Bánh Xèo

Our submission for this year’s pancake competition had a Vietnamese flavour. When we were in Ho Chi Minh city we fell in love with their Bánh Xèo. These enormous crispy, Simpsons coloured pancakes are stuffed with prawns, pork, bean sprouts and mint and are then wrapped in lettuce and rice paper, before being dipped in nuoc cham. Our favourite was this monster in Ho Chi Minh City which was the size of a satellite dish and as crispy as a Pringle.

We learned that Bánh Xèo is an onomatopoeic word that connotes the sizzling or crackling sound you hear when you make one. The batter is a mixture of rice flour, coconut milk and turmeric which fries in a way that leaves a pock marked surface similar to baddy’s face in Licence to Kill.

We found it took longer to cook the pancake than a traditional English version. But the patience was rewarded with a crispy shell to take on the filling.

We opted for a chicken and prawn filling instead of pork and prawn. You could just as easily use oriental mushrooms if you fancied a change. It’s important to marinade the ingredients in fish sauce, lemongrass, garlic, chilli and ginger first to infuse the flavour. Then fry away with some spring onions and keep warm whilst you make the pancake.

Ingredients:

For pancakes

200g rice flour

Half a can of coconut milk

200ml water

2 teaspoons of turmeric powder

Pinch of salt

Coconut oil for frying

Pancake filling

4 chicken thighs

2 cloves of garlic – finely sliced

1 lemongrass stem – finely sliced

1 chilli – finely sliced

Large thumb of ginger – grated

Big slug of fish sauce

150 g prawns

Handful of mint

Bean sprouts

Palm sugar

Lime

Coconut oil for frying

Nuoc cham dipping sauce

100ml fish sauce

50ml lime juice

3 finely sliced red chillies

1 teaspoon of palm sugar

1 clove of finely chopped garlic

Method:

Marinade the filling ingredients in fish sauce, ginger, lemongrass, garlic and chilli for half an hour. Then fry till cooked. Add the marinade towards the end to cook off. And some palm sugar. This should form a nice sticky sauce. Keep warm.

Whisk the rice flour, coconut milk, salt and turmeric together with the water to form a batter. Allow to rest for a bit.

Then add some coconut oil and groundnut oil to a frying pan and when hot add a spoonful of batter. The batter should fizz and crackle. It should also look pockmarked.

Once set and crispy on the other side, give it a careful flip. Because these are lacking in gluten they aren’t as stretchy so be a bit more cautious at this stage.

Serve the pancake, bent in half with the filling spooned in, like a taco. Then plate up with a wedge of lime, some bean sprouts, mint, and extra chillies.  And a little bowl of nuoc cham to dip into.

If you wanted to be extra authentic you could wrap the pancake in rice pancakes – but, they are just as nice on their own I think. And a lot less fiddly.

Some nice people from Roberson Wines gave us a bottle of Cono Sur Single Estate Chilean Reisling which paired perfectly with the Bánh Xèo. Fresh enough to slice through the complex flavours and rich enough to cope with the hint of spice. Not bad for £9 a bottle.

Kaiserschmarrn

I waited until the final day of our Austrian skiing holiday last February to ask Cowie’s dad if he had any objections to me marrying his younger daughter! It was minus twenty three degrees centigrade and we were sharing a rickety old chair lift somewhere about St. Anton. As the lift reached the top of the mountain I plucked up courage and fortunately David said yes – followed by a comment that will stay with me forever: “As Prince Philip once said – you’ve been practicing long enough”.

Having agreed to keep it a secret until I asked Sarah the following week – we shot off down the mountain in search of our final lunch of the holiday. Feeling giddy and a bit extravagant we finished our meal of spaetzles and schnitzels with an enormous serving of Kaiserschmarrn. It’s a classic Austrian pudding made of fluffy chopped pancakes studded with raisins that is often served with a plum compote. Apparently it was invented for Emperor Franz Joseph and his very hard to please wife who wanted a nice light dessert. It translates as Emperor’s Nonsense which all seems quite appropriate.

