Every day, Mr. Son and his wife (Van Lam, Hung Yen) and 5 workers are busy pounding bread from 1 p.m. to 12 p.m., making thousands of pairs of vegetarian thick cakes and hundreds of thick cakes spread across Ha. Cabinet.
Family of 3 generations of making thick cakes: At midnight, there is a rumbling of rice, 300kg of glutinous rice ends the day
Ngoc village, Lac Dao commune (Van Lam, Hung Yen) used to be famous for making sewing machine tables, nowadays, many households in the village “eat and make” with the profession of making billiard tables, loudspeakers, cooking. wine …, high-rise buildings grow close.
Also here, there are 3 households keeping the profession of making round cakes “symbolizing heaven”, each day supplying Hanoi market with thousands of pairs of cakes.
At the gate of Dau market in Ngoc village, people showed me the way to the house of Le Van Son, one of the three oldest thick cake-making families here.
The first floor of the 3-storey house is lined with nearly tens of tons of sticky rice and green beans, deep inside is the workshop area where 3 crusher machines, with a “giant” sticky rice boiler and pre-soaked glutinous rice boxes Prepare for a new batch of cake.
Recalling a period of more than 20 years ago, Mr. Son said, “showing off” his hard hands because he was pounding cakes: “When I was still pounding, my family could only make 7 shifts of rice every day (about 10kg). ), I wish only the robot would pound for me because it was so hard, the hands are still hard.
In 2001, Mr. Son spent all his money buying a crusher for nearly 10 million VND, but had to leave the corner for 3 months because the electricity in the village was weak, the machine could not run: “Those 10 million days were very big, I had to ask a mechanic. struggling to use it forever.
“Maybe other dishes made with traditional and handcraft will taste better, but with thick cake, the opposite is true, pounding with delicious machine and saving time many times,” Mr. Son said.
Every day, Mr. Son and his craftsmen started blowing sticky rice from 1pm, working continuously until 12pm. The days the order increased, the couple had to work all night to keep up.
The cake is made from sticky rice and green beans, so it can only be sold during the day, so it will be made in the afternoon and at night so that it will be delivered to small traders in the morning. In order, thick cakes are vegetarian first, thick cakes with bean fillings are last.
The cake is simple and rustic, but it is very sophisticated to make it. To have a smooth, flexible batch, first choose delicious sticky rice, not mixed with non-glutinous rice seeds, then soak in water for about 6 hours.
On average, Mr. Son soaked from 200-300kg of sticky rice a day, sometimes up to 500kg / day. On the days when there are many weddings, he has to mobilize more workers and work all night to meet the needs. On the full moon, the first day, they work more, while the Saturday and Sunday decrease because schools and offices have a break.
Spread the rice through clean water, then put in a “giant” cooked food. A pot can hold up to 30kg of rice, then divide the sticky rice into 3 parts by 3 pounders. In order for sticky rice to not stick to the canvas, the worker must apply it through a layer of lard.
Ms. Hien (Son’s wife) used to call the cake making stage “catching” dough. Her hands are skillful, stretching the dough and “catching” into pieces the size of an egg. The cake is spread evenly on the stainless steel table surface, when the dough is still hot and smooth, it will automatically melt into a round cake.
“Only after 11 – 12 o’clock at night, I started packing the goods again at 1:00 am. I just took advantage of sleeping for a while in the morning,” said Anh Son.
From 3 – 4 pm, villagers bring goods to wholesale at the gate of Dau market so that small traders can bring them to Hanoi in the morning: “What are banh chung, gai cake, rice ball, banh gio , … some day there is still traffic “, Mr. Son said.
Dân trí