Bánh Xèo - September 29th

My grandpa made pho for lunch on Saturday. Well, he attempted to make it. After trying my recipe, he tried to copy it. Unfortunately he didn't make enough for everyone. One medium sized pot of soup definitely won't satisfy 10+ people. Not in my family. So I helped make more soup. The pho was really good. I did have to tweak it a bit, but in the end, everyone was happy with the soup. I didn't take any pictures of it though. You guys don't need to see anymore pho pictures yet. I've kind of over done it in the recent posts.

For dinner, we had a savoury fried pancake called bánh xèo. Surprisingly, this Cambodian dish was listed in Wikipedia. I used to love this, but I think I over ate it once as a kid. I can't help but be cautious when eating this. It's kind of like my breakfast sausage experience. In the end, I ate pho for dinner. It was a bit better by dinner time, because the soup was near it's end. Everyone else ate banh xeo though.

On a smoking-hot, greased pan, the banh xeo mix was poured onto the pan while the pan was swirled to get an even coating. Doing this swirling motion creates a thin crisp border of pancake too.

After letting the mix cook for a couple of minutes, the bean sprouts were put on to slightly cook.

Then after another couple of minutes, a bit of the meat mixture was placed on top of the bean sprouts to heat through. From what I could remember, there's ground pork, shredded coconuts, some onions and soy sauce.

After the bottom of the banh xeo gets nice and crisp, it is done. Fold over one of the sides and plate it up. You can eat banh xeo two ways.

The first way is to wrap the banh xeo. Take pieces of it with mint leaves, cucumbers, and Thai basil and wrap it in a lettuce leaf. Dip it in the fish sauce mixture (fish sauce, vinegar, sugar and warm water), and enjoy.

If not, you can just mix everything in a bowl and eat it like that.

~*~

I've just created a new label. "Family Meals" will be used for our large extended family meals.