Recalling the honeyed rice pudding on chilly days

As the air turns crisp, the people of Phú Thọ showcase their culinary skills by preparing the traditional honeyed rice pudding, a simple yet richly flavored dish from the midland region.

After the rice harvest, the grains are dried and stored. The best quality sticky rice, a special variety found only in this region, is selected to make the honeyed rice pudding. This newly husked, pearly white sticky rice, with its plump grains, exudes a fragrant aroma unique to the freshly harvested crop.

Through the seasons, women from the midland villages, from their youth to their old age, carefully preserve the sticky rice variety that is both fragrant and sticky. Following local customs, honeyed rice pudding is prepared for new births and offered to the ancestors during the first and fifteenth of each lunar month, a testament to its enduring presence in the region's culinary tradition.

According to local wisdom, the secret to making delicious honeyed rice pudding lies in first cooking it as a sticky rice dessert. Thus, with the onset of cooler weather, women rise early to soak the sticky rice, making it soft enough to cook into a perfect sticky rice.

Soon, the kitchen fills with smoke and the aroma of fresh sticky rice cooking. Once the rice is ready, it's scooped into a basket to drain and cool down before the process of making the pudding begins.

In Phu Tho, a delicious pot of tea must be cooked with sugarcane molasses instead of sugar to achieve a beautiful, deep color. Thus, with each autumn, locals never miss the chance to buy some molasses cakes at the market, storing them carefully for later use.

The recipe for honeycomb tea is intricate. The rectangular molasses cakes, just the right size, are scraped into small bits before cooking. Begin by melting the molasses in the pot until it's evenly hot and dissolved, then mix in the sticky rice.

The most crucial and challenging step in making this tea is ensuring the molasses melts properly, achieving a smooth, fragrant consistency before adding the sticky rice. Mixing the rice thoroughly ensures both rice and molasses blend perfectly.

Only when the sticky rice fully absorbs the molasses does it become glossy and tender. This requires constant stirring for about 15 minutes, never pausing until the tea turns a shiny brown, indicating it's perfectly cooked.

To enhance the tea's aroma, freshly crushed old ginger is stirred in, blending its spicy kick with the sweet fragrance of sticky rice, adding warmth to every autumn meal.

Once the tea is ready, it's served in small bowls or plates. The fresh aroma of local sticky rice becomes even more pronounced when mixed with the spiciness of ginger, resulting in shiny, plump grains that are neither mushy nor broken.

Stirring more, the tea leaves shine and honey deeply permeates the rice, presenting an irresistible sight.

In the midland countryside of Phu Tho, this dish is known as 'bee larvae dessert,' not to distinguish it from black bean or green bean dessert, but for its appearance, color, and sweetness, reminiscent of bee larvae.

The sticky rice grains, once cooked, are glossy and slender like bee bodies, and the dessert's dark brown color resembles that of bees, hence the locals have called it by the simple, rustic name of 'bee larvae dessert' for generations.

Source: Tuoitre.vn

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Reference: Mytour travel guide