This is a recipe for banh xeo, aka sizzling Saigon pancakes. The story is about how we had them in Vietnam on our trip there earlier this year.
Picture it: a hot February late afternoon in Binh Duong, a suburb of Saigon, aka Ho Chi Minh City (no one calls it that except party apparatchiks). My husband’s sister lives there, teaching ESL for a private school. A teacher friend of hers, Miss Li, takes us to the night market. This is where she grew up, so despite being in the midst of an ever-darkening criss-cross of crowded streets, far from anything remotely touristy, we never feel lost.
The hubs, his sister, and I are the only white people we see all night, and I mean the. only. I looked, out of curiosity, but nope, just us. This feels great, exciting, and everyone there is totally indifferent to us. Except people with babies. The hubs is a tall, broad-shouldered man, with long white-blond hair in a ponytail, and a short pale beard. People pop up out of nowhere and hand him a baby or small child to hold, then cluster to his side for their friend to take a photograph. Immense smiles and laughter all around. It happens all throughout the trip, even in stone-faced represso Shanghai. We got used to it, and he didn’t fumble many babies after the first couple.
Anyhow. We arrive at the centre of the market just as begins to get dark. This is when the lights come on, and wow, what lights they are. Single-colour strings of small lights are strung all across the streets, pink, green, red, blue, yellow, orange. There are also some big, flower-shaped lanterns left over from the recent lunar new year celebrations, aka Tet, a very big deal in Asian countries.
Now it is full dark.
The night-time market is at least as busy as in the daylight hours, as people off work take advantage of the evening (relative) cool to do their shopping, take a stroll, see their friends. A lot of social life here happens on the streets, as homes tend not to be very large or well-furnished in this poor neighbourhood.
Miss Li takes us to a Buddhist temple, full of worshippers. It is only partially roofed, and in the unroofed part there is a vast bonfire, the religious purpose of which she doesn’t seem to know, or be able to relate (very quiet lady) but still, it’s hypnotic. We took no photos, since we didn’t feel comfortable taking pictures inside what was obviously an actual, operating church.
People are throwing various things into the fire, we can’t really see what, it’s too dark, and we’re hanging back out of the way, trying to be respectful. A lot of incense and, very likely, ghost money. All through our trip we occasionally find ghost money dropped in the street. I much enjoyed the looks on hubs’s and sister-in-law’s faces when they first picked a piece up to show around and little-miss-nose-always-in-a-book, me, says, “Oh, yes, ghost money. It’s for the ancestors to spend in the afterlife.” Sometimes know-it-all-ism is its own reward.
So we walk slowly through a maze of streets. It’s crowded. Sidewalks are mostly taken up by vendors and by parked mopeds. There are people all in the roadway, also many cars and many, many 200cc motorbikes, reportedly 4 million of them in all of Saigon.
Open-front shops sell flip-flops, facemasks (moped riders wear them against the pollution), moped tires, basketry, pots and pans, wire, clothing, you name it. And food. The place smells of so, so many different foods cooking. Food is everywhere. Sometimes from an open-front shop, very often from a moped or bicycle or a cart, fitted up with a brazier and some storage and display. All through the trip we eat at these all the time. We get some delicious meals, some disappointments, but never a queasy tummy. But we don’t eat fruit without the skin still on, since the water here isn’t potable.
Eventually we get to an open-shop restaurant on a quieter side-street, which has been our ultimate destination in our wanderings. We are going to eat banh xeo. Banh seems to be a general word for a dumpling, pancake, bread, roll. (Banh mi is more or less a submarine-ish sandwich with deli stuff in it.) Xeo means sizzling.
The restaurant is the front room of a very old building, built cheek-by-jowl with all its neighbours, with common side walls. In back are some plastic tables and chairs. In front is an elderly gentleman with a brazier. With smooth, uninterrupted motions he cooks the rice-flour pancakes, fills them with his own pork-shrimp-veg mixture, and scoops them onto a plate, on top of a stiff, papery rice pancake that becomes your holder. So now you have a hot, sizzling pancake-with-filling in a prefab edible rice-paper liner.
