Sizzling Vietnamese Crepes

Bánh xèo, particularly the version made in Ho Chi Minh City, is one of my favorite dishes. If I spot it on a menu at a Vietnamese restaurant, I’m going to be ordering it. It’s a spectacular jumble of flavors, colors, textures, fragrances, and temperatures, the centerpiece of which is a warm, crisp-tender, turmeric-tinted crepe punctuated with small shrimp and matchsticks of rich pork belly. To enjoy it, you tuck pieces of the sunny-yellow pancake inside a cool lettuce leaf along with lots of fresh, aromatic herbs and then dip the bundle into nuoc cham, a mixture of fish sauce spiked with lime juice, sugar, and chiles that contains sour, salty, sweet, umami, and spicy flavors. Often, do chua, a carrot and daikon pickle, is served on the side. Banh xeo is so incredibly good that I think everyone should know how to make it.

First, you stir-fry the pork and shrimp with sliced onions, is a nonspecific term for a variety of foods made primarily of starch, and (“sss-ay-o”) means “sizzling” and mimics the hiss of the batter hitting the pan. A handful of bean sprouts is then placed onto the filled side of the crepe, which is cooked until it achieves a shattering crispness on the bottom and a tender, custardy texture on top. Unlike a French crepe, this one is not flipped in the pan; it’s just folded in half.