Kitchen Chick

Bánh Xèo Recipe

A little while back I posted this picture of Banh Xeo that I cooked for dinner. It has taken me a while (seems like most things these days takes me "a while" to do), but I have listened to you, oh my readers, and am posting the recipe as requested.

I had cracked open a cookbook that had sat neglected for far too long on my bookshelves: Foods of Vietnam, which was my first non-Chinese Asian cookbook. I bought first edition hardcover back in the early 90s. With its large glossy pages and its exquisite food photographs, it is what I think of as my first "glamor cookbook."

Some of my Asian cookbooks only give English names, which makes it harder to find recipes for dishes that I only know by their Asian name, so I really appreciate that Routhier gives both the Vietnamese names and English translations for the dishes.

(Crepe recipe in the extended post)

Bánh Xèo — Vietnamese Rice Crepes

I've been a fan of banh xeo since I was a kid and my mother took me to WE Restaurant in Pontiac, Michigan. (Any Metro-Detroiters out there remember "WE"?) These bright yellow crepes look like they have eggs in them, but they don't. Turmeric gives them that color. They're stuffed with bean sprouts, shrimp, often pork (though not this time), steamed mung beans, mushrooms, and onion and served up with lettuce, mint, cilantro, and a dipping sauce.

Crispy rice crepe and tasty shrimp and vegetables and pungent salty-sour-sweet dipping sauce... Mmmm...

Of course with all crepe-type foods, one of the main tricks to learn is how to not let the crepe glue itself to the pan. I don't use non-stick pans, so this is definitely a challenge for me. It's starting to become an intuitive feel for how hot the pan needs to be and how oiled it should be.

When I've made them a few more times and feel more comfortable, I'll post a recipe.

If you haven't had the joy of trying Vietnamese rice crepes before, I know of two Vietnamese restaurants in the Ann Arbor-Ypsi area that serve banh xeo: Dalat in Ypsilanti and MisSaigon at Stone School and Ellsworth.

Lemon Grass Beef

A few days back we had our first frost warning. This was followed by a week's forecast of sunny and high 70s - low 80s. How unfair! So with that frost warning in mind, I pulled up the basil and harvested the leaves and pulled up two of my three lemon grass plants. (I made a bet — and won! — that the third lemon grass patch would survive the frost and get to enjoy one last stretch of warm weather.)

I pulled apart the stalks of lemon grass and stuck a few, with roots on of course, in glasses of water. I'll overwinter these stalks this way and replant them in the spring. I've done this two years running now. Small lemon grass plants run some $8 each at the Ann Arbor farmer's market, so this is an economical way to keep the lemon grass growing.

With a pile of fresh lemon grass on the kitchen counter I knew I had to make something fresh that day, and I pulled out my first Vietnamese cookbook and looked up a lemon grass stir-fry dish. I had acquired this cookbook back in my undergrad days. It was a glamorous book for its time (and still is), with beautiful food-art photos. I knew a lot less about cooking Asian dishes back then, and a lot of the ingredients (like fresh lemon grass) were hard to come by. My first Vietnamese stir-fry involved chicken, onions, fish sauce, and garlic. Back then I thought that fish sauce smelled awful when cooking but tasted just fine in the final dish. These days I'm so used to it that it doesn't even smell bad to me anymore. It just is what it is.

Stir-Fried Beef with Lemon Grass
The Foods of Vietnam by Nicole Routhier

2 Stalks fresh lemon grass (or 2 Tbs dried)
1 lb lean beef filet (I used flank steak)
2 fresh red chiles, seeded and minced (I used jalapeños)
6 garlic cloves, minced
3 Tbs nuoc nam (fish sauce)
1 tsp arrowroot starch or cornstarch
fresh ground black pepper
6 Tbs vegetable oil
1 Tbs sugar
2 med onions, cut into slivers (slivers? I cut them into fine half-round slices.)
1/4 Cup roasted peanuts, coarsely ground
cilantro sprigs for garnish (optional)

Prepare lemon grass: if using fresh, discard outer leaves and the "grassy" tops and slice into thin rounds. If you have a food processor, pulse the slices until finely chopped. Otherwise, you'll have to do it the hard way and hand slice and chop very fine. If using dried: soak in warm water for one hour, drain, and chop very fine.

