I Can't Believe It's Not Eggs!

So that was what a friend thought this dish was made out of. It is quite deceiving with the yellow color, and the omelet like shape. It really does look like it is made out of eggs, however the taste does not taste anything like eggs. But then again we cover this thing in fish sauce so that is the predominate taste anyways. The surprising thing of all is that there is not a drop of egg in this at all. None what so ever.

Ingredients:
  1   bag of Banh Xeo mix
  1   can of coconut milk
  1   small jicama shredded
  1   lb of ground pork
  1/2 cup of wood ears (approximately)
  1   onion thinly sliced
  5   stalks of green onion chopped
  1   lb of shrimp (optional)
  1   bag of bean sprouts

 To start this off you need Banh Xeo mix. It is in the aisle with the Banh Cuon mix or all the other flour mixes at your local Asian grocery store. The mix should have a white powder and then a smaller section of yellow powder which is where the color comes from. The yellowness of this "crepe" comes from tumeric. There are directions on the back of the bag to make the flour so I would follow that. Once you mix the flour and add the green onions then you let it sit for 10 to 20 minutes.

Soak the cloud ears in some water to allow it to soften. After peeling and de-veining the shrimp I marinated them in salt and sugar. Drain the cloud ears and fry them in the pan with the ground pork. Remove from the stove and place in a bowl.

Now it's time to start making your Vietnamese crepes. I used a rice bowl to measure out exactly how much batter I needed. You will need about 1/2 to 3/4 of a rice bowl of the batter. In a frying pan with oil, place the shrimp and onions.Cook both sides of the shrimp and then add the ground pork and wood ears.

When everything is cooked get the shrimp and most of the onions onto one side. Make sure that nothing is at the center line where you will fold to obtain a half circle. Add the rice bowl of batter and make sure everything is within the batter and you have a nice round circle. Cover the pan for about a minute. Then uncover and lay down the shredded jicama and bean sprouts on one side and cover. This will take a couple of minutes but when the sides start to peel off the pan, fold the crepe in half. I cover the pan again and let cook for a little longer. Then flip onto a plate and you have Banh Xeo!

You eat this with green leaf lettuce and mints. You can wrap the Banh Xeo in the lettuce and dip in the fish sauce but I prefer to rip the lettuce and mints on top so that it is not so messy.

     

Just Like Mama ...

I never realized how much work it takes to cook until Monday... Thanks Mama! So  I decided to try and make Banh Cuon which is a northern Vietnamese rice noodle dish. Now I fully understand the amount of work she would put in just to make this dish for a family of 7 (not including herself). I know I need to take more pictures of the process, but with this dish its kind of hard to stop in the middle of cooking and snap a photo.

So let's start. First you need to buy a package of Banh Cuon flour. I bought the pre-made bag because I didn't want to buy potato starch, tapioca starch, and rice flour. The back of the bag actually has instructions on how to make it. You add 4 1/2 cups of water and a tablespoon of oil. Then you pour a small amount in a pan with some oil in it. Cover it and let the noodles cook. This is where I had multiple problems because I put to much of the mixture in the pot and my noodles were not nice and thin. Another problem was getting the noodles out of the pan. You need to flip the pan on to a cutting board and then wrap up the meat filling. In the beginning every time I flipped the pan the noodles would fold on to itself and these are very sticky noodles. So once they are stuck together it is over. Here is the package I used for the rice noodles.

This is the filling. It is about 2 lbs of ground turkey, 1 onion, and a handful of cloud ears. I fried this up with some garlic powder for flavoring.

This is an on going process. As you make the noodle you are wrapping up the previous noodle that you have laid out on the board. These noodles cook fast too. After you cover the pan the noodles should turn clear in a couple of seconds the edges will start to peel off. In the end (after many failed attempts) you should get these:

Lastly you slice up some Vietnamese meat loaf, cucumbers, and mints. Oh DON'T FORGET THE FISH SAUCE! Let's take a bite!