Lunar New Year

I love celebrations and feel blessed to celebrate the New Year twice: one based on the Gregorian calendar and another based on the lunar calendar. During both festivities, I experienced the start of a new year differently. When observing January 1st, the sensation is more of a passage from past to future. While commemorating Tết (Vietnamese Lunar New Year), my experience highlights the present and traditions. Amongst the customs, nothing could portray the best Lunar New Year than the art of sharing a meal with family during this special time.

Tết is such an important holiday in Vietnam and the Vietnamese diaspora. Everything revolves around the home, from house cleaning traditions to celebrating with family around the table. It's a pleasure to practice some traditions through the art of the table. It's the time to eat mostly your favourite Vietnamese dishes and specialty foods for the event.

Charcuterie

The joy begins with Vietnamese sausages and cured meats. We typically serve chả with grilled dishes, different rice cake dishes, or even soups. I enjoy eating them as an aperitif.

Cured/Steamed
Nem chua is fermented pork with garlic and chilli. We eat it raw. And my mom makes the best.

Chả lụa is a pork-based sausage wrapped in banana leaves and most commonly served in Vietnamese cuisine.

Chả bì is like chả lụa, but with bits of pork skin added. This is one of my go-to chả.

Giò thủ, also known as tête fromagée in French, is made of pork head parts. It's soft and looks like a salami. It's certainly part of my top picks.

Chả Huế has whole black peppercorns and some garlic.

Chả bò is a variant of steamed sausage, but beef and herb-based.

Chả cá is made of fish and herbs, also steamed.

Deep-fried
Chả chiên is entirely deep-fried and isn't wrapped in the banana leaf.

Chả quế is a deep-fried sausage variant typically found in Northern Vietnam. It is seasoned with cinnamon powder, which gives it its dark colour.

Grilled
Dồi sả nướng is grilled sausages filled with ground pork and lemongrass.

Nem nướng is made with ground pork and lemongrass, then grilled on a skewer.

There's not enough room to consume all of these excellent Vietnamese sausages in one meal, but the truth is we like to spoil ourselves with a few ones like nem chua, chả bì, chả chiên, and giò thủ. We may alternate other years and enjoy some chả quế and dồi sả nướng.

Appetizers

Here's my favourite section. I love Vietnamese appetizers because they're made of delicious food served in small portions, like tapas. The dilemma is there are too many goodies, and we must make space for the main courses of that occasion. I'm narrowing the list down to the most popular and my picks for this occasion.

Chả giò is a crowd's pleaser to any gathering. As tradition, these Vietnamese spring rolls are filled with ground pork, mushrooms, carrots and vermicelli noodles, then deep-fried and served with lettuce and fish sauce. There are alternatives to the filling recipe, and the same goes for the usage of rice paper or flour dough. My primary approach always involves flour dough and whole shrimp. It makes preparing for a very yummy outcome taste easier and quicker.

Bánh cáy is spicy cassava fritters. Simple as that and tasty.

Bánh bột lọc is a small tapioca dumpling filled with shrimp and pork belly, wrapped in a banana leaf, ready to steam before serving. Its small portion makes it addictive; you can't get enough.

Deep-fried sesame shrimp toast is one of my mom's creations. I don't know what inspired her to make these, but they're the best. She spreads ground shrimp and mayonnaise on a sandwich cut into a triangle piece. She sprinkled white sesame and deep-fried it. It's so damn good!

If it was up to me, I could have a full meal with only Vietnamese appetizers. It's too good, and picking key ones for special events like this day is always tricky. That's why Tết Nguyên Đán (aka Festival of the First Day) usually lasts a few days where each day is an occasion to celebrate within the core family, extended family, and friends, and to taste different dishes every day. It's quite an ingenious concept, eh?

Soup

We can always appreciate Vietnamese soups for their rich broths and fragrant flavours, such as meal soups like phở or bún bò Huế. However, none of that is served at the table on Tết in my home. At this event, soup is meant to be a broth-based dish that people can enjoy amongst all the remaining plates.

Canh khố qua is a stuffed bitter melon soup. The name says it; it's bitter. I've come to develop my taste and like it. Regardless of its ground pork, glass noodles and black mushrooms stuffings, the bitter melon brings health benefits for the liver, blood sugar level, and immunity. This is why it's one of the main items for Lunar New Year. Otherwise, we mostly consume this soup at home.

Mains

There are main dishes that are very representative of Tết, amongst which the sticky rice cake is the one I look forward to. This dish only comes up for this occasion, while we cook other dishes yearly.

Bánh Tết is a cylinder-shaped dish of glutinous rice, mung beans, and pork wrapped in banana leaves. It's traditional for the Lunar New Year, hence its name, "Festival cake"." There are two common ways to cook this sticky rice cake: steaming or pan-frying. My family and I prefer to pan-fry it all the time. It gives the rice cake a crispy texture while soft and glutinous.

Thịt kho trứng nước dừa is a dish of caramelized pork belly, boiled eggs, and coconut. It's an excellent dish with many flavours and an easy recipe.

Gà luộc is also a simple yet tasty dish that consists of poaching the chicken. It's then cut into slices for everyone to pick with their chopsticks and dip in ginger-chilli fish sauce.

Side dishes

During this celebration, side dishes are as numerous as the appetizers and main dishes. It's a true feast. I'd like to highlight one side dish that we're preparing this year: xôi gấc.

Xôi gấc is red sticky rice. There are several varieties of Vietnamese sticky rice, each coloured differently depending on its ingredient or extract. I bet you can guess why xôi gấc (red colour) is for the Lunar New Year, right?

Fruits

Customs elevate meaningful practices, including a tray of fruits. There are five of them, each representing the basic elements of life. Each fruit has a colour that the selected fruit manifests. My family and I are less traditional and don't follow the exact customs, but I find the different Vietnamese regions' selection of fruits interesting to share.

Northern Vietnam chooses banana, pomelo, peach, mandarin, and persimmon.

Central Vietnam goes with what best represents gratitude to the ancestors, and this varies from one family to another. The common fruits are dragon fruit, watermelon, pineapple, and orange.

Southern Vietnam has papaya, coconut, fig, mango, and soursop.

Tết is a lot. There's a lot of red and gold in the decorations and those famous red envelopes (lì xì). There are many zodiac animals to keep track of every year to know which is the highlight. There's a lot of food on the table and in the Vietnamese culture. There's also a lot of emotions during this time of the year. Lunar New Year holds this cultural importance for me to appreciate and celebrate with my family.