Coming to Hoi An, you
will be freely enjoy many outstanding specialties such as Chicken rice, Quang noodle, Cao lau, Banh dap (Crispy rice cake
snacker),… Among those, it will be
sorted without mentioning the clear, pure, simple cakes – Banh bao (meat bun) and
Banh vac (dumpling), or can be call White
Rose. This fancy name cause the curious to tourists.
The word is the name was made by
foreign tourists in Hoi An. They imagined the dumplings as white roses and
named it “White rose”. The petite cakes have shape like white roses, are placed
right on a plate, and decorated with the green of basil vegetable, the red of
chili.
Banh bao, Banh vac
are usually placed together on a plate
Banh bao, Banh vac is different but usually placed together on a same
dish and use the same special sauce: not too salt, not light and have the
flavor, the sweetness of shrimp.
Have to assure many
principle to have the sweetness, white smoothly dough outside
The stuff inside includes shrimp, less fat pork, black fungus, bean
sprouts and scallion, all are thinly sliced, stir fry nicely with spices. Banh
vac is usually added a bit more blended shrimp in the core. Banh bao has
stuff with pork, mushroom, bean sprout and be rimmed around like a rose.
The small pretty
cakes inspire many tourists
Banh bao, Banh vac are made from rice flour, but
require the clever from the cook from refining rice to shaping cakes. Rice used
to make the cake is new, aroma, sticky. To have good dough, blended rice need
to be refined many times through water, absolutely without using any bleach or
borax.
After that, dough
will be knead into long pieces, then will be rolled into small thin pieces of
dough.
Have to be skillful
to shape the cakes into these petite nice roses
After making the
cakes, lightly set them into a big pot to steam, about 15 minutes. Have them on
a dish, Banh bao is in the middle or
on top, Banh vac is around at the
edge or under, then sprinkle fry onion, a spoon of oil on top of the cakes.
The soft sticky white
cakes
The sauce is made carefully from shrimp broth, has to be had 3 savors
sour, spicy, sweet with the flavor from shrimp. The balance of sweetness, not
too sour and crushed chili has to be green and red. That how comes a tasty
flavorful fish sauce mixture.
All over Hoi An,
there are many stores that serve Banh
bao, Banh vac not only for tourists but also for the local people.
*Taro**
