A golden crusty pastry with a rich filling
September 2024
They’re back again - the red and yellow stalls lining the streets of Hanoi, selling mooncakes. And not just on the streets; supermarkets and bakeries have been selling them too, starting, I’d say, in August, a good six weeks before the Mid-Autumn Festival, Tết Trung Thu in Vietnamese, also known as Moon Festival.
It’s celebrated according to the lunar calendar in the middle of autumn, on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, which corresponds to the full moon between mid-September and early October in the Western calendar. As the full moon symbolizes prosperity and abundance, people give thanks to the moon for a successful harvest season. After Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, it’s the second most important festival in Vietnam.
Cô Lien's eyes light up when she tells me how her family celebrates the festival: with a traditional tray of five fruits and moon cakes on the family altar to worship the ancestors, making lanterns and preparing many dishes for the family gathering. It is THE festival for children, she tells me. On the night of the full moon, the children from the neighbourhood parade through the streets with their colourful lanterns in the shape of stars and animals, singing songs, watching the lion dances, that are supposed to bring luck, prosperity and happiness to every house, and eating as much moon cake as possible.
Usually there are two types of cakes: sticky rice cakes and baked cakes, round or square, each molded with geometric flower patterns. The traditional filling is green beans, taro jam, lotus seeds or salted eggs. These days, the choice is bigger and one filling sounds more delicious than the other, such as Lotus herbal beauty tea, scallops with one yolk, coconut cold coffee with Baileys, pork floss, mung beans, kumquat jam and chocolate, dragon fruit minced cheese to give you an idea. The filling is very rich, and I can’t have more than one or two bites. Pair the mooncakes with a cup of hot green tea, recommends Cô Lien, and hands me over her favorite one with salted egg custard and a fancy cappuccino-cheese-lava-mooncake. Wow!
It's time to go. I want to see what Madame Huong, one of my favorite pastry shops, has on display. Their little mooncakes, packaged in beautiful, colorful cardboard boxes with matching paper carrier bags, are the most sophisticated I know and make the perfect gift for family and friends in Germany. I'm leaving in a few days, just before the next full moon on 17 September, the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival this year, which I will unfortunately miss. But next year I want to be in Hanoi in autumn to finally experience the festival in person.
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