Tra Cuon Banh Tet

It had to be a cake that could wait for many days.

That, as people in Cầu Ngang tell it, is what a Khmer woman once said to herself. She had many children, and she had tried one trade after another to keep them fed. Then she remembered the bánh tét that the elders used to cook, cakes that kept for days without spoiling. Bánh tét is a cylindrical cake of sticky rice, wrapped in banana leaves. A cake she could sell meant money. A cake she could not sell came back home, and the family ate it in place of rice. Sold or not, such a cake never wasted the work of wrapping.

Her name was Thạch Thị Lết, and she lived in the land of Cầu Ngang. People speak of her as the first to wrap the cake that everyone now calls bánh tét Trà Cuôn. As for the year she wrapped her first cakes, every teller gives a different answer. It is known only that the story goes back many decades, and people here still pass it on. One of her daughters still carries on the craft.

Cầu Ngang is coastal country, with low ridges of sand. Here lies the hamlet of Trà Cuôn, along National Route 53. It sits more than 10 kilometers from the center of Trà Vinh, on the road to Ba Động beach. The name Trà Cuôn comes from the Khmer language, after the water spinach plant. In the former commune of Kim Hòa, where the hamlet lies, most people are Khmer.

The busiest season of the year comes in the days before Tết, the Lunar New Year festival in Vietnam. In the old days, as Tết drew near, every household in southern Vietnam wrapped its own bánh tét and cooked its own pot. Now many families order the cakes from the people who make them for a living. In some Tết seasons, hundreds of people make cakes day and night in the small kitchens of the hamlet.

In those busy days before Tết, a woman of the hamlet, like so many cake makers here, spreads out fresh banana leaves one by one. Every leaf she picks is broad and whole, without a single tear. The banana leaf is the outer coat of the cake, so she chooses with care. Then she lays them in the sun for a while to wilt a little. Only then does she bring them to where she wraps.

Beside her is nếp sáp, the sticky rice the cake makers here prefer. Some batches of rice she leaves white. Others she colors with leaves and fruit from the garden. Cẩm leaves turn the rice purple. Gấc fruit turns it orange-red, and bồ ngót leaves turn it green. The batches of colored rice sit side by side, cheerful just to look at.

Long ago, the cake held only three things: nếp sáp, mung beans and pork fat. That was the bean and fat cake the grandparents knew well. The cake makers here took that old cake as their base, then slowly added new things. They added pork belly and salted duck egg yolks, and some homes add dried shrimp too. In front of her today, the old things and the new are all there.

For the mung beans, she picks large, round ones. She skins them, cooks them soft, then mashes them into a single mass. The mashed beans are smooth and golden yellow.

Then comes the pork fat. She cuts it into long bars with square edges, like small sticks of wood. She mixes the bars with a little salt, a little sugar and a little chopped scallion.

Now it is time to wrap. She spreads out a leaf and lays down a layer of rice. In the middle she sets the filling. As she rolls the leaf up, she lets the rice close all the way around the filling, making a long, round cake.

Then comes the string. This part takes a skilled hand. Practiced hands know just how tight to tie it. If the string is too tight, the fat inside will not cook evenly. If it is too loose, water seeps in, and the cake soon spoils. Not too tight, not too loose, just right.

She and the other adults of the household stack the cakes in a very large pot and set it on a wood fire. The fire catches, and the wood crackles. The adults take turns adding wood to keep the fire high. For hours, someone is always sitting by the stove to watch it. The pot bubbles and bubbles for seven or eight hours. Outside, night has fallen, but the kitchens of the hamlet still glow red with fire.

When about half an hour remains, she lifts the lid off the pot so the cakes turn soft and chewy. When that half hour is over, she lifts the cakes out one by one. The banana leaves were fresh green when she wrapped them. Now they have faded to a pale color, yet each cake is still firm and neat.

With no preservatives at all, her cakes keep for about five to seven days. One cake-making family in the hamlet remembers when a whole pot took several days to sell. The cakes simply sat and waited for buyers. Now that family sells much faster, and the hamlet has cakes for sale almost all year round. Her cakes this season go to the families who ordered them, to join the Tết of each home.

On the morning of Tết, guests arrive at one home that ordered the cakes. The host peels away the leaves, sets a cake on a cutting board and cuts it into thin rounds. The knife passes through, and each round falls away neat and circular. A slice cut across makes a small picture. In the very center are the pork fat and the salted egg yolk. Around them is the golden mung bean, and on the outside is a ring of deep green rice. In the mouth, the fat is rich, the beans are nutty, and the rice is soft and chewy.

The host sets the cake on the Tết tray with three other dishes. There is dưa giá, pickled bean sprouts. There is tôm khô củ kiệu, dried shrimp eaten with small onion bulbs. And there is thịt kho tàu, pork braised in a pot. With just these few dishes, a home with guests has a proper Tết meal at once.

A few months after Tết, the Khmer welcome a new year of their own. Their new year, called Chôl Chnăm Thmây, falls in the middle of April and lasts three days. The hamlet of Trà Cuôn enters one more cake season. Once again she spreads out the leaves, wraps the cakes and cooks them in time for the holiday. On those days, every Khmer home has bánh tét. Beside it are two other cakes, bánh ít and bánh gừng. People carry cakes to the pagoda as offerings, and set them out for visiting guests.

In one Khmer home in Cầu Ngang, the adults set a bánh tét on the altar of the ancestors, hoping for a year of plenty and a good harvest. People in Cầu Ngang say this cake was born to wait for buyers, and to feed a houseful of children in place of rice if it did not sell. In these first days of the new year, the cake waits on the altar.