Just like Mum made: Banh Xeo

At the weekend I was thrown into a haze of childhood nostalgia on the train when I stumbled upon a recipe for Banh Xeo (pronounced in my poor anglicised Cambodian as Ban Cheow - it's acutally a Vietnamese dish) in the Guardian.

This is one of the few things my mum cooked and I actually liked. It’s one of the few things that my mum cooked that wasn’t boiled rice (fair enough she gave me the deposit on my house but I did have a childhood of no toys, no holidays and 18 years of boiled rice for dinner EVERY DAY to pay for it).

Anyway, this dish reminds me of happy, simple times. Helping make the coconut milk (by painstakingly taking a rinder to the flesh and carving it out) drinking the juice (bizarrely I had a hatred of coconut for a long time – too many Bounty bars and bad frosting on Victoria sponges) and rushing home to stuff my face and going back for seconds.

Mum used to make us top and tail bean sprouts by hand, everything was very methodical when she cooked, rhythmic. It always took ages. I give her less credit as a cook then she deserved, but I put that down to 18 years of eating boiled rice.

The Guardian recipe for Banh Xeo was a vegetarian adaptation, but here’s my mum’s version, as I remember it.

For the pancakes
Rice flour
Coconut milk (you can buy it tinned, or spend hours making your own)
Egg
Some people advocate adding tumeric, but I don’t ever remember my mother doing so

For the filling
Minced pork
Shrimps
Onion
Bean sprouts
Salad leaves
Cucumber
Thai mint

For the sauce
Fish sauce
Lemon juice
Crushed garlic
Crushed peanuts
Chili (optional)

It really makes a difference if you can make the sauce the night before. Simply mix the fish sauce, lemon juice, crushed garlic together, altering quantities to taste. Mum used to add warm water to dilute, the flavours are quite strong.

To make the pancake batter, beat the egg and add to the rice flour. Add the coconut milk slowly, stirring out any lumps. The mixture needs to bit a little thinner than a conventional pancake mix.

Set the batter aside a while to work on the filling.

Chop the onions and fry. Add the pork, then the shrimps at the last minute add the bean sprouts. Take off the heat and leave to one side while you cook the pancakes.

Heat some oil in a large wok. The oil needs to be hot, but not smoking, make sure the sides are coated and the oil doesn’t just sit in the base. Using a ladle, spoon in the pancake batter, swirling it around to make a big, thin pancake – it should have thin, crispy sides.

Spoon in the meat and bean sprouts into the middle of the pancake and fold it in half. Transfer onto a plate and garnish with the salad leaves, mint and cucumber. Spoon some sauce, it's like a sharp vinaigrette, over the top with some of the peanuts.

We always ate this with chopsticks. It’s a challenge.