Tết Trung Thu

Viet: Tết Trung Thu
English: Mid-Autumn Festival. Trung Thu mean "Middle of Autumn." I thought I was clever knowing Trung means "egg," but apparently that is "trứng." Tết usually refers to the Lunar New Year in the spring, so I assume it translates to "New Year."
Pronunciation: Thet (sharp rising) Chung (g is very soft, back of throat) Too


I first heard of Tết Trung Thu when Anh of A Food Lover's Journey posted a recipe for mooncakes.  I celebrate tết with Thai's family every spring (he calls it, "Asian Christmas"), so I wondered how I'd missed this other seemingly well-known holiday.  Wikipedia expanded my knowledge, but I knew who I really wanted to ask.  So I e-mailed Thai's mom to see what she remembers of this holiday.

Her response was short and sweet. A holiday for the kids. Under the moon.  Eating mooncakes. Very fun.  Flashes from her childhood in Vietnam.  I picture her as a tiny girl, holding a pinwheel lantern and parading the streets of her shore-side town.  Just Google "tet trung thu" images, and you'll see pages and pages of orange dragons, red stars, and pink and yellow lanterns in little kids grasps.  I feel nostalgic for a childhood experience I never had.  Perhaps it hints at Halloween trick-or-treating or the unity of a family dinner at Thanksgiving.  I remember digging for Starbursts in a pumpkin-shaped bucket; she tasted Mung Bean in a printed pastry.

She came to visit us this weekend, bringing with her a sliced moon cake.  My tongue dissected this new flavor as she repeated her memories to me.  My niece, just one and a half, scampered up to me to see what I was munching.  I broke her off a crumbling piece to hold in her tiny hand.  It seemed fitting to have a little girl toddling around the kitchen as her grandmother described the Vietnamese holiday for children.  The holiday developed as a way for rural parents to spend time with their children after the busy harvest season finally ended.  Even though the festival isn't officially until September 22, I guess spending time with my niece was my version of Tết Trung Thu this year.

We bought more moon cakes at the Asian supermarket.  As Thai and I passed one back and forth in the car, I declared, "I like moon cakes."

Thai responded, "Me too.  And Moon Pies." 

The epitome of Asian-American.

Tre Em Viet Nam

In February 2010, I ran my first marathon and raised over $2600 for ASHA. Many of my friends and family helped me raise this money for educational programs in India, encouraging me from my training to crossing the finish line.

I am now training for TWO MARATHONS. In December, I will run the Dallas White Rock Marathon. In February, I will run the Austin Marathon for the 2nd time.

Training for a marathon is VERY hard. It's a day-to-day struggle that entends for months on end. And it is nothing compared to actually running the race. When I crossed the finish line in February, I broke down in tears because I was so happy the hardest thing I had ever done was over. Now I've got TWO more difficult times on my horizon, and I can think of no better way to honor these times than raising money to help the Children of Vietnam. And this is why:

My fiance's mom escaped from Vietnam after the war. Her 8 year journey found her in prison several times, in a refugee camp in Thailand, and finally in a scary new home called America where few spoke Vietnamese. My 26.2 mile struggles are nothing compared to her life. And Vietnam, her beautiful homeland, still has its own struggles. 29% of the Vietnamese population lives below the internaitonal poverty line (compare this to less than 2% in the US). For every 100,000 people, there are only 53 physicians. And there is a 40% school dropout rate for children ages 12-20 who come from poor families.

I can never truly understand the Viet struggle, but I can help change the Viet future for the children that still live there. And so can you! Click here to donate: http://www.firstgiving.com/marathonvietnam

My goal is to raise $5000 for Children of Vietnam by February 20th, 2011, when I run the Austin Marathon. Please donate any amount you can -- I'll be watching the total rise as I train! It is so encouraging!

Cháo gà

Viet: Cháo gà

English: Rice soup with chicken

Pronunciation: Jow (Jelly minus elly plus pow minus p.), rising tone. Yapple minus pple, falling tone. Jow Ya.

My poor little Asian got sick.  (Can I call a 6'2" man little?) 

