Sizzling Crepes

Name: Sizzling Crepes
Yield: makes eight 8-inch crepes, to serve 4 to 6 as a one-dish meal
Ingredients: 1 cup raw jasmine or regular long-grain rice; 2 tablespoons firmly packed leftover cooked rice; 1 tablespoon firmly packed Ground Steamed Mung Bean (page 322); 3/4 teaspoon salt; 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric; 1/4 cup coconut milk, canned or freshly made (page 318); 1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons water; 1 scallion, white and green parts, thinly sliced; 3/4 pound ground pork or thinly sliced boneless pork shoulder; 1/2 pound small white shrimp in their shells (page 273), legs and tails trimmed; 1 can (15 ounces) whole or broken straw mushrooms, drained and cut lengthwise if whole; 1 small yellow onion, thinly sliced (3/4 cup); 1 cup Ground Steamed Mung Bean (page 322); 4 cups bean sprouts (about 2/3 pound); 1/2 cup canola or other neutral oil; Vegetable Garnish Plate (page 313), preferably with the addition of red perilla; 1 1/2 cups Basic Dipping Sauce made with garlic (page 308)

December 14, 2011

Named for the ssssseh-ao sound that the batter makes when it hits the hot skillet, these turmeric yellow rice crepes are irresistible. Fragrant with a touch of coconut milk, they are filled with pork, shrimp, and vegetables and eaten with lettuce, herbs, and a mildly garlicky dipping sauce. Most Viet cooks make sizzling crepes with a rice flour batter, but the results fall short of the nearly translucent ones made by pros in Vietnam. To reproduce the traditional version, which captures the alluring toastiness of rice, I soak and grind raw rice for the batter. It is not as daunting as it sounds. You just need a powerful blender to emulsify the batter to a wonderful silkiness. Adding left over cooked rice and mung bean, a technique I found buried in a book on Viet foodways, gives the crepes a wonderful chewy crispiness. Make your crepes as large as you like. These instructions are for moderately sized eight-inch ones. In Saigon, the same crepes are typically as big as twelve inches, but in the central region, they are as small as tacos. At my house, we serve and eat these crepes as fast as we can make them.

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