Got a very short message from oversea friend : “Hey, help me to look for and buy Quang Nam specialties – Thai Binh cake – as a TET season gift to take away!”. Put a lot of thinking but still not understanding why Thai Binh[※1] cake is Quang Nam[※2] specialty? Found out the address at Tam Ky market and headed up to Truong Xuan ward, finally I got it…”Ohh, it’s a brand name!” . The shop was simply arranged like a small shop. Shop owner did not keep introducing about products neither took care of “God” as usual. But because of that not-hurry, elegant way of the 92-year-old old man made his customers can not help but linger for a while, make a sip of tea, bite a piece of cake and listen to his story: “I came from Nam Dinh[※3] , moved to Quang[※4] when I was just a 22 year old and single. Only know how to making cake. I didn’t even have a name. Everyone just called me “the guy, the guy”. Later when I went to vocational training, I learned the words, the teacher gave me the name I have now : Nguyen Huu Tay”… Then Tay old man explained:” The brand name of Thai Binh is derived from the wish of people of my time. War, disorder, there is a profession to make living by, and always hope there is peace for everyone.
According to my age, I have nearly 70 years of cake making. I do not bring cake from the North but make it from sticky rice, beans, flour, flavor … of this land so it is definitely Quang Nam specialty. ” Mr. Nguyen Huu Tay moved to Quang to make a living during the nine years of French resistance. But at that time, it was difficult to make money by making cake, even as a hire baker. So he asked his friend to go to learn how to make tea. Mr. Tay and his friend in Quang planned to convince a Chinese teach them how to make tea. Then he followed them to Binh Dinh[※5] , Phu Yen[※6], returned to Nam Tra My[※7], went up to Hien, Giang [※8] and down to Hoi An …
He also has over 20 years of making tea for Mai Hac, a famous tea brand in Quang Nam. The fate brought him to cake making is when Mr. Tay married and “teach my wife how to do”. Despite of saying that, Mr. Tay also check carefully each recipe, materials, considering the proportion of powders and beans … tasted the taste of each type of cake and created new products. For example, green bean cake must have the aroma of green beans, especially baked one[※9] must has the smell of smooth flour of green bean, fragrant like the smell of baking cake; wet one[※10] must has the sweet taste … Coconut cakes also have two types: dry type[※11] and limber type[※12], they must also have different tastes.
It is important that all cakes are made from the best quality ingredients. Making a traditional handicraft cake, everyone has their own secret, but the basic thing to make prestige is quality of the main material of the product. Perhaps because of that, having handed down through 3 generations, nearly 70 years as Mr. Nguyen Huu Tay said, Thai Binh cake in Tam Ky still retains the “specialty” flavor. The mind keeps the craft. In recent years, bakery production facilities have sprung up like mushrooms. Meanwhile, large confectionery manufacturers also market too many high quality cakes. To make traditional handmade cakes recognized in the middle of that, people who follow traditional craft have to base on the root, the mind of the craft. The son of Tay old man, Mr. Nguyen Van Thuong, followed that philosophy from his parents to keep the craft. Behind the small shop is a bakery. Although still keeps household business model for many generations, Thai Binh bakery is very orderly from the ingredient input to the output of finished products. He managed them all. How to bake bread is moderate, fragrant cake must be fragrant, fine flour cakes must be smooth … And of course, the quality of cakes associated with food safety and hygiene. Still with the same way as his father, Mr. Thuong “examined” each of the workers’ baking techniques. Because it is a manual cake, the absolute regulation of the workshop is “clean hands”, the generation-handing craft has many of hardness but it is also the source from which we have to make. “There must be a mind for craft, for the customers, to be able to keep the craft, to live with the craft. With people like me living with the traditional craft, the respect for tradition must be the most basic thing ”- Mr. Thuong shared. Perhaps so, Thai Binh cake in Tam Ky still retains certain customers in Vietnam and abroad. “For products with a shelf life of not more than 10 days from the date of packaging,not using additives is a weakness in product consumption, but if using additives to prolong the shelf life, it will lose the characteristic of the product. On the other hand, it is impossible to control additives in the market so our family’s cakes are absolutely not using additives ”- Mr. Thuong added. Now, understand why there are hundreds of different kinds of cakes from domestic to foreign goods that are luxurious and expensive to make gifts every TET season, but friend who live abroad insist to ask for a taste of countryside. Limber cakes, baked cakes, rice cakes, and gingerbread with traditional flavor cannot be replaced every coming TET season[※13]. Just like Mr. Tay, who is 92 years old, he always keeps a happy smile like keeping the essence, aromatic herbs in the tea flavor, the taste of bread handed to his descendants.
Tam An
[※1] A province name in the north of Viet Nam
[※2] A province name in the central of Viet Nam, next to Da Nang city
[※3] A province name in the north of Viet Nam
[※4] A short name of Quang Nam
[※5] Province names which locate in the south of Quang Nam
[※6] Province names which locate in the south of Quang Nam
[※7] Place names of the high land in Quang Nam
[※8] Place names of the high land in Quang Nam
[※9] Green bean biscuit. Go to product page.
[※10] Green bean cake. Go to product page.
[※11] Coconut cracker. Go to product page.
[※12] Coconut limber cake. Go to product page.
[※13] Lunar new year festival