Headache, vomiting, fatigue, the usual works that keep you out of work for two days.  I went home early to morph into Nurse Sarah.  I made him comfortable in bed, got him a glass of water, and then asked what I could make him to eat.  Any suggestion of food made him cringe.  But there was one culinary risk he was willing to take.  Whenever he was sick as a child, his mom would always make him cháo.  And since sickness makes one revert to a childlike state, he now requested that I make him the same dish.

Facts known: 

Called "Jow."

Made in rice maker but with more water. 

Soup-like.

A wonderful invention called the "internet" enabled me to expand on these facts.  What Thai calls "Cháo" is called "congee" in many Asian countries, and every Asian country has their own variation.   The Vietnamese version is often made with chicken, or "gà" as I should say.  The big debate is how much water to put into the rice cooker.  Once I decided upon 5 cups, though, I still wasn't satisfied.  

Rice and water and chicken? I decided to "Viet it up" a bit.  Toss in some fresh green onions, sprinkle in some ground ginger, mix in a little soy sauce.  Just because he's sick doesn't mean I halt my obsessive desire to appeal to the Viet child inside him!

And let me tell what that little Viet child said, peeking out through big brown eyes.  He slurped and Mmmm'd and devoured.  And somewhere in the middle of that, he said, and I quote, "It's better than what I had as a kid!"

My response was of course a victory dance.

Make way for the Vietnamese chef, world.

Cháo gà, made for sick Thai

1 cup of rice

5 cups of water

4 green onion stalks

Fully cooked chicken breast fajitas

ground ginger

soy sauce

black pepper

1. Put rice and water in rice cooker.  Turn to Cook.  Monitor while cooking to make sure doesn't overflow.  If that happens, lift the lid and let the dragon calm down.

2. Heat up desired amount of chicken breasts in microwave according to directions (or this is the point where you could be more legit and cook up fresh chicken breasts.  I'm vegetarian, so I'm not very passionate about the meat.)

3. Chop green onion stalks (not the bulb part) so there about 1/4 thick.

4. Cut warmed (Warning! Could be very hot!) chicken into little squares, about 1/2 inch thick.

5. When the rice is done, mix in the green onions.  

6. Add ginger, pepper, and soy sauce to taste.  Ginger can be very powerful so be careful with that one!

7. Put chicken want in 1 serving in bowl.  Scoop cháo into bowl.  Make sure you get a good amount of water too, not just the rice.  

Future servings, I had to add in more water and heat it up in the microwave, especially as I neared the bottom of the cooker.  I put the chicken in the serving bowl here because I'm vegetarian-- I wanted some cháo too!  But you can of course mix it into the main pot.

Good news: Thai is now all better.  Coincidence?

Texan Sriracha

In my fiance's world of Viet cuisine there are 3 necessities: rice, soy sauce, and Sriracha.

Sriracha is actually a Thai sauce, named after the seaside village of Si Racha in Thailand.  It's main ingredient is Thai chilli peppers.  But the Sriracha sauce that you'd find on the shelves at Hong Kong Supermarket in the US, the Sriracha my fiance grew up loving, is a little different.  It was developed by a Chinese-Vietnamese farmer who fled after the war on a boat in the late 1970s (sound familiar?) and established Huy Fong Foods in California.  The sauce is made from fresh red jalapeño peppers. 1 2

My first exposure to Sriracha was seeing my fiance Thai squeeze a liberal amount into his phở bò.  After a few times witnessing this, I decided that I would try this "Sweet Rah-cha" sauce.  I squeezed a drop on my finger to test out the taste.  As it touched my tongue and began to burn, I wondered at the misleading name - There's nothing "sweet" about this!!


This summer, I discovered a recipe on Viet World Kitchen for Homemade Fermented Sriracha Sauce.  I wrote down the list of suggested peppers and went to see what I could find at the Farmer's Market.  This being Texas, I of course found a plethora of jalapeños.  Later, I tossed them into a blender with the other required ingredients, thinking only of how impressed Thai would be with my Sriracha-making skills.   It wasn't until my mixture reached "a texture like that of wet oatmeal," that I realized something was wrong.


It was GREEN.


