When I was little, I always waited for the Lunar New Year. My favorite moments were when we would stay up all night with family and neighbors in the front yard around a fire pit, singing, and telling stories; the children were playing, the wood was cracking, the flames were dancing, casting shadows on our burning red and smiling faces. In the center of it all, on top of the fire would be a huge pot of banh chung simmering away. No other banh chung has ever tasted better. Every Vietnamese person knows about the origin of banh chung: An ancient king, Hung Vuong, had three sons. He wanted to pass his kingdom onto one of them and he called all of his sons together to ask each of them to provide him with a dish of food on the last day of the Lunar Month. He would choose the best food and pass his kingdom onto him.
The eldest brother took a boat out into the South China Sea to fish for the finest tasting fish. The second brother went into the Khmer mountains to find the most tender boar meat. Only prince Lang Lieu stayed at home and pondered his father's request and prepared a large flat rice cake. King Hung Vuong asked prince Lang Lieu why he had chosen to present him with such a simple rice cake. He said that rice was the most precious and valuable of all food found in this kingdom; it was also the most abundant. He had prepared a dish that represented his love for king Hung Vuong and his beautiful Vietnam. He had cooked it thoroughly then molded it into a round rice cake and called it banh day, as it symbolizes the sky we live under. He had cooked a square rice cake, stuffed it with cooked bean paste and ground meat in the middle and called it banh chung. This would symbolize the earth we live on. After that, king Hung Vuong selected prince Lang Lieu to be the new king and ordered that his recipe be passed out to all people in his kingdom.
As a result, the Vietnamese custom is that every year, during the New Year celebration, the Vietnamese people cook banh chung and banh day and use them as special offerings to their ancestors, as well as special gifts to relatives and friends during the New Year celebrations.
I know that Banh Chung is not easy to make, but it is very interesting to try with your friends. Even among Vietnamese people, there are so many people who cannot wrap a banh chung squarely, however, I really want to introduce this very popular Vietnamese traditional food to you. I hope that you will enjoy making it. In Canada, you can buy these ingredients in any Asian market from January to February every year.
Recipe
Recipe
Equipment
– wooden frame (instructions follow) and banana leaves
– 16 dried Phrynium leaves
– 12 pieces green banana leaf (or frozen and thawed), trimmed, rinsed, and wiped dry
– 16 pieces of kitchen twine, cut into 20" lengths (additional needed if used for cutting)
– kitchen shears
– 4 sheets of heavy-duty aluminum foil, cut in 12" x 18" sheets
– double steamer
– parchment paper
– food processor
– deep stockpot for boiling cakes
– plastic wrap (if you do not have many leaves)
Ingredients
– 5¼ cups long-grain sticky rice
– 1½ tbsp sea salt
– cold water
– 2⅔ cups yellow beans, dried, hulled, and split (soaked overnight and drained before assembly)
– ¼ lb boneless pork chop (or pork butt), with some skin and fat
– 1 medium-sized Vidalia or Spanish onion, minced
– 3 tbsp sea salt
– 3 tbsp black pepper, freshly ground
– 1 tbsp sugar
– 1 tbsp fish sauce
Procedure
The night before
- Soak the phrynium leaves, placing them in a large roasting pan and adding water to cover. Put a plate on top of the leaves to keep them submerged.
- Cut the pork into pieces the size of a deck of cards (3 inches long, 2 inches wide, ½ inch thick). Each piece should have some fat and skin. Add the onion, fish sauce, pepper, and pork to a bowl and mix well. Let marinate overnight.
- Soak the rice in cold water and let it sit for a ½ hour. Then, cover it with three inches of water and let it sit overnight.
- Place the beans in a bowl and rinse under cold water until the water is clear. Drain, and then add enough cold water to cover beans by 1 inch. Let soak overnight.
The morning of assembly
- Drain the yellow beans. Fill the steamer bottom halfway with water. If the tray holes are larger than 3/16-inch in diameter, line the tray with parchment paper and leave a few holes uncovered for heat circulation. Bring to a rolling boil over high heat. Put yellow beans in the steamer tray and spread them out evenly. Place the tray in the steamer of boiling water and cover. Steam for 8 minutes, or until the beans are tender. Remove the tray from the steamer bottom and set aside until the beans cool completely.
- Process the cooled beans in a food processor until it reaches a fluffy consistency. It should look like fine cornmeal but should hold together when you pinch a small bit between your fingers. At this point, the ground beans are ready to use.
- Drain the rice in a colander and return it to the bowl. Gradually mix in the salt, sprinkling it over the rice and using your hands to distribute it well.
- Drain the phrynium leaves, rinse, and set aside.
- If you are using frozen banana leaves, defrost them by soaking them in hot water and rinsing thoroughly. Pat them dry and cut them into sheets of 5" × 12". Set aside.
