Sizzling Saigon Crepes—banh Xeo |
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Prep Time: 45 Minutes Cook Time: 0 Minutes |
Ready In: 45 Minutes Servings: 5 |
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This is a Cook's Illustrated recipe. It sounds delicious! Here's what they had to say about them: Sizzling Saigon Crêpes (Banh Xeo) are paper-thin omelets stuffed with shrimp, pork, and bean sprouts, wrapped in lettuce and herbs, and dipped in a sweet-tart dipping sauce. For our cookbook The Best International Recipe we found a way to recreate this popular Vietnamese street food at home. The hardest challenge was folding the crêpes; they were so thin they kept breaking under the weight of the meat. The answer was to move all the meat to one side of the pan before pouring in the batter, and then to fold the light side of the crepe over the filling. Ingredients:
1/3 cup fish sauce |
1/4 cup warm water |
2 tablespoons limes, juice of |
2 tablespoons sugar |
2 fresh thai chiles, serrano or 2 jalapenos, seeds and ribs removed, chiles minced |
1 medium garlic clove, minced (about 1 teaspoon) |
2 heads red leaf lettuce or 2 heads green lettuce, washed and dried, leaves separated and left whole |
1 cup loosely packed fresh thai basil (or regular basil) |
1 cup loosely packed fresh cilantro leaves |
2 cups water |
1 3/4 cups rice flour |
1/2 cup coconut milk |
4 medium scallions, sliced thin |
1 teaspoon ground turmeric |
1/2 teaspoon salt |
5 tablespoons vegetable oil |
1/2 lb ground pork |
1 small onion, halved and sliced thin |
1/2 lb medium shrimp, peeled, deveined, and sliced in half lengthwise (31 to 40 per pound) |
3 cups bean sprouts |
Directions:
1. For the dressing and garnish: Whisk the fish sauce, water, lime juice, sugar, chiles, and garlic together in a small bowl until the sugar dissolves, then divide among 6 small dipping bowls and set aside. Arrange the lettuce, basil, and cilantro on a serving platter and set aside.
2. For the crepes: Adjust 2 oven racks to the upper- and lower-middle positions and heat the oven to 200 degrees. Whisk the water, rice flour, coconut milk, scallions, turmeric, and salt together until uniform.
3. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add the pork and onion and cook until the pork is no longer pink and the onion is softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Add the shrimp and continue to cook until they curl and turn pink, about 2 minutes. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and set aside.
4. Wipe out the skillet with a wad of paper towels, add 2 more teaspoons of the oil, and return to medium-high heat until just smoking. Add 1/3 cup of the pork-shrimp mixture and let heat through, about 30 seconds. Scrape the pork-shrimp mixture to one side of the skillet. Quickly stir the batter to recombine, then pour 1/2 cup of the batter into the skillet while swirling the pan gently to distribute it evenly over the pan bottom, keeping the meat mixture to the side. Reduce the heat to medium and cook the crêpe until the edges pull away from the sides and are deep golden, about 2 minutes.
5. Sprinkle 1/2 cup of bean sprouts on top of the pork-shrimp side of the crêpe, then gently fold the opposite side of the crêpe over the sprouts. Slide the crepe out of the skillet onto an individual serving plate and transfer to the oven to keep warm. Repeat five more times with the remaining 10 teaspoons oil, remaining batter, and remaining pork-shrimp mixture. Serve the crêpes with the individual bowls of sauce, passing the garnish platter separately. (To eat, slice off a wedge of the crêpe, wrap it in a lettuce leaf, and dip it into the sauce.).
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