Banh Gai of Tu Tru

The ramie leaves that reach Mía village now travel a long way, sometimes from as far as Nam Định.

Mía village lies beside the Chu River. It sits in the Thọ Xuân countryside of Thanh Hóa province, west of the provincial center. The village is near Lam Kinh. Lam Kinh is the homeland of Lê Lợi, who founded the Lê dynasty. Today the silt flats along the river are thick with corn.

The road through Mía village runs two ways: leaves come in, and cakes go out. The glossy black cakes made from those leaves will travel farther still. By its origins, the cake carries the name of Mía village. But in a buyer's hands, it carries the name of another place.

In the old days, the leaves did not have to travel so far. The villagers grew ramie right there on that silty land. At first light, the village girls called to one another and went out to pick leaves. Back home, they snapped off the stalks, stripped out every vein, and laid the leaves out to dry. They dried them until one side turned deep black and the other faded to gray.

The ramie plant gives both fiber and leaves. The fiber was woven into fishing nets. The leaves went into the kitchen, and the cake took its name from them: bánh gai, the ramie leaf cake. To the people who make it, the ramie leaf is the soul of the whole cake.

In years past, in the days before Tết, the grandmothers, mothers and sisters of the village rose very early. Tết is the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam. The ramie leaves had already been boiled until very soft. The longer they boiled, the softer and smoother the cake. Then the pestles started up, pounding rice and leaves. Their steady beat filled the village, quicker as Tết came closer.

Once the leaves were pounded fine, the women cooked them with sugarcane molasses until the mixture thickened. They worked this sweet mass into sticky rice flour and left it overnight. Next, the baker tipped the dough into the mortar and pounded it until it held together tightly. Well-pounded dough gives a smooth, glossy black skin.

Whoever makes the filling mixes mung beans, coconut and sugar, with a little banana oil for fragrance. Some households add lean meat as well. The shaper spreads the dough very thin, sets a ball of filling in the middle and wraps it closed. Then the cake is rolled across a tray scattered with sesame seeds. The sesame adds a nutty richness and helps the cake peel cleanly from its wrapper.

The cake's outer coat is banana leaf, and it must be leaf that has dried naturally on the tree. Fresh leaves cut and then dried will not do. Some people gather these dry leaves around the area and sell them to the cake makers. Wrapped neither too tight nor too loose, the cakes come out neatly square. A thick enough coat lets the cake cook evenly and keep well. Then someone with scissors trims every stray scrap of leaf, so each cake looks tidy.

Once wrapped, the cakes of Mía village go into a net bag, with ramie leaves tucked all around. Then they are steamed the way sticky rice is steamed. The fire is always wood, never charcoal. The ties are ready beforehand: strips of bamboo, split very thin and dyed. When the steaming is done, the cakes are tied together five at a time into a bundle. In the village, people say the number five was chosen as a wish for things to multiply and thrive.

Along the highway through Mía village, in the days before Tết, every passerby catches the scent of bánh gai. The cakes have not yet left the village, but their smell has already reached the road.

Today bánh gai is made all year, and the craft has spread to many other communes of Thọ Xuân. It was different in the old days. People mostly made the cakes for death anniversaries, for Tết, for village feasts and for festival days. Back then the bundles traveled short roads. They went to the village communal house, to the temples and shrines of Lam Kinh, and to the bride's family on a betrothal day. At the village festival, young men and women gathered in the yards of the storehouse and the communal house to pound rice and make cakes together. Then the villagers offered the bundles at the communal house for the festival.

The villagers also offer cakes at the temples and shrines of Lam Kinh on the remembrance days. Their name is easy to remember: "hăm mốt Lê Lai, hăm hai Lê Lợi." It names two days in a row, one for Lê Lai and the next for Lê Lợi.

By the old custom of Mía village, when a young man went to ask for a bride, his tray of gifts could not be without bánh gai. Without that tray of cakes, the girl's parents would hardly give their consent. So the cake followed the betrothal tray to the bride's home. And when girls from other villages married into Mía village, their mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law taught them to make it.

As for how old the cake is, the village keeps two accounts.

One traces the cake back to the 15th century, the time of the Lê emperors. It says that cakes from Mía village were among the offerings presented to the Lê emperors.

The other begins in the imperial capital of Hue. It says the craft was brought home by Ngô Thị Phẩm, the daughter of Ngô Đình Chí. He was a man who passed the examinations and served as an official. She learned to make the cakes in Hue, then came back and taught the village. The village still tells both.

When a batch is done, the people of Mía village carry the cakes out to Tứ Trụ street to sell. Tứ Trụ is a busy street with a well-known market called Đường market. Here the cake takes a new name. Travelers from far and wide buy them here and call them after the street, until the name sticks: bánh gai Tứ Trụ.

Some cake makers send their cakes even farther. They go to the center of Thanh Hóa province, into the southern provinces, and as far as Ho Chi Minh City. Far down in Cà Mau, one customer orders them as offerings to the ancestors on death anniversaries and at Tết. In summer the cake keeps for about a week, and longer in winter. Bánh gai is eaten cool. Peeled while still hot, it sticks to the leaf and to your fingers.

At Đường market, a buyer lifts a bundle of five square cakes tied with bamboo strips and calls it by the name of the street.

But an old woman of Mía village puts it differently. By rights, she says, it should be called bánh gai làng Mía, the cake of Mía village. Then she adds: "Tứ Trụ only sells the cakes. It does not make them."