Near Tet, Tuy Loan rice paper-making village (Da Nang) is again vibrant. This is also the season when dozens of households here work at full capacity day and night, to promptly deliver cakes to customers.
Every December (the 12th month of the lunar calendar), the streets in Tuy Loan ancient village (Hoa Vang district, Da Nang) are filled with the smell of new rice, white sesame… mixed with the smell of kitchen smoke from traditional rice paper makers. tradition, making visitors feel anxious and looking forward to Tet .
Rushing from midnight to “run” the Tet menu
Tuy Loan rice paper craft village is located in the ancient village of Tuy Loan and is about 500 years old. The village has more than a dozen households still preserving traditions and making a living by making rice paper completely by hand.
According to the customs of Tuy Loan villagers, rice paper is an indispensable dish on the offerings to ancestors during Tet. The cake is perfectly round as many families wish for a happy and reunited new year.
Therefore, in the last months of the year, the rice paper ovens in Tuy Loan are always on fire to increase output to meet the high demand of domestic and foreign customers.
Ms. Tran Thi Luyen (71 years old) has more than 50 years of experience in the cake making profession. “I wake up at 1 a.m. to prepare for the steps. Every time Tet approaches, I have to work continuously,” Ms. Luyen confided and said that the cakes are made by hand, from flour milling to other stages.
Ms. Luyen tries to complete the orders placed in advance and does not dare to accept more, worried that she won’t be able to do it in time.
In the kitchen, Ms. Luyen used a ladle to scoop flour and pour it onto a cloth stretched over the mouth of a large pot with boiling water inside. She used a ladle to rotate a thin layer of dough in a circular shape.
Her hands are extremely skillful and agile. Each cake is coated with two layers. Once the first layer is cooked, continue to use a ladle to scoop the mixture onto the previous cake.
Mrs. Luyen is the third generation to make heirloom rice paper, so she doesn’t need to watch the time when molding the cake, she just needs to look at the steam rising from the lid to know how cooked the cake is. With about 20kg of milled rice flour, Ms. Luyen had to sit and pour cakes until 11:00 am.
According to Ms. Luyen, to get Tuy Loan rice paper products with a unique flavor, care must be taken from the ingredients of rice, sesame and soaking time.
The rice for making rice paper must be “circle” rice (February 13 rice) sown and harvested by farmers in the village to be used as raw materials near Tet. This type of rice cooks hard rice but makes the cake crispy. Rice is soaked the night before until dawn the next morning and then ground into flour.
When the cake is cooked, Mrs. Luyen uses a thin bamboo stick to slide it under the cake, then spreads it on a grid made of bamboo and hangs it to dry. Another woman with many years of experience will be in charge of this cake drying process.
The difference makes the brand famous
Ms. Luyen said that a delicious rice paper must be prepared with 5 spices: fish sauce, salt, sugar, sesame, garlic or ginger. This preparation is considered the village’s “secret” to give rice paper a unique flavor that cannot be compared anywhere else.
Cakes are arranged on bamboo cages. Unlike rice paper making villages in many localities, Tuy Loan people do not dry their cakes in the sun but dry them on charcoal.
If you want the cake to be delicious, you must dry it over charcoal at least twice, turning often until the cake is slightly golden and fragrant, but do not “force the fire” so that the cake dries quickly.
Rice paper is dried for about a day and stacked for storage. “The cake is dried on charcoal so it can be kept all year round without worrying about mold. When eaten, it is very crispy and you can clearly feel the faint flavor of the spices,” said Ms. Pham Thi Huong (who worked with Ms. Luyen). ) confided.
Tuy Loan rice paper has a diameter of about 30cm and uses white sesame to coat the cake.
As Tet approaches, the number of orders is high so Ms. Luyen has to hire more workers to make cakes for customers. Every day, Ms. Luyen’s bakery makes about 200 cakes, selling for 220,000-270,000 VND/10 cakes. This price increased by 10,000 VND compared to last year because of increased raw material prices.
“There is no Tet where my oven has a dozen cakes left over. I make as many as I can. During Tet, some people still come here waiting to get cakes,” Ms. Luyen confided.
Today, Tuy Loan rice paper is not only a familiar dish of the countryside, but it also follows tourists and friends everywhere and becomes a famous specialty of Da Nang.
The local government is also investing in restoring this traditional craft village, associated with developing craft village tourism with the hope of restoring the craft village, contributing to local socio-economic development
($1~24,000 VND)
Photo: Internet