With Pancake Day almost upon us and almost a year gone by from when I proposed to Sarah, I thought sharing this Kaiserschmarrn recipe would be rather appropriate. If you felt like taking the nonsense to a new level you could use blackberry or quince jam instead and maybe even add some different nuts. 

Adapted from a BBC recipe

Ingredients

50g butter, softened to butter the pans
175g caster sugar, plus 40g for dusting the pans
4 free-range egg yolks
300g crème fraîche
75ml dark rum
75g plain flour
60g raisins, soaked in rum
8 free-range eggs, whites only
½ tsp cream of tartar
60g icing sugar, for dusting

Method

Butter two ovenproof dishes and then dust with sugar. Cream the egg yolks and 25g sugar with a whisk until smooth. Then beat in the crème fraîche and rum, followed by the flour. Add the rum soaked raisins.

Whisk the egg whites along with the cream of tartare and remaining sugar until you’ve got stiff peaks. 

Then fold the egg whites into the batter and pour into the two pans. Bake for 20 minutes – or until lightly browned and set. Remove from the oven and chop.



Then dust with icing sugar and serve with plum compote and whipped cream.





If you've got any suggestions for recipes for pancake day please let me know. We're more determined than ever to win our annual competition this time round.

Flaming Wild Mushroom Crepes

My Godfather gave us an unbelievably exciting collection of dried wild mushrooms as a very generous engagement present. The sight of jumbo Morels, dried Chanterelles, Porcini and Trompettes de la Mort were too much to cope with, so I decided to give our Flaming Wild Mushroom Pancake recipe another outing, but with turbo charged fungus.

We first created it for our entry into this year’s Pancake Day competition. It came about when we wondered how we could capture the excitement of a flaming Crepe Suzette with my obsession with mushrooms. Initial plans involved truffles and fine cognac, but it got scaled down to a more sensible wild mushroom ragout spooned inside a pancake and then doused in flaming brandy.

Full of confidence and low on voting smarts we came second in February to a Chile Con Carne Crepe, which, it pains me to say it, was a deserving winner. Stung by defeat, we went back to the chopping board and tweaked our recipe to dial up the shroom factor and weave in some complementary flavours into the batter and mushroom ragout.

We decided to add some porcini powder and chives to the batter to make it more savory. And also threw in extra tarragon, thyme and parsley into the ragout to make it more complex. We also decided to use Taleggio rather than Parmesan because it melts better and has a tang that makes the mushrooms stand out more.

Ingredients:

Pancake batter:
Porcini powder (or throw dried mushrooms into the batter and then remove them after you’ve let the batter prove)
Flour
Eggs
Water
Salt
Chopped chives

Mushroom Ragout:

1 onion
3 cloves of finely chopped garlic
600g button mushrooms
3 handfuls of dried wild mushrooms
600ml hot water
Rocket
100ml double cream
Tarragon
Parsley
Taleggio
Salt
Pepper

Method

Start by making the batter. Whisk together the flour, eggs, water and add in the porcini powder or dried mushrooms.

Then chop the chives very finely and add them too. Let the batter prove overnight.

Rehydrate the dried wild mushrooms in boiling water and leave to steep for 30 minutes, or as long as the packet says.

In the meantime, fry an onion in olive oil and butter over a low heat and once softened add in the chopped garlic. Don’t let it brown. Then add the chopped fresh mushrooms and cook until soft and coloured. Add some salt and sauté until the liquid that the mushrooms leach has bubbled away.

Then squeeze the now hydrated, formerly dried, mushrooms into their bowl and add to the pan. Give this some heat to drive off the excess liquid and then, perversely, add in the mushroom stock 200ml at a time. Reduce this down until there it is a bit saucy.

Then add in lots of chopped tarragon, thyme and parsley. Season and then add in 100ml of double cream and continue to reduce until you have a rich mushroomy sludge.

Keep this warm and fry some pancakes using the now proved batter. Once you’ve fried the pancake on the bottom, flip it and spoon some of the mushroom ragout onto half of the pancake.

Add a few rocket leaves, a few slices of taleggio, salt and pepper and fold over.

Pat down with a spatula and douse in brandy over a hot flame. Stand back. 

Serve with a peppery side salad.