Mainland Southeast Asia · Volume 61, The Dry Bowl, the Ash Noodle and the Jar Drunk Through a Reed
Bánh căn
Ninh Thuận and Phan Rang, and Nha Trang after
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 50 sources in the brief
The Cham cup cake, as tourism copy tells it: begun by the Cham of Ninh Thuận, who, by one account, watched the Việt make bánh xèo and made their own; spread to Khánh Hòa, Bình Định and Bình Thuận; named, by a folk etymology, for its swelling shape. The stove comes from Bàu Trúc pottery village and holds ten to fifteen cups of about fifteen centimetres with lids, over a charcoal bed with air holes. Nha Trang fills the cups with squid, shrimp or quail egg. The sources give no Cham name for it.
As tradition built it
Serves a table. The rice is soaked the night before.
Ingredients
The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.
- old crop rice, soaked overnight and ground
- dried cooked rice, ground in for puff and crispness
- split mung beans, soaked 3 hours with the rice, the Ninh Thuận way, in place of the dried cooked rice
- as needed oil, for the cups
- spring onion oil
- to serve mắm nêm, or peanut mắm, or chilli and lime fish sauce
- a broth of braised anchovy, scad or mackerel with a little pork skin
Method
- Grind the soaked rice to a batter, with the dried cooked rice or the mung beans.
- Heat the clay stove over charcoal until the oiled cups smoke, pour batter into each, cover, and bake until the cakes are set and crisp at the edge.
- Lift them out in pairs, brush with spring onion oil, and serve with one of the dips, mắm nêm, peanut mắm, or chilli and lime fish sauce, or with the broth of braised anchovy, scad or mackerel.
What a modern chef changes
The cup as a pan, the batter weighed
Rung 4
Method
- A cast iron aebleskiver or takoyaki pan is the nearest British vessel; heat it on the Egg so the cups take smoke from the charcoal, which is the stove's own flavour.
- Ferment the batter overnight at room temperature with a spoon of cooked rice; the slight sourness and the bubbles are what the old rice gives.
- Weigh the batter per cup so each cake is the same height, and do not fill above a third.
- Make the fish broth dip as a court bouillon of scad with pork skin, strained and reduced, the Ninh Thuận option the tourist table forgets.