Chang fun (rice noodle roll) experiment 1

My husband took me to a Cantonese dim sum restaurant and told me the dishes he liked. That gave me some good ideas what to try out during my leisure moments at home. Chang fun (肠粉) is one of the dishes that can be either very difficult, if made from scratch, or very simple, if ready-to-use materials are use. So I decided to start simple, to get a feel of the materials. Ready-to-use rice noodle sheets are sometimes sold in the international market. They come in packages that need to be chilled. The instructions on the package say the noodles can be softened in the package using the microwave. After softening, the sheets can be used as wrappers to make meat rolls and steamed. 

My first experiment with the packaged noodle sheets is not completely satisfactory. Here are my problems. With microwave, the heat is not uniform. Any unsoftened parts of the noodle sheets tend to be brittle, making the sheets hard to unfold. After softening, I used the sheets to wrap up some cooked meat and steamed the rolls in a steamer with med-high heat for 20 minutes, then serve right away with sesame oil and soy sauce. The rolls were a little dry even after being cooked in moist heat.  This suggests that the noodle sheets may need to absorb some water at the softening stage. So my next experiment will be to try softening the noodle sheets by a different means, such as soaking in warm water.