Bánh Giò, Bánh Tẻ

Bánh tẻ stays. Bánh giò travels. Both remain.

The wood-fired stove glows red from early dawn. Steam billows from a large pot, carried by the wind into every corner of the village. The faint scent of rice batter and dong leaves lingers in the air. Footsteps stir as women call out to one another. Slender bánh tẻ (long rice cakes) are laid neatly on a brass tray, waiting to be carried for the communal house ritual. Today is the village ceremony.

Bánh Tẻ

In Làng Chờ, Bắc Ninh, bánh tẻ appear at nearly every family or village gathering. The cakes are long and slender, about the width of two fingers. When the outer layer of dong leaves is unwrapped, the cake emerges smooth and pale, almost silky to the touch. Warm steam rises, carrying the mingled scent of rice batter, dong leaves, pork, scallions, and pepper. The children have been waiting. Some open the cake and eat it at once; others carry it to a corner of the courtyard, taking their time with the savory richness of the filling.

As rice became a steady presence in the household, bánh tẻ moved from the home to the market. In the early twentieth century, from the village of Phú Nhi, shoulder poles laden with bánh tẻ followed vendors toward Nghệ Market, then spread outward through the town of Sơn Tây. 

Darkened, softened banana leaves wrap around an inner layer of dong leaves. Bamboo ties circle the cakes. Together, they hold the cake’s shape and kept it warm. Carefully made, the cakes sold quickly, whether at the market or by street vendors. Even today, people in Phú Nhi make bánh tẻ year-round, sometimes freezing them to send farther away.

In Trung Lập village (Thanh Hóa), bánh tẻ is known as bánh lá răng bừa (harrow-shaped leaf rice cake).

Elder villagers recall that King Lê Đại Hành once came here to plow the fields at the start of spring and shared these leaf-wrapped cakes with the villagers during the tịch điền ceremony (the first plowing ritual of the new year, performed by the king to pray for a good harvest). The cakes are long and round, resembling the teeth of the harrow he used. From this resemblance came the name răng bừa (harrow-shaped).

In the past, the cakes were wrapped in dong leaves; later, banana leaves became common. The filling is plain, made with pork only, without the wood ear mushrooms found in bánh tẻ from Phú Nhi.

In Nữ Công Thắng Lãm (1760), Hải Thượng Lãn Ông, a Vietnamese physician and scholar, recorded methods for making bánh lá (leaf rice cake). Alongside white cakes with savory fillings, he noted versions mixed with sugar syrup, green cakes colored with sabah snake grass leaves, and red cakes tinted with sappanwood leaves. He regarded these cakes as food that was both pleasing to eat and healthful.

To become a good cake, whether bánh lá or bánh tẻ, the rice flour must be worked by someone who knows the right moment.

A heavy wooden pestle strikes the stone mortar. The rice breaks down into a fine white meal. The flour is rinsed with water several times, until it is clean and smooth. Yet raw rice flour, no matter how much it is kneaded, dries easily and cracks; once steamed, the cake cannot hold its shape.

There is no other way. Water is added, the flour is set over the stove, and stirred steadily with long wooden chopsticks. The thin slurry thickens into a soft mass, clinging to each turn of the chopsticks. When the batter is cooked to about seven-tenths, the pot is taken off the heat and stirred again. Only a batch worked just right yields bánh tẻ that are supple and fragrant.

In Huế, bánh lá shifts slightly in both flavor and form. Dried shrimp replaces the familiar pork filling. The cakes were still wrapped in dong leaves, but flatter and thinner. Ms. Hoàng Thị Kim Cúc, a home economics instructor at Đồng Khánh School in Huế, described them in Nấu món ăn Huế (1943).

My mother, a Huế native, taught me how bánh lá is presented. Each cake is unwrapped one by one, then rolled into a neat spiral and arranged on the plate. In Huế, the eye eats first. 

Ms. Cúc also showed how to make bánh nậm with a shrimp-and-pork filling, wrapped in banana leaves. The batter for bánh nậm was thicker, and the cake itself was more substantial than bánh lá. Today, Huế-style bánh nậm is more commonly made with dried shrimp, wrapped in banana leaves, and shaped into a slender form.

Bánh tẻ is a cake that stops where it should. Bánh giò came later, when people began to want more.

Bánh Giò

The boat, heavy with people and goods, eased toward a small river landing. Vendors moved up from the bank, their sharp calls ringing out: “Bánh giò…” Bunches of pyramidal cakes passed quickly from seller to buyer. The horn sounded, long and drawn out. The boat pulled away. The sellers gathered back along the bank and headed home to Bến Hiệp village, Thái Bình.

Bánh giò resembles bánh tẻ, but with more batter and a fuller filling, wrapped in banana leaves into a pyramidal form. It seems to have been a cake eaten on the road, carried into the towns; no longer just enough, but enough to fill. Bến Hiệp still makes bánh giò today. The boats that once traveled the river routes are gone, but bánh giò continues to travel far.

A sign reading “Mrs. Ly – Hot bánh giò” hangs quietly on the wall of a small house in Ngô Sỹ Liên alley, Hà Nội. The woman of the house smiles and points to it. “My mother had it made as a keepsake,” she says.

The three daughters of Mrs. Ly, now nearing sixty, continue their mother’s bánh giò trade together. One ladles batter and filling onto the leaves, one wraps, one ties the bamboo strings. The pork filling, stir-fried with wood ear mushrooms, is still hot, the fat seeping into the batter. The banana leaves are layered thickly and tied tight. Customers start coming early. By ten in the morning, a few hundred cakes are gone.

Mrs. Ly, like many other bánh giò vendors in Hà Nội, sources her rice flour from the former Tổng Xốm area in Hà Đông, long known for its hàng xáo trade, where rice is sifted and milled before being sold on. The rice is finely worked, then pressed and drained several times until the flour is elastic enough. When the flour is done right, the cake is good.

Saigon, in the late 1980s. A quiet alley was startled awake by a hawker’s call: “Bánh chưng, bánh giò!” The word giò caught briefly, then broke off short. Enough to make a few lights switch on, doors open, voices call back, “Bánh giò.” The cakes, kept warm in burlap sacks, still hold a trace of heat. The filling wraps a thin layer around a small quail egg. Some are eaten at once; others saved for breakfast. The call fades, then disappears.

Bánh tẻ was made to bind people to the land. Bánh giò was made for people to leave the land and still live.

Both remain.

Notes:

– bánh lá: Hải Thượng Lãn Ông, Nữ Công Thắng Lãm (Women’s Skills Manual), Women’s Publishing House, 1971, pp. 38–39.

– bánh lá, bánh nậm: Hoàng Thị Kim Cúc, Nấu món ăn Huế (Cooking Huế Dishes), Ho Chi Minh City General Publishing House, 2004, pp. 210–211.

mlefood – Minh Lê

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