OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the stories behind the foods of the Pacific Northwest with videos, articles and this weekly newsletter. Every week, Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian, food writer and ecologist, highlights different aspects of the region’s food ecosystem. This week she offers a recipe for the Vietnamese festival dish, bánh chưng — a cake of sticky rice filled with pork and mung beans.

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Lunar New Year (aka Chinese New Year, Spring Festival or more accurately, Lunisolar New Year) started this week, observed in East Asian countries based on the Chinese or lunar calendar.

The beginning of the celebrations falls on the first new moon of the new calendar year. Even if the holiday isn’t part of your culture, you can still enjoy Lunar New Year foods and reflect on its sentiments — that spring is right around the corner, and that your family and deities deserve a little treat. In Vietnam, where the festival is known as Tết, nine traditional dishes are prepared as offerings not just to one’s ancestors, but also to Ông Táo, the kitchen god. Other dishes, like thịt kho tàu (caramelized pork belly and eggs simmered in a rich coconut juice broth), fresh fruits and candies are made for the living celebrants.

This week’s recipe, bánh chưng, is a labor of love prepared for the living and dead alike. What does this dish symbolize in Vietnamese culture? Read on to find out!

New avian flu enters the chat

The outbreak of novel, highly pathogenic avian flu strain H5N9 was detected on a California duck farm — the first confirmed case in the United States — the World Organization for Animal Health reported on Monday.

New warehouse to serve Central Oregon’s hungry

The community not-for-profit NeighborImpact has a shiny new 10,000-square-foot Redmond warehouse for storing much more food for its 60 partner agencies distributing food in Central Oregon. Read about it in the Bend Bulletin.

Tariff price hikes hit the grocery bill

On Monday, Eater reported about the new administration’s tariffs and their impacts on foods (mainly tropical produce) that America imports from Canada and Mexico. Sure, I could make another tired joke about Millennials (“avocado toast may soon be out of everyone’s price range!”) or point out that this type of tax disproportionately impacts the poor, but hopefully the stall on Colombian tariffs means it won’t come for our morning cuppa, as OPB’s Crystal Ligori explores the potential impacts to the Northwest’s coffee industry. (Either way, there’s never been a better time to eat local!) Watch this episode of “Superabundant. to see how the Pacific Northwest has influenced coffee culture.

A lot to sip on this week

Speaking of coffee, beverages are getting a lot of press lately — first, a new report that drinking more than four cups of caffeinated coffee or tea per day is associated with a decreased risk of neck and head cancers. Another report suggests that sparkling water can help weight loss better than still water (though the effect is minimal). And if you prefer your carbonated beverages on the sweeter side, a new North Portland soda shop, Fizz and Sip has opened to tap into the recent buzz around syrupy drinks (though I’m not sure 1940s drugstore soda fountain drinks or the Italian sodas popular in the 1990s are really a new trend just because they’re called “dirty” now).

In not-great beverage news, Oregon saw its first wine sales drop in a decade, which industry analysts attribute to shifting preferences (in some cases, for NA beverages and cannabis, since alcohol is now officially on the U.S. surgeon general’s “bad for you” list). Watch the chardonnay episode of “Superabundant” for more on Oregon’s ever-evolving wine scene.

I spent last weekend with three gal pals at Rockaway Beach, strolling, sipping and noshing our way to inner peace. We made most of the meals in our rental’s kitchen: Sarah made a spicy cream cheese salmon spread to eat with pita crackers, Meg made a Japanese curry pot pie with a puff pastry topping, I used the other puff pastry sheet to cobble together a cheese Danish with homemade cornelian cherry jam, and Claudia capped the weekend off with raclettes (she even brought individual raclette pans with little tea light burners!) to enjoy with cornichons, potatoes and a Tabor Bread whole wheat baguette. 🧀

We did venture out once for happy hour cocktails and snacks, stopping into the Salmonberry, a new woodfired pizza joint in Wheeler that has superlative mozzarella sticks. (There wasn’t any kelp on the Salmonberry’s pizza but if the owners are reading, I’ve got two words for you: Dulse margherita.) The folks behind Winter Waters (a collective of marine scientists, educators and culinary professionals working to promote Oregon’s seaweed industry) is hosting a variety of cool culinary events and screenings at the coast over the next month, including one at the Salmonberry later this month, and a screening of the PBS docuseries “Hope in the Water” at the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce. 🌊

Between all the seafood and cocktails we enjoyed over the weekend, we cruised through a lot of citrus (mandarinquats were the highlight). If you’re burning through citrus too, you’ll have a chance to stock up at the Citrus Fest hosted by Rubinette Produce on Feb. 8 (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) at Providore Fine Foods. 🍊

It’s truffle season in the Valley, and that means Oregon Truffle Fest tickets are now available — the Joriad (truffle dog competition) sells out fast, so act quickly.

