Happy New Year!

Eddie Lin writes the blog DeepEndDining.com and he is the author of Extreme Cuisine. He celebrated Tet, or Vietnamese new year with Ann Le, author of The Little Saigon Cookbook.

For Tet, Ann served a braised pork belly and egg dish, slow cooked in a ceramic pot. She also made a caramelized shrimp dish. A traditional Tet dish is banh chung, or a sticky rice cake with meat, wrapped in a banana leaf. In the Vietnamese tradition, all the food is prepared ahead of time so that no work needs to be done during celebration. As in the Chinese tradition, no scissors or knives are to be used.