ohmigod i am just famished today. it was only four? ish? hours ago that we returned from grocery shoping, and i was dizzy with hunger, and still managed to stumble about the kitchen cracking open eggs and cans of salmon and straw mushrooms. it was the bean sprouts that done it. in the car i had said out loud, “maybe i could make an omelette.”
“like a banh xeo?” asked the boy.
“um, no. i was thinking, like, a goat cheese omelette.”
“a banh xeo with pork and prawns?” he was relentless.
we had neither pork nor prawns, but in the pantry there was a tin of salmon, and in the back seat there was a bag of bean sprouts and a bag of vietnamese rice crackers covered in pork floss, sesame seeds and dried prawns.
and so there it was in the pan: two beaten eggs topped with salmon, straw mushrooms, bean sprouts, crushed rice crackers, a few squirts of sesame oil, fish sauce and chili sauce. em. i’m calling it banh xeo anyway.
but now i am dizzy with hunger again! any tales of roadside cakestops will just have to wait.
3 Comments
Omelettes are definitely underrated. I love a good omelette, and the one pictured looks delish! In our house, omelettes were always a Friday dish. Something about making an omelette a meal without having to make God angry, by eating meat, is what I remember. This ofcourse collided with the teenage angst of wanting to eat pepperoni pizza on Friday.
I’m not a fan of omlets, but you made me hungry. =P
when i’m driving home and famished, an omelette and rice is generally what i have. involves literally two minutes of cooking.
faux banh xeo on your site? nums. i can’t imagine banh xeo as fast food though. it takes forever and a day to make — generally because we make dozens at a time.
i love banh xeo extra crispy. i only found out a few years ago that it’s yellow from turmeric, not eggs, heh.
canned salmon?? i think the only time i’ve ever used canned salmon was for salmon cakes (like crab cakes, i guess).
one popular local (southern vietnam, country) variant for banh xeo uses a sweet dipping sauce made out of peanuts and feremented fish paste, i think. how my aunt always made it, and all the relatives acknowledged that banh xeo was her best dish. ingredients were always: shelled shrimp, fatty pork, bean sprouts, green onion stalks.