Candied Coconut, Candied Ginger

Candied ginger, candied coconut: two lives.

Candied Ginger

A small plate of candied ginger and a cup of steaming tea. Mệ Thảo sits facing the street, rain falling hard. She worries about the floods this year. The heat of ginger in her mouth draws her back. “In Huế, there’s always flooding. With weather like this, it’s time to make a little more candied ginger.” She finishes the plate and drains the tea. She feels warm again.

Mệ Thảo’s house is on Tăng Bạt Hổ Street in Huế, and her family has been making candied ginger since her great-grandfather’s time, once supplying much of the neighborhood. 

In the past, people in Huế often ate candied ginger. When the weather turned cold or the floods came, they chewed it slowly, feeling the warmth return. If they felt too full after a meal, they would take another slice. Anyone feeling nauseous or unwell would also turn to the sharp heat of ginger. 

In Huế households of the past, candied ginger often sat near the teapot. During Tết, candied ginger always sat at the center of the tray. Children reached for the sweeter candied fruits, while the elders only smiled and picked up a piece of candied ginger. They took a small bite, unhurried, holding it on the tongue as the sweetness slowly dissolved, giving way to the ginger’s heat. The spice slipped into the throat, down to the stomach, warmth spreading from within. 

Mệ Thảo’s house is stacked with sacks of ginger—small, firm roots still carrying the scent of earth. Mệ Thảo’s granddaughter uses a small spoon, carefully scraping off the skin. The ginger smells sharp. When she first began, her eyes watered constantly for days. Nearby, her mother slices the ginger into thin pieces. The ginger passes through rounds of cold water and hot water before finally resting in sugar, left to absorb.

Red coals glow, the fire kept low. In a large cast-iron pan, sugar syrup simmers gently. Yellow slices of ginger bob on the surface. When the syrup begins to thicken, Mệ Thảo lifts a pair of dark chopsticks, shaped like small oars, and stirs. Stir lightly, and the ginger catches the sugar unevenly. Stir too hard, and it breaks. 

She stirs until the sugar dries and clings to the ginger in a fine white coat. The pan is lifted from the fire; she keeps stirring for a while longer before turning it out onto a bamboo tray to cool. Mệ Thảo tastes a piece and nods.

Huế candied ginger is pale yellow, thin as butterfly wings. A small bite releases heat and fragrance. This is ginger from Tuần—where the Hữu Trạch and Tả Trạch rivers meet to form the Perfume River. The hillside soil, mixed with gravel and fed by silt from both streams, yields ginger that is small but sharp. The colder the weather, the hotter the ginger. As if the land itself knows what people need.

Today, of three stoves, only one is lit. The candied ginger is finished early. Mệ Thảo sits by the table. The cup of tea is half empty, already cold. Fewer and fewer people come to buy candied ginger. She sighs and reaches for the small bottle of eucalyptus oil set near the teapot. She cannot remember when the oil replaced the ginger.

Her granddaughter comes home, passing the table where Mệ sits. “No need to make candied ginger tomorrow, Mệ.” Mệ says nothing.

Note:

– Mệ: a Huế form of address for an elderly woman, equivalent to “grandmother”.

Candied Coconut

My older sister cheerfully takes out a bag of candied coconut. “Here, taste this. It’s better than the old kind.” 

It is soft, lightly sweet, without the heavy glaze I remember. 

“I bought it online. They make it in the Mekong Delta.” 

“But it’s not Tết yet,” I say. “It doesn’t have to be,” she says. “They sell it year-round.”

The candied coconut has come a long way.

Mid-summer in the Mekong Delta. A wide brick courtyard, shaded by trees. Bunches of green coconuts, smooth and taut, pile in one corner. Three men sit stripping husks, prying out coconut meat. Each strike of the knife lands firmly. Children crowd in, asking to help. They shave away the bits of husk still clinging to the flesh—awkward at first, then quicker. The trays soon fill with coconut meat.

Women from nearby houses with free time join in. Knives thud against cutting boards. Curved slices of coconut pile up. Their backs are soaked with sweat, their hands slicing without pause. Basins fill to the brim with fresh coconut meat. Now and then, laughter rises above the sound of knives.

In the kitchen, the firewood burns red. Syrup boils in the pans, bubbling softly. The women pause from stirring and pull their checked scarves up to wipe away sweat. One pan holds candied coconut, white and clear, in the traditional way. Other pans are light green with pandan, or pink with magenta leaves. The smell of syrup and coconut is sweet and nostalgic. 

In the Mekong Delta, candied coconut is something made at home. Coconuts grow in the garden; girls learn to stir candied coconut at their mothers’ side from a young age. Every household has it at Tết, so familiar that no one thought to sell it.

Candied coconut from the Mekong Delta has only left the kitchen in the past few years. At first, a few extra batches were made on ordinary days, then posted online. People grew used to the taste and came back. Gradually, the candy began to be made more regularly. A few households joined together to work as one—more cheerful, more efficient.

On a large table, stacks of bags and jars are set out neatly. Clear plastic, sturdy. The candied coconut is visible inside—apricot blossoms, thin and oval cat’s tongues, long strands curled into rose-like forms. There is less sugar coating than before. Some pieces are dusted with pale palm sugar, others with the clean sweetness of rock sugar.

Back at my sister’s house, her grandchild comes home from school. He asks before setting down his bag, “Is there any candied coconut left, Grandma?” 

Tết is still a long way off. The bag of candied coconut is already empty.

Note:

– magenta leaf: a leaf used in Vietnamese cooking to give food a pink hue.

mlefood – Minh Lê

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