The Flat Steamed Rice Cake --Bánh Nậm

The flat steamed rice cake is wrapped in a banana leaf and is part of the Hue alongside with clear cake, banh beo. If you have a chance to visit Hue, Vietnam, you will enjoy this cake. The main ingredients for making Banh Nam are rice flour, minced pork, and prawn. When enjoying it, you should eat it with fish sauce and especially keep covering the leaves and spread it on the dish, so the smell of fragrant banana leaves will make the cake more delicious and addictive while eating.

If you are curious about how to make Banh Nam, let’s see the simple way to make Banh Nam.

 Ingredients:

3/4 cup rice flour

1/4 cup sweet rice flour

1/2 cup potato starch

2 cups water

The filling:

1/2 lb. shrimp, shelled. 

2 oz. ground turkey or pork

1 garlic clove, minced

1 shallot, minced

1 tsp annatto oil

Seasoning:

Salt, pepper, fish sauce

Banana leaves for wrapping the cake

Directions:

Combine the flour and water in a saucepan. Add a 1/4 tsp salt and bring to a boil on medium-low heat. Use a spatula to stir the flour mixture until your hand feels heavy, and the flour mixture turns a white shade. Turn the heat off and continue to stir the flour mixture until it looks shiny and smooth.

To make a filling:

Clean the shrimp well and marinate with salt and pepper. In a sauté pan, add a little oil and fry the shrimp until turning pink. Remove from heat.

Put shrimp in a food processor and turn the machine on to finely chop the shrimp.

In the same sauté pan, add oil, garlic and shallot. Stir and cook until fragrant. Add ground turkey and cook until turkey is no longer pink. Add shrimp and cook for 10 minutes. Seasoning with salt, pepper, sugar, mushroom seasoning annatto oil and fish sauce to your liking

To assemble the cake:

Wash and clean the banana leaves well and cut into 7x7 inches. This recipe will end up with 12 cakes. You can cook the banana leaves in the oven for 1 to 2 minutes for the banana leaves to slightly flatten and soften.

Place the banana leaves in front of you horizontally, with the back of the leaves up. Add a little oil so that the cake dough does not stick to the leaves. Take one tablespoon of dough and spread thin on the leaves. Remember, the smaller and thinner the cake, the better the cake. Stir one tablespoon of the filling all over the dough. Pull two slices of the leaf in front of you to cover the cake slightly and fold the leaves from two sides of the cake . The cake has a straight shape.

Tear the banana leaves to make a string and tie two cakes together.

To steam the cake:

Bring a steamer to boil. Place the cake into the steamer in layers of three in the style of tower, horizontal layer, vertical layer, and then horizontal so that the cake is exposed to the most heat, helping the cake to cook faster and evenly. It takes about 17 to 20 minutes.

The cake serves well with fish dipping sauce.

The ratio of ingredients to make this dipping sauce is:

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp fish sauce

4 tbsp water

Some garlic, chili and oil