Yes, green peppers create green sauce.  Surprise!  Toss in some brown sugar instead of Thai palm sugar, and you've got some Texas-ified Sriracha.  But Thai is Texan-Vietnamese, so I suppose it suits him!  The resulting sauce was even HOTTER than Huy Fong Sriracha.  And he absolutely loves it!  He said that he actually likes it better than the Viet red sauce!  

My green Sriracha in a Tostitos salsa jar.

Texan Sriracha (adapted from Homemade Fermented Sriracha Sauce)

¾ pounds green Jalapenos, snipped, halved lengthwise and coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 ¼ teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
Water, as needed

1. Combine jalapeños, garlic, salt, and sugar in blender and chop finely to a texture like that of wet oatmeal.

2. Transfer the mixture to a glass bowl or jar and cover with plastic wrap. 

3. Set aside at room temperature for 4 days, until small bubbles have formed under the surface of the mixture (I didn't see bubbles?). If a little fuzzy mold forms, lift it off with a fork and discard (and don't tell anyone!). 

4. After 4 days, put the fermented mixture and vinegar into small saucepan. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to simmer for 5 minutes.

5. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool to room temperature. Transfer to a blender and puree for 3 minutes, until a smooth mixture forms. Add the water to facilitate the pureeing, if needed.

6. Let the flavor develop and bloom for a few hours before using.

7. Grab your Asian and let the judgement begin!

--- This post is my contribution to Delicious Vietnam #4, a monthly blogging event celebrating Vietnamese cuisine created by A Food Lovers Journey and Ravenous Couple! This month's host is Bonni_bella of Chrysanthemum. ---

Prop 8

Vietnamese: tình yêu
English: Love

Today Proposition 8 was declared unconstitutional in California Courts.

Being in an inter-racial relationship makes me feel very connected to the struggles in the LGBT community for the freedom to marry.  Marriage between people of different races used to be considered horrific, just as marriage between people of the same sex is considered now.  If society told me I couldn't be with my fiancé only because I'm white and he's Vietnamese... my heart hurts just thinking about it.

My thoughts are with the gay community in America.  Let's take this to the Supreme Court!

Tôi không hiểu

My grasp of the Vietnamese language crawls along.  A new word gained here and there.  The only time I get to practice my new vocabulary is when I casually show off to my Viet mother-in-law.  And she is dumbfounded that a white girl can even wrap her tongue around the sacred language.  The bottom line is that I can exist in my every day life without knowing Vietnamese.  Curse or blessing?

My fiance's mom grew up in Vietnam speaking her native tongue and learning French. Then the war came, beginning the scariest journey of her life.  The following years found her thrown from boat to prison to boat to prison, and finally to refugee camp.  Her journey culminated when she boarded a plane bound for the United States of America.  And then her second journey began.

She landed on American soil with two children and no English.  I can't even imagine; absolutely no English.  I asked her, on our most recent visit, "How did you survive? How could you get a job!?"  She weaved together for me a picture of their early existence: living off welfare, living off her husband's wages delivering pizzas, opening an Asian gift shop, pushing the kids through American public school, watching as their knowledge of English far surpassed her own, getting the chance to go to cosmetology school, working for and then running a hair and nail salon, and always the struggle, struggle, struggle.

The struggles of learning English were thrown on top of the financial troubles.  There were not many Viets in the country back then, so Viet-English translations were limited.  She was reduced to looking at picture books labeled ONLY in English and attending a class for immigrants where the teacher ONLY spoke English.  She would see a picture of a glass of water with a word next to it, but she would think, "Does that word mean "water" or "glass"?  Or perhaps it means "drink" or even "to drink"?"  Another tale she tells me is seeing the word "table," but thinking it is said like the french word, "table." Same spelling.  Same meaning.  Different pronunciation.

As she tells me these stories last weekend, she expresses the difficulty, what she deemed impossibility at times.  But she kept coming back to one phrase: "For my children."  All the trials in her life can be captured in those three little words.  She escaped oppression, battled poverty, and learned a language and culture from scratch.  And all so her children would know life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  One of those kids grew up to be the man I love.  How can you thank someone for that??  The only way I know is to sit, eyes wide, and listen to her stories.

