When Hanoi gets cold, many people come to De To Hoang to enjoy the nearly 30-year-old banh troi dish.
When Hanoi gets cold, one of the “hottest” snacks; is the ship’s floating wheel.
Located at 90 De To Hoang, Hai Ba Trung District, Ms. Van, 57 years old, has become a familiar address for many diners for nearly 30 years. Although there is no name or sign, diners can easily recognize her basket of floating cakes by the line of people standing in line, sitting and eating in front of the house next door.
Mrs. Van’s recipe for making banh troi (pictured) was passed down from her husband’s family, which is also a family with a traditional profession of making banh troi. Up to now, she has been selling for about 28 years. For the first 7-8 years, she often carried goods from home to along the streets of Hue. It wasn’t until the 2000s that it was sold permanently at its current address.
Mrs. Van’s basket of banh troi tau is quite simple with a pot containing banh troi tau and hot, cooked soup. The strong aroma of ginger and black sesame spreads along De To Hoang street, about 3 meters wide.
Ingredients to make a pot of banh troi include glutinous rice flour, green beans, black sesame, old ginger, and sugar. To make the crust, Ms. Van mixes glutinous rice flour with water, kneads it into soft, flexible, and smooth dough until it does not stick to her hands. Let the dough rest for about half an hour, then divide it into small balls of equal weight.
With green bean filling, Ms. Van said the beans need to be soaked in water for about 3-4 hours first and then cooked in the pot. When the beans are cooked and soft, put them on low heat with the sugar until the sugar dissolves, add grated coconut, let cool and divide into small, round balls. With black sesame paste, black sesame is roasted, pureed, added with a little water and sugar similar to green beans.
“The special feature of my banh troi is that it is filled with meat,” Ms. Van said. Banh troi stuffed with meat came from the suggestion of an elderly customer in the first days of opening, then she researched the recipe and how to make it herself to create it.
The meat filling has a different way of making. Minced pork mixed with wood ear mushrooms, chopped mushrooms, marinated with pepper. Then use a spoon to shape each meatball and drop it into the pot of boiling water until cooked, then take it out and let it cool.
Use your hands to flatten the dough, place the filling balls in the middle, then carefully wrap them and roll them into a ball so that the edges of the package are not exposed. After shaping the cake, boil it in boiling water until it floats to the surface, then take it out and soak it in cold water to avoid sticking together.
According to Ms. Van, what makes the difference in each Banh Troi Tau shop is the flavor of the sugar water. To make the sugar water fragrant and delicious, Ms. Van uses old ginger to cook with molasses sugar to get a dark brown color similar to honey. When the sugar water boils, add all the cakes and continue cooking until the cakes float on the surface and are done.
When customers order, Mrs. Van uses a spoon to scoop each ball of banh troi into a bowl. Although all the fillings are put in the same pot, Ms. Van has her own way to distinguish each type.
Each bowl of banh troi costs 20,000 VND and has three cakes, sugar water, grated fresh coconut fibers, a spoonful of black sesame seeds, and crushed roasted peanuts sprinkled on top.
The bowl of Banh Troi Tau has the dark brown color of sweet sugar water, is slightly viscous, thick, has the pungent smell of ginger and the aroma of black sesame. “Just holding a bowl of hot banh troi in your hand is enough to fight the cold of Hanoi’s winter afternoon,” diner Vu Quynh Chi, 28 years old, Hai Phong shared.
Ba Van’s banh troi balls are large in size, about 3 – 4 cm in diameter, making it difficult for diners to eat them all in one bite.
When biting into the cake, diners will feel the mixture of chewy, fleshy sticky rice crust, smooth cake filling and sweet sugar water, crunchy fresh coconut, roasted peanuts and fatty black sesame. Put a spoonful of sugar water into your mouth, your throat will burn due to the spicy taste of ginger. The heat along with the sweetness of sugar water lingers, drowning out the cold of winter.
Ms. Van’s sugar water is quite sweet but not too harsh, diners can enjoy the entire bowl of banh troi without feeling any discomfort in the throat.
In addition to Chinese sweet soup with 3 different flavors, Ms. Van also sells cassava sweet soup, Ba Cot sweet soup, and sticky rice. In particular, young coconut cassava sweet soup (right, photo) is only sold in winter, with coconut pearls, steamed cassava, coconut milk, and green bean sweet soup. A bowl of young coconut cassava sweet soup costs 20,000 VND.
Since opening for sale at 3:30 p.m. every day, diners have been waiting to buy banh troi. Hanoi is getting colder, floating cakes sell faster. On average, she sells more than 1,000 pills a day. “It says it’s open until 6:30 p.m., but on a crowded day, it only takes about an hour and a half to two hours before it’s out of stock,” Ms. Van shared.
Banh troi is a favorite snack of many people of all ages, so the customers coming to the restaurant are quite diverse. From adults to children, students, young couples also come from far away to enjoy Mrs. Van’s floating cakes.
Diners should note that the restaurant only accepts cash, not bank transfers. Because it is located on a small road, the restaurant does not have parking. Visitors find a parking space on the opposite side of the street and pay attention to observe and ensure personal property.
The restaurant’s peak hour starts around 4:00 p.m. If buying in large quantities, diners should order in advance to have enough cakes to take home and not have to wait too long.
($1~24,000 VND)
Photo,Video: Internet (Vinlove.net)