Tet Trung Thu

Today the Mid Autumn festival will be celebrated in Vietnam. This is a celebration of the Harvest Moon, said to be the biggest and brightest full moon of the year. Traditionally, it’s also an event for children. They make lanterns to resemble the moon and carry them along the streets on this night. They enjoy dragon dance shows and are given toys.

Of course, there is a culinary element to this celebration, which these days is what the festival is most associated with. For weeks before Tet Trung Thu, many bakeries are given over to the sale of only one product, Mooncakes.

Mooncakes are like small pies, eaten cold, and with an array of fillings mixed together; bean paste, lotus and watermelon seeds, preserved chinese sausage, a jam made from squash, roast pork or chicken, but most importantly salted duck eggs. The cooked yellow yoke being the symbol of this lunar celebration.

Mooncakes vary greatly in quality and there have been a number of companies exposed as selling substandard products in the past few weeks. Most people buy from a handful of trusted bakeries that set up temporary outlets all over the city at this time. I am told that to be guaranteed of good quality, you should spend 50,000 dong (about $2.50). However these days, as they have evolved from a gift for children and family into a way of maintaining business relationships and clients, mooncakes with exotic ingredients can cost up to 2 million dong ($100). Now they are a way of expressing gratitude to certain people in your life, like your landlord or the local police, as one article I read suggested.

These cakes are definitely something that should be tried, because they don’t taste like anything else. With the combination of fillings they are often quite dense and rich in flavour. In this way, one that I tried this year reminded me of and English fruit cake, but with more texture and a strong pork flavour.

So yes, you should try them but they are a bit of an acquired taste.