Viet'd Up with Gỏi Cuốn

Viet: gỏi cuốn

English: spring roll

Pronunciation: yoi (like a question) coon (rising)

A weekend in Vietnam (aka Thai's mom's house) always Viets me up a bit.  I was already thrilled when his mom set out all the ingredients to make fresh shrimp spring rolls, but then she said that she would show ME how to make them.  Me! Người mỹ trắng!  So here is a 100% legit Viet recipe, from the mouth of a woman raised on the Southern tip of Vietnam:

1. First, moisten the bánh tráng (round sheets of rice paper).
2. Lay the sheet flat on a plate. 
3. On the closest part of the sheet to you, put a small amount of fresh lettuce, cilantro leaves, cooked (not hot) rice noodles, and four or five shrimp (or meat of choice).
4. Then, fold in the right and left sides of the bánh tráng to keep the ingredients from falling out the sides.
5. Keeping the sides held in, wrap the closest part of the bánh tráng over the ingredients very tightly.
6. Roll tightly.

NOTE: The gỏi cuốn will taste 10 times better if you are wearing purple pajamas brought from Vietnam a month ago, size XL.

It is also wonderful to have Thai's mom as my Vietnamese Consultant.  Instead of spending 10 minutes surfing the net and piecing together a shaky pronunciation, I simply turn around and say into the kitchen, "How do you spell trắng?"  That leads to a 10 minute explanation of that word and 5 related phrases, each spelled out and repeated several times.  The Viet newspaper next to me is covered in handwritten Vietnamese words.  I find it quite enjoyable!

First attempts at Viet cooking

I decided to make my first dive into Viet cooking.  I found two recipes online that claimed to be Vietnamese.  This is their story.

Viet Food Attempt #1

Original Recipe: Vietnamese Salt and Pepper Eggplant

Source: RecipeZaar.com

Evolved Into: Might-Be-Viet Ginger & Pepper Eggplant Fries

Viet: cà tím

English: Eggplant
Pronunciation: gah (low) theme (rising)

Pronunciation Confusion:  Forward accent indicates a high, rising tone. Cá means fish. Tím means purple.  Backward accent indicates low sound. Cà is the first part of eggplant. Tìm mean search. 

người Mỹ

Viet: người Mỹ
Meaning: American person
Pronunciation: Blend the n and g in the back of the throat, then add (as the British would say) "oi!" in the gradually falling tone. Second word is "Me" as a sharp rising tone.

When I go into an Asian restaurant, I pretend that everyone there thinks I'm Asian.  It probably harkens back to the middle school desires to "blend in."  Inevitably, there are moments during my brush with the staff at these places of Asian cuisine when I might as well be wearing a sign that says, "I am a stupid white American that doesn't understand your language or your culture!"  At least, that's how I feel at these moments.

When Thai and I went to New York City, we ate in a delicious restaurant in Chinatown.  We had soup and duck (pre-vegetarianism for me) and amazing rice!  However, when our order was brought to our table, there was a very significant difference in the utensils we received.  Thai was blessed with chopsticks, while I was handed a fork.  That was the first time I sensed the giant sign across my chest: Stupid. White. American.  I was a bit embarrassed, which he did not understand.  I tried to explain; How would he feel if he went into a steakhouse, and the server brought chopsticks for him?  Of course, he said that would be hilarious.  He is quite impossible sometimes.

We often go out to Vietnamese restaurants with Thai's family.  The waitress will chatter in Vietnamese to Thai's sister, Thai will then sputter out his rehearsed pronunciation of the Viet dishes, and then the waitress will look at me.  She'll size me up and ask, in English, "And what would you like?"  I'll mumble, "Spring rolls and a side of rice, please," and she'll be on her way.  My self-illusion that I am Viet is shattered!  Now, occasionally, I will throw in some Viet words that I know.  Cảm ơn.  Thank you.  But I always mix up whether it's pronounced "come" or "cam," and thus I usually just end up with a confused glance and pitying nod.  Can I skip ahead to the language lessons about food?

cơm

Viet: cơm
Meaning: cooked rice
Pronunciation: a mix between "gum" and "scum" minus s

The Asian staple.  I have eaten more rice in the last four and a half years then I think I ate in the whole eighteen years before I met my fiance.  He eats it with Chinese sausage, with canned tuna, with barbeque, with any meat he can dig out of our fridge.  And always drowned in Golden Mountain Seasoning Sauce, which I only recently realized is soy sauce (the Vietnamese literally translates to "salt to increase taste"). 

