Banh mi chien tom (shrimp toast)
Tags: blog, cooking experiments, appetiser, asia, bread, finger food, shrimp, vietnam June 29th, 2011Aka bánh mì chiên tôm. Literally, fried bread with shrimp. It’s hard for me to explain about shrimp toast. It’s always been one of my favourite foods, though I didn’t actually eat so much of it when I was younger; but when I started cooking for myself, it was one of the first recipes I tried to reproduce. And, boy, those do bring back memories…
| Banh mi chien tom (shrimp toast) |
Recipe type: Appetiser
Prep time: 40 mins
Cook time: 15 mins
Total time: 55 mins
Serves: 30-40 toasts
The best shrimp appetiser ever.
Ingredients
- 250g shrimp, shelled and deveined (defrosted frozen shrimps are perfect for this)
- 1 egg white
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 0.5-1 teaspoon salt (depending on how salty your shrimps are. Frozen ones tend to have more salt content, at least where I hail from)
- dash of pepper
- 0.5 teaspoon sugar
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 3 spring onions, white parts only, chopped (or a small shallot)
- extra water and/or flour
- 2 ficelles (a ficelle is a narrow baguette. Get a baguette if you can’t get one; or get some other sliced bread and cut it into small enough pieces)
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.
- Mash the shrimps, the garlic and the spring onions into a paste, either by hand, mortar and pestle, or food processor. Then fold in everything else except the bread. It should resemble a spread; adjust water and flour quantities accordingly if it doesn’t.
- Cut the ficelles into slices about 1-2cm thick (see picture for an idea of the size), and spread the paste on them.
- Now this is where it gets a little bit tricky: spread a thin coating of oil on top of the spread paste (we found out this weekend that the smallest of the measuring spoons, the 1/8 teaspoon, is pretty good for this, but it’s a painstaking job).
- Put them on an oven rack covered with aluminium foil, leave for about 15 minutes, or until the top turns golden. Enjoy!
Notes
If you don’t mind the extra grease, the traditional method for cooking this is frying on both sides in a pan.
June 29th, 2011 at 5:14 pm
Sounds delicious, and one of my favourite treats, too. I wonder if the spray cooking oil that some people use to keep their fat intake to a minimum might be a useful way to sidestep coating each one individually. I’ll certainly be trying this out.
June 29th, 2011 at 7:55 pm
I’m pretty sure the spray oil thing would work, but alas, I haven’t got one… It would definitely save time, because doing them one by one is a little time consuming (there’s also the option of dropping them face-down into a oil-filled plate and then taking them out, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t lower the fat intake…)
Let me know how it turns out!