Watch the truffles episode of “Superabundant” for more on truffle culture in the Northwest.

Lately, in the “Superabundant” kitchen

✨ I picked up a Dungeness crab at The Spot in Garibaldi from a nice fisherman who addressed me as “m’lady,” and even though I cut my thumb open while shelling it (classic Heather!) I was able to turn it into a gorgeous meal by tossing the meat in warm melted butter with Meyer lemon zest and folding it into buckwheat crèpes. Stay tuned for the recipe next week.

✨ I enjoyed so many libations over the weekend (don’t tell the surgeon general!) but my favorite was the pitcher of bloody marys. I didn’t have my usual spices with me, but I got pretty close to a perfect mix by combining spicy tomato juice, a splash of dill pickle juice (plus minced-up garlic and spices from the bottom of the jar), hot sauce and lemon juice. Since I hadn’t packed any picks to hold the pickles and olives, I whittled skewers out of twigs from a Sitka willow. Maybe this is why I didn’t suffer any hangovers? Willow bark contains salicylic acid (named for the willow genus, Salix), which is what aspirin is made of.

✨ I don’t know why I always sleep on French bread pizza, but one night I spread a half-loaf of leftover garlic bread with marinara sauce, parmesan and salami, and I broiled it in the toaster oven until the salami got a little crispy on the edges. It’d have obviously been better with shredded mozz and the tiny cubes of pepperoni, but overall, it was a win. Your move, Stouffer’s!

Recipe: Bánh chưng (Vietnamese sticky rice cakes with pork belly and mung beans)

Imagine making a dish so delicious that the king hands you the throne. That’s the origin story behind bánh chưng, in a nutshell (or in a dong leaf, rather). During the end of Vietnam’s sixth Hùng dynasty, an aging Hùng Vương VI needed to name a successor to his throne, and instead of just going with the eldest son (as was the standard at the time), the aging king decided to make things interesting and posed a challenge to his 18 sons: Prepare a culinary offering for Tết that perfectly epitomizes ancestral reverence; essentially, make a dish fit for the kings’ lineage. While most of the sons commanded their cooks to make the most refined delicacies from the most luxurious ingredients of both land and sea, the youngest son and end of the hereditary line Lang Liêu didn’t have the same funds of his many, many older brothers. Feeling the trickle-down economics of it all, he had to be a bit more resourceful. Like poorer folks the world over, Lang Liêu had ready access to three ingredients: Pork, beans and rice.

In what must have felt like some combination of deferral and defiance, the dish offered by the youngest son was as humble as can be. Pork belly was seasoned simply with fish sauce and black pepper, smeared with mashed mung beans and enshrouded in sticky rice, then wrapped tightly with dong (a close relative of bananas) leaves into neat little parcels before steaming.

A square package (bánh chưng) represented the earth, and a round one (bánh giầy) represented the heavens, while the humbleness of the ingredients themselves was a perfect tribute to the Viet people.As you might have guessed, the youngest son’s offerings were the ones that most swayed the king’s heart, and Lang Liêu was handed the throne. Bánh chưng remains a standard Tết dish thousands of years later. OPB culture producer Steven Tonthat admits that he just buys bánh tét (the catchall term for all types of stuffed glutinous cakes wrapped and steamed in a banana leaf) rather than make it from scratch, and who could blame him?

It is a process, y’all. That might be why the only local recipe I could find came from James Beard Award winner Vincent Nguyen, chef/owner of Berlu, which closed last fall (but promises a new chapter). I’ve edited Nguyen’s very concise/cheffy recipe slightly to be more accessible to home cooks, but I think the soul of the dish remains. Makes 4 bánh chưng

Please read these important notes:

1. This dish takes planning — allow extra time for steps that require overnight soaking and slow-cooking.
2. You will also need a few pieces of specialized equipment for this recipe: a sous vide/immersion circulator, crock pot or Instant Pot; string for tying the wrapped cakes; and a large, multi-tier steamer for cooking.
3. Some Asian brands of split mung beans contain yellow food coloring; either rinse the beans well before cooking or buy a brand that doesn’t have additives.
4. Look for banana leaves in the freezer aisle of Asian grocery stores like 99 Ranch or HMART.
5. Vincent’s instructions are for the cylindrical shape bánh tét; I’ve included a link to food blogger Vicky Pham’s page if you’d like to try the square shape. If you want to make the square bánh chưng, you’ll need a square pan or mold for forming the cakes.
6. If you want to make your own pickles (a must-have accompaniment), this recipe is good.