Cut beef across the grain into thin slices about 2 inches long. Routhier says to pound the slices lightly with the flat of a cleaver. My slices were very thin, so I didn't bother.

In a bowl, combine the beef with the chiles, 1/2 of the garlic, lemon grass, 2 Tbs of fish sauce, arrowroot starch, black pepper to taste, and 2 Tbs of the oil. Mix well and set aside for 30 minutes.

(if you haven't already done so, this would be a good time to prepare the onions and peanuts)

Heat 2 Tbs of the oil in your wok. Fry onions and remaining garlic until crispy golden brown and remove with slotted spoon and set aside. (Don't follow my example! I always end up overcooking them until they are charred. Remove them just before you think they are ready.)

Add the remaining 2 Tbs of oil. Stir fry beef with remaining 1 Tbs of fish sauce and the sugar over high heat until beef is just cooked. Transfer to platter. Arrange with onions, top with peanuts and more ground black pepper and garnish with cilantro.

Serve with rice, or make a Vietnamese-style sandwich by splitting a sandwich-length section of a French baguette and stuffing it with the beef, along with some lettuce.

This dish also works wonderfully well with chicken.

Thu's Homemade Pho

Thu's Pho Xe Lua

If you've been following the conversation in the comments in this post, you'll have seen that our friend Thu offered to deliver her homemade pho xe lua to us. We took her up on the offer. Well, mostly. If she was going to share her pho with us, we felt the least we could do is pick it up.

And sure enough she had an entire "pho kit" (some assembly required) ready for us, packed up in styrofoam boxes just like a restaurant. (see below photo) Included with the pho were these marinated onions. They were first soaked in vinegar, then drained and mixed with fish sauce, chilies, and sugar. A bit of onion to each spoonful of pho added a nice tangy-sweet flavor. And I loved it with the holy basil.

The broth was very flavorful, with notes of star anise and licorice. I added a touch of hoisin and chili paste, but really I think it was better all by itself. (Happily we have a bit of leftover broth, which I'll be savoring tomorrow at lunch.)

I have to say, I'm inspired to try my hand at making pho broth.

Thu:

Thank you for sharing your wonderful pho with us. It as good, no, even better than last time. You are a fabulous cook. When are you opening a restaurant? (Okay, we'd settle for Vietnamese cooking classes.)

Kitchen Chick & Joe

Thu's Pho Xe Lua Self-Assembly Dinner Kit

Pho Kits from Paradise

Hiding in the Colonnade out on Eisenhower Parkway is Paradise Restaurant. We've become very familiar with Paradise because they are one of three places that will deliver out to where we live. (The other two are pizzerias.) These days we order from Paradise not only because they're the only non-pizza place that delivers to our place, but also because they have the best pho we've tried in town. (Apart from our friend T's, but she doesn't own a restaurant... yet.) We don't claim to be experts on pho by any means, but we really like Paradise's. And they're also really nice folks.

Pho is a traditional Vietnamese soup with rice noodles, bean sprouts, and meat (often beef) served in a beef broth. It comes with cilantro, onions, hot peppers, a lime (or lemon), and sriracha (hot sauce) and hoisin sauce, and maybe a few other things depending on the particular pho. Though often pronounced like "foe" by English speakers, it actually sounds more like "fuh". Which, well, leads to a lot of bad puns.

Normally, people eat pho in restaurants, but here in Ann Arbor, you can get a tasty pho kit delivered directly to your door. (Don't live in Ann Arbor? Check out the pho experts to find a pho restaurant near you.)

Your Paradise Pho Kit arrives in two parts: one large soup container full of broth (and the meat balls), and another takeout container  with a mound of noodles, other beef cuts, and toppings.

