(Bánh Tráng Nướng) Vietnamese Pizza
Street-food. It is in the top three reasons why we travel. I have learned so much from my culinary adventures around the world. It has truly made me a better home cook.
The Asian continent always seems to have the most street vendors. For today’s recipe we are visiting Vietnam, one of our favorite countries to visit. When we landed in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) at midnight one might think food could be a problem. Ha! That would be a seriously incorrect assumption. The street outside our hostile was filled with BBQ smoke and hundreds of vendors that stretched for at least ten blocks. We ate and drank beer until 4am. It was heaven.
A few days later we found ourselves on the Mekong Delta in a small town called Can Tho. We had planned to go out to a restaurant for dinner that night, but stumbled upon a town square that was full of street food vendors. So, How about a snack and a cold beer to start the evening? We walked around the square, had a fried won ton filled with meat and a quail egg (recipe in a future blog) and set off to see what our restaurant options were.
As you can guess, after an hour of looking at overpriced menus, we returned to the street-food. This is when we found Bánh Tráng Nướng, Vietnamese Pizza. We would have this dish many times over the next month.
Yesterday the sun was shining in Torrevieja and we decided to have a BBQ on our roof top. I remembered this dish and of course I had to try making it. Below is the video we filmed in Can Tho of “The Real Deal”.
So here is the run down. The “crust” is your standard sheet of rice paper. I always have these on hand to make spring rolls.
The toppings can be anything you want. Traditionally it may be dried shrimp, veggies, scallions, chicken etc. It’s a pizza. I just went to the refrigerator and picked out what we had, in this case a variety of peppers, green onions and some ham. I did a quick saute to cook the items.
We went to the roof and got the coals going. The first attempt failed. Too hot and the rice paper just immediately burned, so low heat. The next two turned out perfect. Lay the rice paper down, crack two quail eggs, spread evenly, add toppings and turn the pizza so the edges all brown evenly.
And that is it. The sauce is mayonnaise mixed with Sriracha.
Have fun with this! Share it with your friends at your next BBQ, I think they will be impressed!
