![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Mar. 26th, 2009 09:54 am
A tale of two bánh
What with the craptastical weather, I'd been putting off my weekly visit to the old place, hoping against hope for a pleasant evening when I didn't feel worn-out. Last night, I concluded my plants would die before such a chimaera appeared and went there anyway.
I wanted a quick dinner, so I popped into my old stalwart, Phở 777. On the back wall of the vestibule was posted a list of three special bánh. I didn't recognise any of the names or remember the list from previous visits. Now, bánh is slippery word. As the Wikipedia article puts it, "In general, anything made from flour can be called bánh." So I called the waiter over to explain the choices. The way he described bánh nậm, it sounded like a dish I'd had once before at Hai Yen with Mozhu, so I opted instead for the bánh bèo, which came topped with "shrimp and pork skin".
By "pork skin", I thought he meant bì, where it is thinly julienned together with lean pork. No, he meant cracklins. I smiled at my naïveté and gamely polished off the plate of them--which was no mean feat because the little disks of steamed rice flour that served as a base were slipperier than chue cheong fun. Since the meat of the dish turned out to be mostly air, I was still hungry, but as I was in a bit of a hurry to finish my errands before my CTA transfer window expired, I paid up and headed out in search of something quick and portable. Chiu Quon Bakery was, as expected, already shut for the night, but not a smaller bakery a few doors further down. I averted my eyes from the tempting arrays of sweets and settled them on the only savoury item left at the counter: bánh chưng, the Vietnamese version of the zongzi or "Chinese tamale"--the basic sort, with mashed mung beans and barbecued pork. I was pleasantly surprised to find these ingredients wrapped not in ordinary stick rice but in glutinous cơm tấm.
It was huge, though, so I ate only half of it, intending to eat the rest for breakfast this morning. Of course, I managed to completely forget about it in my morning stupor. Now for a healthy snack of nuts and berries instead!
I wanted a quick dinner, so I popped into my old stalwart, Phở 777. On the back wall of the vestibule was posted a list of three special bánh. I didn't recognise any of the names or remember the list from previous visits. Now, bánh is slippery word. As the Wikipedia article puts it, "In general, anything made from flour can be called bánh." So I called the waiter over to explain the choices. The way he described bánh nậm, it sounded like a dish I'd had once before at Hai Yen with Mozhu, so I opted instead for the bánh bèo, which came topped with "shrimp and pork skin".
By "pork skin", I thought he meant bì, where it is thinly julienned together with lean pork. No, he meant cracklins. I smiled at my naïveté and gamely polished off the plate of them--which was no mean feat because the little disks of steamed rice flour that served as a base were slipperier than chue cheong fun. Since the meat of the dish turned out to be mostly air, I was still hungry, but as I was in a bit of a hurry to finish my errands before my CTA transfer window expired, I paid up and headed out in search of something quick and portable. Chiu Quon Bakery was, as expected, already shut for the night, but not a smaller bakery a few doors further down. I averted my eyes from the tempting arrays of sweets and settled them on the only savoury item left at the counter: bánh chưng, the Vietnamese version of the zongzi or "Chinese tamale"--the basic sort, with mashed mung beans and barbecued pork. I was pleasantly surprised to find these ingredients wrapped not in ordinary stick rice but in glutinous cơm tấm.
It was huge, though, so I ate only half of it, intending to eat the rest for breakfast this morning. Of course, I managed to completely forget about it in my morning stupor. Now for a healthy snack of nuts and berries instead!
Tags: