With just a little bit of skill and not too much time, you can make beautiful rose-shaped cakes, traditional Hue style for family and friends.
Rose Cake
Rose cake is a famous dish of the ancient Hue Royal Court. This cake is always served on important occasions such as New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Eve or weddings.
Steamed rose cake with salty filling is one of the beautiful dishes with lovely blooming 3D petals. This dish can be used as an important dish in a banquet because of its elegant appearance, but can also be used as a snack at any time of the day.
The inside has a rich meat filling mixed with a thin outer layer creating a delicious taste.
To color the cake, ancient artisans often used natural coloring ingredients such as purple leaves, butterfly pea flowers, dragon fruit, carrots, and spinach.
Besides the ingredients for coloring the cake, the main ingredient used to make the cake crust is rice flour. If you want the crust to be a bit chewy, you can mix in tapioca flour or sticky rice flour with the rice flour as desired.
Steamed rose cake seems complicated but is quite easy to make if you know some secrets as instructed by artisan Do Thi Phuong Nhi in the workshop of MOM Cooking Class.
In addition to the familiar colors, gardenia fruit is also an interesting ingredient to create yellow color but not many people know. The advantage is that this fruit will produce an eye-catching yellow color without affecting the flavor of the dish.
When using dried gardenia fruit, you need to wash it and drain it. Then, crush it to release its color faster, then put it in a pot of boiling water. When the pot is dry, let it cool and use the water to make dishes made from rice flour, sticky rice or sticky rice.
Artisan Phuong Nhi shared that you should only use a moderate amount of yellow gardenia fruit to avoid creating a slightly bitter taste in the dish.
Hue royal cuisine is considered the quintessence of Vietnamese cuisine with dishes that are not only delicious but also beautiful. From the careful selection of ingredients to the appearance of the cakes, everything is meticulously cared for, through many stages with special processing tools to create dishes containing culinary quintessence.
Fashion designer Tran Phuong Hoa with steamed rose cakes made by herself with guidance from artisan Phuong Nhi
The chefs and artisans here also introduce a menu of Hue delicacies that are loved by foreign tourists when attending the Vietnamese cooking course.
Lettuce roll
Lettuce rolls are a typical dish of Hue.
With skillful hands and creativity, Vietnamese people have enriched spring rolls by replacing rice paper with rice flour trays and unique rolling methods to create spring rolls with crispy golden crust and a particularly attractive shape.
This type of roll has the spicy taste of mustard greens, the refreshing taste of vegetables mixed with the salty and sweet taste of fish sauce that will linger on the tip of the diner’s tongue.
Banh beo cham tom chieu
This is a specialty to invite guests to visit Hue.
Each bowl is sprinkled with shrimp, pork rinds and fried onions to create eye-catching colors. When eating, diners pour sweet and spicy fish sauce on top, enjoying the chewy, fatty but not greasy cake.
Hue grilled spring rolls
Nem lui is the flavor of the sweet aroma of pork mixed with the smell of charcoal and lemongrass essential oil when grilled together.
The harmonious combination of easy-to-find rustic ingredients makes grilled spring rolls attractive and have a unique Vietnamese flavor.
Hue dishes have recreated the traditional regional culinary space of Vietnam, from vegetarian dishes, to rustic dishes to family dishes. In addition, famous culinary artists have brought rustic cakes associated with the childhood memories of many Vietnamese people.
Photo: Dong Cong, Thong Media, MOM