In the beginning, Thai always made the rice.  He'd scoop the dry grains out of the giant cloth bag in the pantry, and they'd clatter into the silver bowl of the rice cooker.  He'd casually hold the bowl under the faucet for a few seconds, before fitting in back in its nest.  And 20 minutes later, voila! Delicious white rice!  I was in awe of this magic machine that combined dry and wet with heat to create perfection.

Then, Thai graced me with the darkest and deepest Vietnamese secret to be passed down for generations... (do they even have rice cookers in Vietnam?)... The key was the amount of water.  Too little and the rice couldn't cook; too much and it turned into mush.  The perfect amount, he instructed me, was to the first knuckle of your pinky finger.  And thus I took my first step forward as a Viet chef.


------ Note: There are three versions of the letter O in the Viet alphabet.  Yes, three!!   Let's see if I get these right -- o is said like "aww," ơ is said like "uh," and ô is said like "oh." -- Now just throw in the accents and there are only seventeen possible combinations for the letter O!  Oh my...

I've decided to become Vietnamese.

What makes a person Vietnamese?

My fiance's mother was born in southern Vietnam.  She would still be there, most likely, if the war had not come.
But it did, and so she began a death-defying cycle: attempt escape, get caught, go to prison.  She has told me that she did not want her children to be raised in a Communist country, the place where she rode her bike to school past piles of dead bodies loaded in carts.  The place where she was told what she could do and where she could go.  

And thus, for the eighth time, she crawled into a tiny boat and prayed that this time they would not get caught.  I cannot even imagine the relief she must have felt when she placed her feet on land again.
Thailand.  Freedom.  Waiting. 

She waited for years for a chance to migrate to the USA. It finally came, and here in the States she has remained. She is a survivor. She is a pillar of strength. And no one would deny, she is Vietnamese.

So is it being born in Vietnam that makes one Vietnamese?  

My fiance was born in a Thai refugee camp, a location so sacred to his mother that she named him "Thai."  I think that was her small way of saying, "Thank you," to the country that had embraced her in her time of need.
Thai, however, remembers nothing of Asia, nothing of Dallas, nothing of California.  All he recollects is the ghettos of Houston, Texas.  

And yet, I still always say he was raised in "Vietnam."  His mother could only speak Vietnamese, and so he only spoke Vietnamese, until American children hammered English into his brain.  For the first eighteen years of his life, he ate phở bò and rice with nước mắm while surrounded by incense and jade statues of buddhas.  He watched his mom's Chinese soap operas dubbed in Vietnamese and listened to her Viet music and radio stations.  

He may worship Texas barbecue and obsess over American football, but he is not just any Texan or any American.  He is Vietnamese-American.

And then there's me.  Let's measure me by these Vietnamese standards, shall we?

Born in Vietnam? 

Far from it.  In the fourth grade, we had to do a project where we drew out our family tree with the birthplace of each relation written next to their name.  The letters "USA" were scribbled next to every single one of mine, reaching back for generations.

Olive skin and dark almond eyes? 

When Thai told me he'd never been sunburned, I couldn't conceive of that concept.  My complexion is pink and freckled; my eyes are wide and green.  My hair is dark, but it's a mass of curls that would frizz and fry in jungle heat.

Speaks Vietnamese?

At the level of a 2 year old.

Eats Vietnamese?

Restaurants and a rice cooker.

Celebrates Vietnamese culture?

I gamble on Lunar New Year, does that count?

I am not Vietnamese by any average measurement.  But I'm in love with a Vietnamese-American with a Vietnamese mother.  She doesn't care that I'm white or that I butcher her language when I speak it.  He doesn't care that I have green eyes and pale skin or that I can't cook phở.  
But I care; I want to embrace as much Vietnamese culture as my little spoiled American self can handle.  And I will document this delightfully terrifying journey here.

If you've made it this far in my explanation, cám ơn!