How to cook Steamed coconut rice cake

[arbeck]

This is a dish I recently had at Tamarind Tree, a local Vietnamese restaurant in Seattle. It's on the menu as Bánh mặn củ cải tôm. It was basically a square of steamed cake with some shrimp on top. I really want to reproduce the cake at home, but I can't find any recipes for it. Can anyone help?

[sygyzy]

What did it look like?

[arbeck]

Here is a picture:

http://vegfoodie.typepad.com/.shared/image...coconutcake.jpg

It was almost like the texture of a steamed bun. Very smooth, and slightly chewy.

[sygyzy]

Oh ok. Thanks for the picture. I know what this is. It's the same type of "dough" that is used in lots of dim sum dishes. I think it's made with rice flour. It has a pretty neutral taste and is slightly chewy like you said. I never thought about making it at home but I'll try to do some research. I believe you can just buy it packaged which would be easier than trying to make it.

[arbeck]

My guess was going to be mixing coconut milk and rice flour into a dough and then just steaming the thing.

[Tri2Cook]

I made some steamed rice flour cakes for a dessert recently with 100g rice flour, 100ml coconut milk and 60g sugar mixed to a smooth paste then 80ml boiling water mixed in (it was a small test batch) and allowed to rest a bit before steaming. I colored them with a nori paste I'd made to make another component (nori glass). They were not all that sweet but you could probably reduce/remove the sugar if you wanted. I'm not entirely familiar with what you're after so this may be no help at all.

[Domestic Goddess]

I was gonna say it looks remarkably like Filipino Puto (Steamed Rice Cake). Here's a recipe on Puto.

Ingredients

2 cups White rice

1 1/2 cups Water

1 1/2 cups Granulated white sugar

3 tsps baking powder

1/2 tsp Salt

Preparation

Soak the rice for several hours, then grind and mash it until it resembles batter. Mix with sugar, baking powder, and salt.

Pour into large muffin molds until the are 3/4 full, place them in a steamer for 1/2 hour.

Turn the molds over, and garnish with coconut.

My aunt had a puto business and this was her recipe.

[arbeck]

Tri2Cook,

That sounds about exactly what I was going to attempt. I'll let everyone know how it turns out!