VIETNAMESE MINI SAVORY PANCAKE (DRAGON EGG CAKE) IN CA MAU, CAN THO, SOC TRANG

This is an easy dish to make and enjoy. It can be served for breakfast or for welcoming guests.  Ingredients are mainly rice flour mixed with fresh turmeric juice or turmeric powder, chopped green onions, pork, minced shrimps, and mashed green beans. The cake is round like bloating fern-shaped cakes but bigger and has beautiful turmeric yellow. Prepare a wood cooking stove and put a terracotta mold on top. The mold has many small round circles within with a lid; a more sophisticated version includes separate small lids for each circle. Using long cooking chopsticks with their tops wrapped in pork fat, when the mold is heated enough, spread the fat on the mold, creating sizzling sounds, then pour the flour inside. The flour should be stirred before pouring into each box. The lid is put on again each time. Wait for the flour to gradually turn translucent and green beans to cook, add fried minced pork on the cake surface and cook for another one or two minutes. Finally, cakes are arranged around onto a plate. The dish is served with cooked coconut milk, sweet sour fish sauce, pickled red and white radish, and some spicy pepper on top. Each cake is a wonderful mixture of the countryside rice flour, turmeric, greasy coconut milk, soft green beans, tasty pork, shrimps, and sweet sour fish sauce … This is truly a significant folk dish. Today the dish has changed a bit in terms of cooking techniques. Cooked coconut milk is no longer pour on the dish, but mixed with the flour for cooking; shrimps are no longer chopped but remain their full shapes; green beans are kept in whole grains instead of being grinded. Cake molds also vary in materials such as earthenware, cast iron, bronze … To enjoy the dish, roll each small cake with green vegetables, lettuce, and other herbs by hand and dip in sweet sour fish sauce like eating pancakes.

Collected by Linh Trang