Homemade Vegetarian Banh Cuon

I had a craving for Vietnamese banh cuon. They are steamed rice crepes with a filling, usually made of minced pork and wood ear fungus.

I made vegetarian banh cuon as I already had the ingredients for the filling. There are plenty of recipes online. Be aware there is skill involved with cooking them right because it can easily result in a flop. I'll elaborate on that part a little later. 

For the batter you need two kinds of flour, rice and tapioca. Tapioca flour gives the crepes a gelatinous chewiness. One part of each flour plus 3 parts water and a tablespoon or two of oil worked best for me. For the filling I fried finely chopped garlic, onion, firm tofu, wood ear fungus, shittake mushrooms and carrots. I mixed in chopped soaked vermicelli noodles and sliced shallots after cooking. The secret to flavouring this meatless dish is fish sauce and oyster sauce-you can substitute soy sauce and vegetarian oyster sauce if you are making a 100% meat free dish. 

My banh cuon turned out a little too thick. I cooked them on a fry pan with a lid on before flipping them onto a plate. Unlike the videos on Youtube, I had to cajole my crepes off with a chopstick. The crepes tore or formed holes if I made them too thin. They were too sticky if I didn't cook them long enough. Also they were not coming off the pan cleanly, leaving behind a rice "paper" residue. Maybe I steamed too long causing a crust to form or the batter needed more water or I simply didn't use enough oil. That's the problem with making banh cuon the first time-there lots of ways to fail! It will get easier with practice though.

Banh cuon can be made a day before and they can be reheated in a microwave covered in cling film. I served these at a lunch with nuoc cham. This is dipping sauce made with lime juice, water, palm sugar, fish sauce, chilli and garlic.

Here are the ones I stuffed up. They had holes in them so they didn't roll nicely. I also kept aside the rice crusts which were actually like delicate noodles when added to a broth soup. Maybe a chef will intentionally make this rice skin to be added to soup one day? (Well you read it here first!)

I skipped the usual dressings with lettuce/beans sprouts/fried spring onions. I just drizzled with nuoc cham and devoured. They were soft, chewy and delicious.