Delicious Treats for Doan Ngọ Festival

Aside from their traditional role in pest control, the dishes served on the 5th of the 5th lunar month such as duck meat, sticky rice wine, and pyramid-shaped cakes also help to cool down during the scorching early days of summer.

No matter where you go or what you do, on the 5th of the 5th lunar month, many people forget the memories of the delectable dishes enjoyed during Doan Ngọ Festival, also known as the day of pest extermination.

Rice Wine Sticky Rice

With the purpose of pest extermination, rice wine sticky rice is an indispensable dish on the morning of Doan Ngọ Festival. According to folklore, the strong flavor of sticky rice combined with the spicy fermentation of wine is believed to eliminate harmful parasites from the body.

Rice wine sticky rice is popular throughout the country, but in each region, this dish has its own unique characteristics in terms of fermentation time and method. While in the North, rice wine sticky rice is left as individual grains, in the Central region, it is pressed into blocks, and in the South, it is shaped into round balls.

Duck Delight

While not as common as rice wine or sticky rice, duck meat is an indispensable dish during the 'pest-killing' Tet celebration of the people in the Central region of Vietnam. Some believe that duck, being cooling in nature, provides a refreshing and nourishing meal during the sweltering days of the lunar month of May. Meanwhile, others hold the belief that ducks start to become plumper and more delicious from the 5th day of the 5th lunar month onwards.

On this day, markets in the Central region and some in the North are often bustling with the buying and selling of live ducks. Ducks, after being purchased, are prepared into various dishes such as boiled duck with ginger sauce, braised duck, duck and bamboo shoot vermicelli soup, or duck cooked with star fruit and served with vermicelli. Among these, the most popular is duck blood pudding.

Banh Tro Cake

Alongside various early-season fruits such as plums, lychees, mangoes, and mangosteens, Banh Tro Cake is a traditional dish during the Duanwu Festival in Vietnam. Banh Tro Cake, also known as floating rice cake or sticky cake, has a deep yellow color from glutinous rice soaked in ash water, boiled from various types of dry wood, then wrapped in banana leaves and steamed.

Depending on the region, the cakes are wrapped in different shapes such as elongated or triangular cones. Inside, the cake is usually filled with either savory or sweet fillings, sometimes without any filling. Banh Tro Cake is easy to digest, cooling to the intestines, often eaten with sugar or honey. The refreshing taste of Banh Tro Cake blends with the sweet flavor of honey, leaving anyone who tries it longing for more of this simple and rustic cake.

Rice Ball Cake

In contrast to the Kinh people's glutinous rice wine, floating rice cake, and duck meat, the specialty of the Doan Ngo Tet festival for the Nung people (Muong Khuong, Lao Cai) is the rice ball cake. The ingredients for making the cake include delicious glutinous rice, mugwort leaves, mung beans, and black sesame seeds. The rice ball cake has a similar shape and preparation method to bánh dày (round rice cake).

After soaking the rice thoroughly, it is ground together with mugwort leaves into fine flour and shaped into small balls. Mung beans are ground and cooked until soft, then mashed. Fried shallots are golden brown, and black sesame seeds are toasted and ground before mixing evenly with mashed mung beans to create the cake filling. Rice ball cakes can be steamed or fried according to preference, but the most enticing method is frying in fat. At this point, the hot cakes become fluffy, shiny, and fragrant with the aroma of mugwort leaves, the flavor of mung beans, shallots, and a hint of richness from black sesame seeds.

Ke Sweet Soup

Ke sweet soup is also a very distinctive dish for the Doan Ngo Tet festival in Hue. The round, chewy ke seeds are soaked, peeled, ground, and boiled until they swell soft and spongy. Adding sugar and ginger water produces a fragrant pot of sweet soup with a captivating golden ke color.

Ke sweet soup is simple to cook but contains more nutrients than other cereals. It also helps nourish the blood, balance the body for those who regularly consume cooling foods and drinks.

In Hue, Ke sweet soup is particularly special because it is often served with sesame rice crackers. Instead of using a spoon, you scoop it up with the rice crackers. Therefore, the crispy texture of the rice crackers quickly blends with the sweetness of sugar, the fragrant chewiness of ke seeds, and the subtle spiciness of fresh ginger, making the dish even more enticing.

Source: VnExpress

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Reference: Travel guide Mytour