Intermedio

Bánh Căn

Name: Bánh Căn
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Ingredients: 300 g Rice flour; 80 g Cooked rice, blended smooth with water; 700 ml Water; 1/2 tsp Ground turmeric; 1 tsp Salt; 20 Quail eggs; 200 g Small prawns, peeled; 5 tbsp Spring onion oil — chopped spring onion warmed in oil; 4 tbsp Fish sauce; 3 tbsp Lime juice; 3 tbsp Sugar; 4 / 4 Garlic and bird's eye chilli, pounded; 1 Green mango, shredded; 200 g Herbs and lettuce

Little rice batter cakes cooked in a clay pan of round wells, each one topped with a quail egg or a prawn and lifted out crisp underneath, soft on top, two at a time.

Fuente

Receta de Southern Vietnamese home kitchens · 🏺 Tradicional · Saigon and Mekong Delta home cooking — sweeter, coconut-led, served with herbs by the armful

South-central Vietnam · clay-pan rice cakes — An ownerless regional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms bánh căn as a pancake-like cake made from rice flour, water and turmeric, cooked in a special cast-iron or traditional clay pan with round moulds. The cooked-rice trick, the thin-oil rule, the timings and the pan substitutes are this book's own.

Background on Wikipedia ↗

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Mẹ Trẻ Bố Già 👉 ASEAN Adventures Helen's Recipes (Vietnamese Food)

⏱ 60 min🍽 4 porciones🔥 290 kcal🇻🇳 Vietnam🌶️🌶️

PescetarianoSin glutenSin lácteos

Pasos

Whisk the rice flour, blended cooked rice, water, turmeric and salt into a thin batter and rest it 30 minutes.
Heat a bánh căn pan, an æbleskiver pan or a takoyaki plate until a drop of batter sizzles at once. Wipe the wells with the thinnest film of oil.
💡 The thinnest film. Bánh căn is not fried — too much oil and the bottom blisters instead of forming the flat crisp shell that lets it lift out whole.
Fill each well two-thirds with batter, drop in a quail egg or two prawns, and cover for 3 minutes.
Lift the cakes out with a thin spatula when the edges pull away and the base is speckled brown.
Sandwich them in pairs with a spoonful of spring onion oil between, which is how they are sold.
Mix the fish sauce, lime, sugar, garlic and chilli with 4 tbsp water, stir in the shredded mango, and serve with the herbs.

💡 Consejos

Phan Rang and Đà Lạt argue over it. Phan Rang serves it with a fish-sauce dip, Đà Lạt with a thick pork-and-tomato sauce called mắm nêm xíu mại — both are correct and neither town will concede.
No clay pan? A takoyaki plate is the closest thing most kitchens have and it works. A muffin tin does not — it bakes rather than sears.