saying 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 towel around me.

“How is it, not bad?”- I asked my housemate.

“Very pretty,” she smiled and snapped away as I posed next to the printer so I could send my report home to my parents. It was cold outside but sunny and dry. After the storm, the snow melted, slimy and trickling down the drain like a small stream.

I walked to school. The ao dai was like a secret hidden under the floor-length cloak.

A quiet afternoon in the East Village, the whole neighborhood is deserted. There is the clunking sound of an old woman pulling a shopping basket, the shadow on the street is a sign of time moving forever...

“A sunny afternoon filled with joy for many souls”, I sang softly, a touching song about the first spring by the talented musician Van Cao. The lyrics seemed to anchor a bit of warmth in the cold weather of a foreign land...

In New York, it is February 1st.

In Vietnam, the normal season has moved to... New York, February 2022

Dao Khoa Thu

Source: https://baoquangtri.vn/van-hoa/mua-binh-thuong/183447.htm