These are is picked up by the waitress, who puts them one after another on our little plastic table (our chairs are little plastic stools) which is almost but not quite in the street. On the table is a plate piled high with assorted herbs, which you put on top of your banh xeo. Add sauce, fold it over like a taco, and chomp down. Mmm. Good doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Oddly, they sell no beer, but I try a bottle of fizzy pop. I have been avoiding their fizzy pop for days now, but try-everything-once is my motto. Flavour choices are bright yellow, bright pink and bright green. I try pink. It is vile. Sweet beyond sweet, no real flavour, not even of chemicals.
On our way back to where we can find a taxi, we stop at a modern drugstore, just sitting there in the midst of a large, very traditional neighbourhood. From the dim light of the night street we enter a brilliantly-lit store full of western shampoo, soap, booze. Very jarring. Then out again into the soft night air, into a taxi, and home to my SIL’s modern apartment.
Note: the photos here are from Wiki Commons, but are the-same-only-different as our own. I’m too idle to put them on the web. So shoot me. But if you come to our house we will happily give you our slideshow of the whole 4 weeks. Record time for showing it so far = about 3 hours, with beer, pizza and many stories. The stories I will glad share with y’all over time here, but for the actual photos (including some video of Cambodian dancing girls!) you have to come to my house.
So, the banh xeo recipe:
Rice Batter:
- 2 cups rice flour
- 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 3/4 cup canned coconut milk
- 3 green onions, chopped small. To do it the classic Asian way, slice them thinly on an steep angle.
Mix it all together and let rest for 30 minutes.
Fillings:
- 1 cup cooking oil (melted lard is very trad) (or coconut oil, if you can get it)
- 1/4 lb. pork, cut into thin slices
- 1/4 lb. very small shrimp, peeled and deveined (we saw these tiny shrimp in many dishes in Vietnam, they are cheaper than chicken, and a basic source of protein for locals)
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup sliced onions, about 1/8 inch thick
- 1 to 2 medium long red chilies, sliced thin, into rings
- 3/4 cups thin-sliced mushrooms, 1/8 inch slices
- 2 cups bean sprouts
- A pile of large lettuce leaves (this is what we’re using, since the edible-rice-paper thingies are hard to find in the west)
Chop this all up, except the lettuce leaves, and have it ready in a bowl beside your wok or frypan.
Nuoc Cham (sauce):
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup warm water
- 3 tablespoons lime juice
- 1/4 cup fish sauce
- 1-2 small chilies, cut into very fine rings
- 1 clove garlic, minced fine
Stir it together and put it on the dining table in a bowl, with a spoon or small ladle.
The pile of herbs and green leafy vegetables is served with many Vietnamese dishes. Usually they are stalks, rather than chopped, but any thick tough stalks were removed. It can be a mixture of basil, cilantro, spearmint, dill, mustard greens, sorrel, watercress, sliced raw cabbage, spinach, just to name the familiar western ones. Rice paddy herb, for instance, might be difficult to find outside a Vietnamese grocery.
All right, time to get cooking here! Everyone should be at the table at this point, slavering in anticipation.
Heat up your pan, over high heat. Put a tablespoon of fat into it, then add about half a cup of the pork mixture. Stir-fry until half-way done. Ladle half a cup of rice flour mixture over top and tilt the pan to coat the bottom evenly. Put some bean sprouts on top. Drizzle another tablespoon of fat around the edges of the pancake. Lower heat, cover, and cook for 1 minute. Remove cover and cook it some more, until the edges begin to brown. Lift it out of the pan and onto a waiting, dry lettuce leaf. To eat it, fold it over and dip into the sauce. Chomp. Pass out from culinary bliss.