Pho Kit Instructions

1) Call Paradise Restaurant at 930-1988 and order your pho. Note: their pho is in the witness protection program or something; they don't call it pho on the menu, they call it noodle soup. My own preferences are for either the "beef and meat ball noodle soup" or the "deluxe beef noodle soup".

2) Upon delivery, get yourself a large bowl. I use a Chinese casserole bowl.

3) Carefully lift out the noodles and beef and place them in the bowl. Do not be alarmed that the thinly sliced beef looks raw. The broth will cook it. (Yes, even after the car ride to our house. And our house isn't exactly close to the restaurant. But if you're concerned, there's always the microwave. Nuke the broth before you add stuff.)

4) You may top off your pho with the bean sprouts, cilantro, and other goodies. Or you may set them on a side plate and add them slowly to your pho as you eat it.

5) Pour your broth over the beef and noodles. I often have some left-over broth that I enjoy the next day.

6) Add hoisin and sriracha sauce to taste.  Taste the broth first, then mix in a little of each and until it tastes "just right" for you. (It's easier to add this stuff than it is to take it out after the fact...)

7) Eat! Chopsticks and a spoon are both useful.

Paradise also offers a fairly standard American Chinese menu, but we mostly order from their Vietnamese menu. We like their "Vietnamese pot stickers," which are balls of rice noodles, pork, carrot, and rice deep fried to a crunchy goodness and served with a dipping sauce. They also serve up the more commonly-known, and much healthier, cold spring rolls. If you don't want pho, we recommend the grilled dishes with lettuce and tomato for meat lovers and the low-carb set, while the caramel fish clay pot is excellent, and the vermicelli noodles with grilled meat dishes are also quite nice.

Paradise Restaurant
883 West Eisenhower Parkway
(The Colonnade)
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
734-930-1988

Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls

I love fresh spring rolls.  When at a Vietnamese restaurant, I find it almost impossible to not order them.

Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls

Rice paper rolls (banh trang)
Green or red leaf lettuce, sliced or shredded.  Hard ribs removed.
Fresh Mint or cilantro sprigs
Shredded or julienned carrots
Rice vermicelli noodles
Cooked shrimp, halved lengthwise

Put noodles in a large, heat-proof bowl.  Boil water.  Pour boiling over the noodles and leave to soak.  Shred or slice lettuce.  Shred or julienne carrots. When the noodles are soft, drain and set aside. 

Fill a shallow pan large enough to hold a rice paper sheet with very warm water.  Slide a rice paper sheet into the water.  Let it soak until almost soft.  I like to have parts of the sheet still feel very slightly stiff.  These parts will soften even after they've been removed from the water.  Otherwise, if the rice sheet is completely soft before I remove it from the water, I can be fairly certain I'll tear the sheets.

Lay the sheet out on a clean work surface.  Put some noodles (1/4 cup or so) across the bottom third of the sheet.  Layer it with lettuce, carrots, mint or cilantro, and three or four shrimp halves.  Roll the bottom edge over the fillings. 

Tuck one or both sides up — whichever you like.  Then tightly, but don't pull too tightly, roll it up.  You'll figure out how much filling to use and how much tension to put on the rice sheet with practice.

Other ingredients to try in fresh spring rolls:  basil, shredded cucumber, scallions, garlic chives. Serve with straight hoisin sauce or with peanut-hoisin sauce (post edited May 4, 2008 to add this recipe):

Peanut-Hoisin Sauce
(adapted from Foods of Vietnam, by Nicole Routhier):

1/4 cup roasted peanuts, ground, for garnish
1 tbsp peanut oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp chili paste (I use Lan Chi)
2 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 cup chicken broth or water
3/4  tsp sugar
1.5-2 tbsp peanut butter (I use a bit more)
1/4 cup hoisin sauce

Heat the oil and add the garlic, chili paste, and tomato paste. Fry until garlic is golden brown. Add the broth, sugar, peanut butter, and hoisin sauce, and whisk to dissolve the peanut butter. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 3 minutes.

Garnish with the ground peanuts.