Ingredients

Sticky rice

• 4 cups glutinous/sweet rice (I used a Korean short grain sweet rice)
• 2 teaspoons fine sea salt

Pork belly

• 1 pound pork belly (the shape and size of a pack of bacon)
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon palm sugar or brown sugar
• ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
• ½ teaspoon chicken bouillon or MSG
• 1 teaspoon fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons minced shallots

Mung beans

• 2 cups split yellow mung beans
• ½ cup water
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cloves garlic
• ½ teaspoon black pepper
• 1 ½ teaspoons grapeseed oil (or other neutral oil)
• 1 pack (10-12) frozen banana leaves, thawed Vietnamese-style pickles (shallots, green papaya, daikon, carrots, etc.) for serving

Instructions

1. Place the rice in a bowl or pot and add enough water to cover it by 2-3 inches. Soak the rice overnight, then drain and mix in the salt. Set aside.
2. Rinse the pork belly and pat it dry. Combine the pepper, sugar, salt, MSG, fish sauce and shallots and rub the pork with the mixture. Vacuum seal the pork and any remaining seasoning mix (or place it in a zip-top bag with the air pressed out), then cook sous vide at 165o for 10 hours or overnight. If you don’t have an immersion circulator, place the bagged pork in a crock pot, slow cooker or Instant Pot, cover it with 2-3 inches of water, and cook overnight on the lowest setting (or “sous vide” setting on the Instant Pot).
3. Cover the mung beans with 2-3 inches of water and soak for at least 4 hours (or overnight). Drain and rinse, then add the soaked mung beans to a medium-sized pot with the water and seasonings. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover, and cook for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat (but don’t remove the lid!), and allow the mung beans to steam for another 10-15 minutes. Mash or puree until smooth.
4. After the rice has soaked and the cooked pork and mung beans have cooled enough to touch, slice the pork belly into 2 x 8-inch strips. If you’re making square bánh chưng, cut the pork belly into four pieces, then slice each piece about ⅛-inch thick.
5. To make cylindrical bánh tét: Remove the midribs (heavy central veins) from the banana leaves, cut the leaves into 11 x 11-inch squares, then rinse in hot water and pat dry. Place a leaf shiny side down, with the lines running vertically, then add another leaf layer on top for extra strength. Brush the top leaf with a little oil, then add ½ cup of soaked sticky rice to the center — it should be about ¼-inch thick, leaving an inch or two of room on the left and right edges of the leaf, and 3 inches on the top and bottom edges.
6. Add a ¼-inch layer of mung beans to the rice, leaving an inch of rice uncovered on the top and bottom edges (the mung beans should be a yellow horizontal stripe on the rice). Lay ¼ of the pork belly strips on top of the mung bean layer, then add another layer of mung beans and finally ½ cup of soaked rice.
7. Roll the banana leaf with the filling into a tube like a burrito, tying it with string ⅓ of the way from either end to hold it in a tube shape. Fold the ends in to close the tube, then tie the tube lengthwise to hold the ends shut. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and steam for an hour, rotating halfway through cooking (and adding more water as needed to the steamer to ensure 2 inches of water are always in the bottom).
8. To make square bánh chưng: Follow Vicky Pham’s step-by-step instructions for folding the leaves. It’s tricky, but I was able to make it work OK even though this was my first time making bánh chưng! Wrap the stuffed banana leaf packets in plastic wrap to ensure they don’t fall apart, then steam for an hour or two.
9. When they’re cool enough to handle, unwrap the bánh tét or bánh chưng and either serve, or slice the bánh tét into inch-thick disks and lightly pan-fry on both sides in a little oil. Alternatively, sear the bánh chưng whole, then slice into quarters diagonally. Serve with pickles.

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Editor’s note: In a previous version of this newsletter, we erroneously said the Salmonberry is owned by members of the Winter Waters team. OPB regrets the error.