It's just sweet soup cooked with cassava root and sugar. However, a hot bowl of cassava sweet soup suddenly becomes a snack on a cold winter day, and a bit of dry golden sunshine makes you feel wistful.
People often nostalgicly remember difficult times. That difficult time has passed for several decades, but sometimes, when startled, they still think it was just yesterday. Cassava and sweet potatoes have become witnesses of that time, with pieces of cassava and rice mixed together.
The reason for eating mixed food like that is because you cannot eat cassava without filling your stomach. The resin of cassava is very toxic, if you do not soak it in water to remove all resin, then when you eat it, if it is mild, you will get drunk like drunk, if it is severe, you will be poisoned. Therefore, just take cassava and cut it into small pieces and bring them with rice to reduce the amount of rice.
Opening the lid of the pot, seeing more rice than cassava makes me happy, and more cassava than rice makes me laugh as if crying. And the boiled cassava trays also clung to student memories, with white, mushy pieces of cassava, cut short into sections, lying next to boiled cassava vines and apples.
During the subsidy period, cassava was grown extensively in the midlands to make filling food and animal feed. Now, people also rarely grow cassava and there is no longer the scene of having to eat filling food. But the scene of the whole family gathering around the cassava-filled rice pot or sitting behind the cassava by the rice husk stove will never be forgotten.
A time of sweet potatoes and cassava" is like that. Perhaps, the image of rice grains sticking to a piece of cassava chair has inspired the fragrant cassava sticky rice later. In addition to cassava sticky rice, people also came up with hot cassava sweet soup to eat when the weather turns cold, to become a sweet soup of winter.
This winter is deeply cold and long. Therefore, people often recall the winters of winter-spring clothes huddled by the fireplace. And then, they crave a bowl of hot, thick, smoky cassava sweet soup as if to dispel the cold in their hands and in their memories.
Hanoians often cook sweet soup with beans, each type of bean becomes a different type of sweet soup. This diversity shows the ingenuity of Hanoians, but cassava sweet soup reveals creativity, knowing how to use available ingredients to cook into a delicious dish.
Cassava sweet soup only has one type and does not change like bean sweet soup. But that is enough, because Cassava sweet soup is a creation of a time, appearing in a season. But anyway, Cassava sweet soup has become a highlight for winter in Hanoi, with a hastily fastened sweater and the north wind running gently on the roof.
The time of cassava sweet soup was winter because only when it was cold did people cook this hot sweet soup. Cooking cassava sweet soup is very easy, like cooking rice. Choosing a piece of yellow cassava, a type of cassava that is not as big as a bamboo stem but only wrinkled like a forearm, with a pale yellow color, is a cassava that is both chewy and fragrant, not too mushy.
Cassava is washed to remove all dirt, then peeled and soaked in a basin of water for 2-3 hours to remove toxic resin. After soaking, put it in a pot, add a little salt and pour water to cover the cassava, then boil until the cassava is just cooked, then take it out and cut the cassava into small pieces.
Pour water into the pot with apricot sugar, stir well and cook until boiling, then add shredded ginger. Next step, put all the cassava in the pot, stir well and cook until boiling again. Finally, put cassava flour in a bowl, add water and stir well until dissolved, then pour slowly little by little into the sweet soup pot, while pouring and stirring until the sweet soup has the desired consistency.
A bowl of sweet cassava sweet soup is thick but not too thick, with a pale yellow or light brown color depending on the type of sugar used for cooking. When the cassava sweet soup is served, the taste of cassava is smelly, the spicy taste of ginger, and the cool sweetness of apricot blossom sugar. When eating, the tongue feels the chewy and buttery texture of cassava mixed with smooth and lightly sweet cassava flour.
In the cold of winter afternoon, it is happiness to find a small cassava sweet soup shop, located on a small street or in a small alley. In that space, find yourself a seat on a small chair to sit and wait. Around are so many ages, old, young, middle-aged.
Winter cassava sweet soup is a privilege that is not unique to anyone. High school girl, office worker, retired old woman, beer shop parking attendant, couple carrying young children... all sat patiently talking casually and waiting for the bowl of cassava sweet soup to be served.
Outside is winter, the colder it gets in the afternoon, even though this is a temporary cold break before a longer and colder cold spell is about to come. But with such cold, people will remember cassava sweet soup, will crave cassava sweet soup. When a small bowl of cassava sweet soup is given, everyone's eyes suddenly light up.
It's just cassava, tapioca starch, brown sugar and ginger, but all make up a cassava sweet soup that is very suitable for winter afternoons. A little sweetness, a little warmth, a little chewy starch is enough to warm people's hearts in the cold. Some people eat a bowl not enough, and ask for 2-3, but just eat freely, because cassava sweet soup is very cheap, only 7,000 VND, 10,000 VND per bowl.
It's interesting, when it has escaped from cassava chair rice to cassava sweet soup, cassava doesn't make much of it. The fragrant and sticky piece of cassava is still associated with the simplest life experiences. Eating cassava chair rice is only for fullness, not for deliciousness. Eating cassava sweet soup is only for deliciousness, not for too deliciousness.
Those are dishes of nostalgia for a time of hardship. In them are memories of individuals, of family, of community, so they will cling to our minds, will reappear vividly as if they just experienced it. The same flavor as the bowl of cassava sweet soup suddenly appears this late winter afternoon.
