The Korean Wave 2006 - Korean Cultural Service

The New York Times, wednesday, january 25, 2006
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Traditional Flavors
of the Lunar New Year
By DANA BOWEN
Two sisters sat at an ingredient-strewn table at
Vietcafe, gossiping as they prepared the sticky
rice cakes that are adored across Vietnam at this
time of year. Lan Tran Cao, the younger of the two and
the owner of Vietcafe, a TriBeCa restaurant, spoke of a
relative’s recipe.
“The way she seasons it is different,” she said to her sister,
Nga Thi Tran. Clearly, “different” meant not as good.
A cook, Mai Nguyen, walked in and spotted the women
mashing dried mung bean balls into banana leaves with
great force. “Ah, banh chung!” she sang, and smiled. For
her, the bundles contained distant memories of New
Year’s celebrations in Hanoi.
Lunar New Year begins on Sunday, and in many traditional
Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese households in
New York, the cooking is under way. Chefs like Ms. Cao
find themselves in a peculiar spot at the beginning of the
Year of the Dog, poised between a public hungry to learn
about the world’s cuisine and a community where many
culinary traditions are slipping.
“Nowadays, everybody buys these,” she said of the banh
chung, a requisite dish for Tet Nguyen Dan, Vietnam’s
New Year and its most important holiday. Buying them
in Chinatown is certainly easier than soaking the rice
overnight, stuffing it in banana leaves with pork belly
and beans, wrapping the cakes in foil, simmering them
for 12 hours and draining them for another few hours.
But to Ms. Cao, the effort is worth it. On Saturday she
will serve them at Gallery Vietnam (attached to her restaurant)
for her annual Tet party. Last year more than 40
families attended, many of them American with adoptive
children born in Vietnam. She’ll describe the significance
of the altar table, where departed relatives’ favorite foods
are set out. Her niece will direct a play about the rice
cakes’ fabled origins.
As she worked, Ms. Cao and her sister recalled the New
Year’s of their childhood in Saigon, when their faces
turned red from eating dyed watermelon seeds. Ms. Cao
remembered how her father, a Hanoi native, made blunt
squares of banh chung (as compared to the south’s round
version) without the wooden molds she now relies on.
Their family would make 70 cakes before the holiday
to snack on with pickled greens during the week, when
stores were closed.
Michael Huynh, the Saigon-born chef of Bao Noodles
and Bao 111 in the East Village, was well aware of this
practice. “Anything made with fish sauce lasts,” said Mr.
Huynh, who serves thit kho to – a sticky-sweet pork dish
with funky undertones of nuoc mam – on his Tet menus.
The candied bites of the pork, he said, are typical of the
holiday’s practical yet satisfying recipes.
Eating your way to
good luck and longevity
Korean New Year, Solnal, is greeted with steaming bowls
of rice cake soup called duk gook – “comfort food,” said
Moon Sun Kwak, who serves it at Dok Suni and Do
Hwa, her family’s restaurants in Manhattan. Her mother,
Myung Ja Kwak, who is the chef, slowly simmers beef
bones into a marrow-rich broth as the base for the soup.
“It’s so healthy,” the elder Ms. Kwak said as she dropped
homemade dumplings into the soup in Do Hwa’s kitchen.
Not all versions of the soup have dumplings; it’s the
duk, or rice cake slivers, that matter. “You eat it so you
can turn a year older.”
Many Korean Americans observe both Jan. 1 and the
Lunar New Year, treating the later date with more reverence.
Ms. Kwak recalled eating the rice cake soup for
breakfast as a child in North Korea, before performing a
solemn bowing ritual to honor her elders.
Jennifer Maeng, who owns Korean Temple Cuisine in the
East Village, remembers her family spending a week pre-
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