BÁNH DÀY - Vietnamese Rice Cake Recipe | Helen's Recipes

Hi everyone, it's Helen here. Today I will make a traditional Vietnamese rice cake. It's called Bánh Giày. Together with Bánh Trưng, Bánh Giày is served during Vietnamese Lunar New Year or Tết as a symbol for the harmony between the earth and the heaven. In the older days, as you know, it is believed that the earth is square and the heaven is round. So while the square and green symbolizes the earth, the white and curvy Bánh Giày stand for the up high heaven. Most people, especially those in the northern Vietnam, they offer both of these cakes to the ancestors for the new year. So let's begin! Today I will make Bánh Giày Giò, which is like a sandwich made of two steamed rice cakes and a piece of steamed pork sausage in the center. The ingredients you're gonna need 200 grams of glutinous rice flour, 10 grams of plain rice flour, about 190 ml of water or milk, half a teaspoon of salt, and some pork roll and banana leaf. Very simple, right? First of all, combine the glutinous rice flour and rice flour in a mixing bowl and then mix it well in the center. You want to heat the water or the milk to 80 degrees Celsius and then pour into the hole. Traditionally, this cake is made with plain hot water but I wanted to have a more tasty flavor so I use milk instead. Then I'll wait for a couple of seconds so it's cooled down enough to handle. Knead with your hands until the dough is formed. Then you want to wrap it in a piece of saran wrap and let sit for about 15 minutes. Next, grease your hand with some vegetable oil and you can divide the dough into 8 equal pieces or just pinch a piece of dough about 48 grams and shape into a ball. And then you want to flatten it out into the thickness of about 1 centimeter or 1 eighth of an inch and then place on a piece of parchment paper and repeat until you finish all of the dough. And we're gonna place it into the steamer and steam for 8 minutes from the point that the water is boiling. Cut banana leaf into 8 equal rounds. The reason I use parchment paper to steam instead of banana leaf because I want to keep the color of the banana leaf. So after steaming, you take out and place the rice cake on the banana leaf so the leaf has still this green and beautiful color. So just simply sandwich a piece of this chả lụa into between two pieces of rice cake and it becomes a Vietnamese hamburger or sandwich. It's surprisingly tasty and it brings back a lot of great memories eating this. You can keep the rice cakes in the fridge for about a week. Just reheat them in the microwave for about 45 seconds and they're good to eat again. It's really simple but yet really tasty and addicting too. You also can dip it in some light dipping fish sauce if you like. The soft and sticky glutinous rice cake celebrates the simplicity and importance of rice in Vietnamese culture and this is a really great treat for both the king and the commoners. I hope you enjoyed today's video and if you like the idea, don't forget to give it a good thumbs up and also subscribe to my channel for more amazing Vietnamese food. Send me a photo on Instagram if you give it a try and put a hashtag Helen Recipes so I can see it and I hope to see you next time. Bye bye!