Banh cuon, the rice sheet steamed on a cloth

Banh cuon is the breakfast you watch being made. At the front of the shop a cook pours batter onto a cloth over steam, lifts off a sheet so thin the light comes through it, rolls it around pork and mushroom and drops it on a plate. The whole performance takes less than a minute.

What is banh cuon?

Banh cuon is a steamed rice sheet rolled around minced pork, wood ear mushroom and shallot. It arrives warm and soft, scattered with fried shallots, with herbs, slices of cha lua pork sausage and a bowl of diluted fish sauce alongside. In the north it is a breakfast dish, and it costs 30,000 to 50,000 dong.

The name means rolled cake, and the rolling is the whole technique. Nothing is fried, nothing is grilled, and the flavour comes from the fillings and the sauce rather than from the sheet, which is there for texture.

How is banh cuon made?

Every roll starts on a cloth stretched tight across the mouth of a pot of boiling water. The cook ladles a thin layer of rice batter onto the cloth, covers it with a domed lid for about twenty seconds, and lifts the set sheet off with a flat bamboo stick in one movement.

The filling goes on while the sheet is still hot, and it is folded and cut before it can stick. A practised cook keeps two or three pots going at once and turns out a plate every minute through the breakfast rush.

The batter is rice soaked overnight and ground with water, sometimes with a little tapioca starch for stretch. Getting the sheet thin without tearing is the skill, and a shop's reputation rests on it.

What arrives on the plate with banh cuon?

A plate of banh cuon arrives as rolls with fried shallots on top, and the side dishes carry most of the flavour. The sauce is the part to taste first, since it is adjusted at every table.

Old Hanoi shops once added a drop of ca cuong to the sauce, an essence from a giant water bug with a sharp, pear-like smell. The real thing is rare and expensive now, and most shops that offer it use a synthetic version.

Which regional versions of banh cuon are worth ordering?

The regional versions of banh cuon differ more in how the sheet is served than in how it is made. Four are worth knowing, and three of them belong to the north.

• Hanoi — filled with pork and mushroom, with cha lua and fish sauce. The standard version.
• Thanh Tri — unfilled sheets, thinner than the Hanoi kind, from a village on the city's southern edge.
• Cao Bang — served in a bowl of hot pork-bone broth rather than with a dipping sauce.
• Banh cuon trung — an egg cracked onto the sheet as it steams, then rolled with the yolk still soft.

Further south the same steamed sheet goes by banh uot, often served unfilled with grilled pork or, in Da Lat, with shredded chicken. The pancake guide covers the fried relatives.

What does a plate of banh cuon cost?

A plate of banh cuon costs 30,000 to 50,000 dong at a street shop, which at roughly 26,000 dong to the US dollar is one to two dollars. An egg steamed into the sheet adds about 10,000 dong, and extra cha lua a little more.

Restaurants aimed at visitors charge two or three times that for the same plate. The steaming pot at the front of the shop is the thing to look for, since a shop that makes the sheets to order has no reason to charge more.

When should you eat banh cuon?

Eat banh cuon at breakfast, between about six and ten in the morning, when the sheets are made to order and the shops are full. Several Hanoi shops keep going all day and into the evening, but the morning plate is the one the dish is built for.

Banh cuon is a light meal by design. The Vietnamese breakfast guide sets it beside pho and xoi as one of the three northern mornings, and it is the one that leaves room for a coffee afterwards.

Is banh cuon the same as a fresh spring roll?

Banh cuon and a fresh spring roll share rice and almost nothing else. Goi cuon is made from dried rice paper softened in water and rolled cold around shrimp, pork, noodles and herbs. The other is a sheet steamed fresh from liquid batter and eaten warm.

The textures are opposite: the spring roll is chewy and cool, the steamed roll silky and soft. The spring roll guide sets out that family in full, and Hanoi is the place to eat both on the same day.