Assemble and boil the cakes
- To make each cake, put a 12" × 18" sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil on your work surface, with the shortest side closest to you. Place the mold on the center of the foil. You will need 4 phrynium leaves to form the frame — the corners and edges — for the cake. Working on one corner at a time, fold a phrynium leaf lengthwise along the spine (with dull side out), then fold in half crosswise. Crease the center fold. To form a 90º corner, simply unwrap the leaf and bring the lower center crease up to meet the spine. The leaf should now look like an upright corner of a paper box. Place the folded phrynium leaf into one of the corners of the mold, with the ends pointing touching two of the walls of the mold. Repeat with the remaining 3 phrynium leaves, going in one direction around the mold and overlapping the leaves as you go. When you are done, the leaves will look like a picture frame. Push the leaves down into the corners to make sure they are snug and flush against the mold. Straighten any slouching leaves.
- Line the interior of the mold with banana leaves, shiny side up and facing you (this allows the green of the banana leaves to dye the rice while cooking). Place a banana leaf so that one of its shortest sides lays flush with the inner wall of the mold that is closest to you; the banana leaf should cover the bottom of the mold and extend above the mold on the far wall. Place a second banana leaf in the reverse direction. The two banana leaves will overlap each other to form the base of the mold. Equal lengths of leaf should extend above the mold on the far and near walls. Then, arrange a third banana leaf, with its long side closest to you, evenly across the bottom of the mold, so that short lengths of leaf extend above the right and left walls. All 4 walls of the mold are now lined. Use your fingers to tuck the leaves into the mould.
Layering the ingredients inside the leaf and metal frame
- To add the edible ingredients, first scoop up 1 cup of the prepared rice and pour it into the mold. Use the back of a large spoon to distribute the rice evenly, taking care to push the rice all the way to the inner edges of the mold. Next, add 1 cup of lightly packed beans, pouring and patting it in a light pile in the center of the mold. Do not push the beans to the edge of the mold. Pour ½ cup of rice to create a wall of rice around the bean square. Next, center a broad, flat piece of pork on top of the beans, spreading single or several pieces of pork to create a flat, roughly square distribution of pork. Again, take care not to place the pork toward the edge of the mold. Top with another cup of beans to create a shell around the pork. Finally, finish by burying the pork and bean core with 1 cup of rice, pushing rice to the sides and corners and flattening out the surface. The mold will look very full.
Wrapping banh chung
- Cover the top of the cake by folding in the side flaps of banana leaf. Then, fold the side farthest from you down over the cake. Finally, fold over the side nearest you over the cake. Use your hands to press down firmly on the cake to compact the ingredients and distributing them evenly. Once the top of the cake is relatively flat and level, put one hand on top of the cake to hold the leaves in place. Gently pull off the mold with the other hand. Temporarily wear the mold as a loose bangle while you fold the top flap of the foil down, followed by the bottom flap of the foil. With the loose open ends of the foil, fold the 4 corners in at small right angles, as if wrapping a gift. Then, fold up the loose sides to form a foil-covered square box. Pick up the cake and gently tap its edges on the table to firm the angles and tamp the ingredients. Secure the cake by wrapping it with kitchen twine. Since the rice will expand during cooking, do not tie the twine too tightly around the cake. The twine should not make an impression in the foil.
- Repeat steps 10 through 13 for the remaining 3 cakes. Save any leftover rice and steam it as you prefer.
- Fill a 12 qt stockpot half full with water. Place the cakes in the pot, stacking, and/or standing them up. Add enough water to cover the cakes. To keep the cakes from floating, place a heavy ceramic plate on top to gently weigh them down. Bring the water to a boil over high heat, and then turn the heat down to return the water to a gentle boil. Cook, uncovered, for 7 hours. Every 2 hours, rotate the cakes so that they cook evenly. As the cakes cook, they will expand and gain weight. To maintain a gentle boil, keep a separate kettle of boiling water on the stove to replenish the stockpot as needed; it is okay if the water drops to an occasional simmer. When the cakes no longer float (about 3 hours into cooking), remove the ceramic plate and continue boiling.
- After the seven hours, use tongs to transfer the cooked cakes to a pot of cold water. Once they are cool, transfer the cakes to a baking sheet, placing the seam-free, neater-looking, square side down. Put another baking sheet on top of the cakes and center a cool stockpot full of water on the top sheet to press. This will flatten the cakes and drain them of excess water. Keep pressed for 8 hours or overnight (eager eaters wait only 1 to 2 hours for cooling, but these cakes tend to be waterlogged).
- The next morning, cut around the knot in the twine and remove the foil. Wipe off any stray bits of rice and wrap each cake in plastic wrap. For display purposes, you may tie colorful ribbon around each cake. Cakes may be kept at room temperature for 3 days, beyond which they should be stored in the refrigerator for up to a week. They may also be frozen for up to 3 months (take care to cut the cake into wedges before freezing, otherwise you'll be forced to thaw and eat the entire cake in one go).
Photo source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIryT7EsHh44ru4N9xEmLqggMLNM83keBoAzy-3EodnsM0X24k-gEWGRZ2U8j_G-XAvcoeECsxRaXBYtLcUvOtPA0Q9LbCpnzrCO7mR3S_y_RCOtnfOL1QdTP3z5aJqMu25TcfAbn8Ee8G/s1600/banhchung1.jpg
