Labor-Intensive Vietnamese Cooking in a Summer Short on Labor

Banh Vietnamese Shop House, on the Upper West Side, lavishes unusual care and preparation on dishes rarely seen in New York.

The Vietnamese rice cake known as banh chung is typically begun at least a day in advance, by soaking sticky rice in water. The next day, a large green leaf is spread with the successive layers that will make up the cake: some soaked rice, cooked mung beans, marinated pork and finally more rice. This is wrapped in the leaf and tied into a neat bundle that will be boiled as long as necessary; several hours is not unusual. As the banh chung cooks, the flavor of the leaf (phrynium in Vietnam, usually banana in the United States) and the filling will travel so that the outer rice will taste leafier and the inner rice will be meatier. The recipe, said to have been revealed to a Hung dynasty prince in a dream, is customary in Vietnamese homes during the Lunar New Year. It is made outside the holiday, too, but banh chung is not likely to appear on anyone’s list of the top 10 fast weeknight dinners. It is, though, a staple on the menu of Banh Vietnamese Shop House, on the Upper West Side. The two versions there, one with pork and one without, are carved into slabs and fried, a treatment often accorded to leftover rice cakes. This may well push the banh chung timeline into a third day.