Recreated Vietnamese Pancake

Yesterday I asked my love what he wanted for lunch and he said he wanted a Vietnamese pancake from our favorite Vietnamese place, Lemon Grass Grill. Instead, I suggested that I make it at home for us since we pretty much had all the ingredients. A Vietnamese pancake (aka Bahn Xeo) is basically a fried omelet/crepe (it's more like an omelet but the egg mixture has rice flour in it to thicken it up) with shrimp, pork, bean sprouts, onion, and it's dipped in fish sauce. Here's a picture of a typical Bahn Xeo:

Bahn Xeo

For myself I decided to just do it omelet style, so I used 1 whole egg + 2 egg whites. For my love I used 2 whole eggs plus some flour and water to thin it out. The egg pancake part is the easiest, it's the filling and the fish sauce that really makes this dish. Also, we didn't have pork so I just used chicken that we already had cooked.

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup shrimp, chopped (I used fully cooked and frozen, but any will work)
• 1/2 cup boneless skinless chicken breast, chopped (again, my chicken was already cooked from my food prep that week, but you can use raw as well, just cook a bit longer to cook through)
• 3/4 cup bean sprouts
• ~1/4 white onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• Eggs, depending on how you want to make your egg pancake

Directions:

1. Add garlic and onion to the pan, saute for 2-3 minutes.
2. Add bean sprouts, chicken, and shrimp to pan and saute.
3. Liberally sprinkle garlic and onion powder. Add salt and pepper to your liking.
4. Stir occasionally. Continue to cook until the onions have wilted and all the ingredients have had time to mingle with each other! (~5 minutes).
5. Remove mixture from stove, set aside.
6. Whether you want to use just eggs or the egg +flour mixture, this step is the same. Add egg mixture to a medium-sized pan (make sure to use cooking spray so your eggs don't stick!)
7. Cook until the top of the egg pancake is almost cooked through, but still a little runny, ~2 minutes.
8. Flip the entire pancake over and cook for another 1-2 minutes. 
9. Add half of the mixture prepared earlier to each egg pancake (I made our simultaneously in 2 separate pans). The mixture should only cover half of the egg pancake. Flip the empty half of the egg pancake over the mixture half.
10. Plate the pancake!

Serves 4

Adapted from here

Ingredients:

• 1 cup water
• 4 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 packet Truvia (or other sweetener/sugar)
• 5 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• Chili garlic sauce, amount depends on how spicy you want it

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl. (FYI, the original recipe calls for the water to be boiled, I think so that the sugar will dissolve, but we didn't do it)

And here's the finished product:

Recreated Bahn Xeo

That's it! It was pretty easy to cook this, and I thought it was just as delicious as in the restaurant. I like that it wasn't greasy and fried like the one at the restaurant. We both enjoyed this healthier creation :)

With love,

Tuffy