Sandwich Shop Goodies 2 – Bánh bía (Suzhou mooncake)
In the middle of bright yellow paste lies a crimson orange ball. The egg yolk. Salted and dried up to the size of a cherry. Or should we say it is the moon, at its fullest on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month each year.
Roughly 650 years ago, it was a bright moon for the Ming Dynasty, but not so bright for the Yuan Dynasty. The Mongolian rulers’ defeats started from a full moon day of August 1368, when the capital Dadu (present day Beijing) was captured by Zhu Yuanzhang and his Han Chinese insurrection armies. Zhu Yuanzhang then rose to the throne as the first king of the Ming dynasty, and he made sure that the Mid-Autumn Festival, which coincides with the end of the harvesting season, was celebrated throughout the country. As the story goes, such revolutionary victory could not have happened without them little mooncakes.
They were secret means of distributing messages among the resisting forces. Words were printed on each mooncake as a simple puzzle. Each mooncake in a package of four was then cut into four pieces, and the sixteen parts were arranged in a particular way to form the entire message. Afterwards, the cakes were eaten and the trace erased. I don’t know what they would do if a hungry kid got hold of a piece.
Although people aren’t sharing secret information anymore (as if anything could remain secretive under the communist watch), the mooncakes still have imprinted words on top and still come in packages of four.
The most popular kind of mooncakes have elaborate designs with golden brown crust, originating from Guangzhou. Other kinds more or less are spin-off versions of the Suzhou-style mooncake with a simple round shape, no design, flaky skin which can be peeled off by the layers, and no need for a mooncake mold.
When the Chinese immigrants settled in the Mekong delta, they introduced the round, flaky mooncakes, referred to as “pía” in Teochew dialect, to the southern Vietnamese, who quickly adopted the recipe and the trade to make it a regional specialty, the Soc Trang‘s pía. “Pía” means “bánh”, things made with flour, but the innocuous southerners took it as a name, and started calling the flaky mooncakes bánh bía. Unlike the Cantonese mooncake that is only eaten during the Chinese Mid-Autumn festival, bánh bía gets served year round, bought as gifts from travelers to Soc Trang, featured in the Khmers’ moon festival Oc Om Boc in October, and individually packaged for sale at $1.50 a piece in Vietnamese sandwich shops in San Jose.
The recipe, too, has slightly departed from its Suzhou originals. If the Chinese counterparts often contain lotus seed, red bean paste, nuts, and sometimes pork for savoriness, the Soc Trang version stays homogeneous with either mung bean paste or taro paste, which can be flavored with lard and durian to the likings. But whatever goes inside, the doughy, flaky skin of bánh bía is the unchangeable feature, distinguishing it from all other pastries.
Each pía needs two kinds of dough: the “skin dough” and the inner layer dough. The skin dough on the outside, made of flour, water and canola oil, gains its elasticity and smoothness from a little kneading, while the inner layer dough has only flour and oil and is left unkneaded to keep it thick and chewy. Later the two kinds are flattened together to make the crust, but with the inner layer dough always contained inside the skin dough, otherwise the banh bia would have a coarse surface. After baked half way, the pía is taken out and glossed some egg wash over its upper side. When fully baked, they shine a ripe yellow invitation, ready to be stamped “longevity”, “harmony”, or some other character in red.
The whole process, from making the filling paste to baking, can take up a whole day. Buying it at the store takes two minutes. If you don’t count driving time.
Address: Huong Lan Sandwiches #4
41 Serra Way, Suite 108 (across the parking lot from New East Lake Seafood)
Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 942-7777
Monnday – Sunday: 6am – 9pm
Click here for a recipe of bánh bía (Vietnamese-adpated Suzhou mooncake)
Previously on Sandwich Shop Goodies: bánh gai (thorn leaf sticky rice bun)
Next on Sandwich Shop Goodies: bánh ú tro (Vietnamese-adapted jianshui zong)
Horse Gelatin Trick
1Nice post. I learn something more challenging on different blogs everyday. It will always be stimulating to read content from other writers and practice a little something from their store. I’d prefer to use some with the content on my blog whether you don’t mind. Natually I’ll give you a link on your web blog. Thanks for sharing.
2Thank you for another informative website. The place else may just I get that type of information written in such a perfect manner? I have a venture that I’m simply now running on, and I’ve been on the look out for such information.
3hello!,I like your writing very much! share we communicate more about your post on AOL? I require an expert on this area to solve my problem. Maybe that’s you! Looking forward to see you.
4What’s Happening i am new to this, I stumbled upon this I’ve found It absolutely helpful and it has helped me out loads. I hope to contribute & assist other users like its helped me. Great job.
5Thanks for every other great post. The place else could anyone get that kind of info in such an ideal manner of writing? I have a presentation subsequent week, and I am at the search for such information.
6I think other website proprietors should take this website as an model, very clean and great user genial style and design, as well as the content. You’re an expert in this topic!
7Real clean internet site, regards for this post.
8Thanks so much for giving everyone remarkably special chance to check tips from here. It is always so terrific and also full of a great time for me personally and my office colleagues to search your website particularly three times every week to see the latest stuff you have got. And lastly, I am just usually contented with all the astounding tactics you serve. Selected 1 areas on this page are truly the most effective I’ve had.
9This actually answered my downside, thank you!
10Hey very nice site!! Man .. Excellent .. Amazing .. I will bookmark your blog and take the feeds also…I am happy to find so many useful information here in the post, we need work out more techniques in this regard, thanks for sharing. . . . . .
11Honey trick for men
12Hello just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The text in your post seem to be running off the screen in Opera. I’m not sure if this is a format issue or something to do with internet browser compatibility but I figured I’d post to let you know. The design and style look great though! Hope you get the issue solved soon. Many thanks
13I dugg some of you post as I thought they were very useful invaluable
14Pretty! This was a really wonderful post. Thank you for your provided information.
15certainly like your web site but you need to take a look at the spelling on several of your posts. Several of them are rife with spelling problems and I find it very bothersome to tell the truth then again I will surely come back again.
16Today, I went to the beachfront with my kids. I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She put the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is totally off topic but I had to tell someone!
17I’ve read a few good stuff here. Definitely worth bookmarking for revisiting. I wonder how much attempt you set to make this sort of great informative web site.
18Hey, you used to write wonderful, but the last several posts have been kinda boring… I miss your tremendous writings. Past several posts are just a little out of track! come on!
19Good write-up, I am normal visitor of one’s web site, maintain up the nice operate, and It is going to be a regular visitor for a long time.
20Have you ever considered creating an e-book or guest authoring on other websites? I have a blog based on the same ideas you discuss and would love to have you share some stories/information. I know my audience would appreciate your work. If you are even remotely interested, feel free to send me an email.
21Thanks, I have recently been looking for info approximately this subject for a long time and yours is the greatest I’ve came upon so far. But, what in regards to the conclusion? Are you sure concerning the supply?
22I would like to show my thanks to you for bailing me out of this situation. Just after searching throughout the the net and coming across advice which were not pleasant, I thought my life was done. Being alive minus the approaches to the issues you’ve resolved through your main website is a serious case, as well as the kind that could have in a negative way affected my career if I had not encountered your web page. Your main know-how and kindness in handling every item was valuable. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t encountered such a stuff like this. I am able to at this time look ahead to my future. Thanks a lot very much for the high quality and results-oriented help. I won’t be reluctant to endorse your web sites to anyone who should receive guide about this subject.
23I have been absent for some time, but now I remember why I used to love this site. Thanks, I’ll try and check back more often. How frequently you update your web site?
24