I made Empress Rice or Com Hoang Hau in Vietnamese (please excuse the missing accents!) today. I had always wanted to make it ever since I saw it in my Vietnamese cookbook Quick and Easy Vietnamese Home Cooking for Everyone by Andre Nguyen and Yukiko Moriyama. It looks gorgeous, festive and delicious too! Unfortunately the bento pictures here don't really show how pretty the rice actually looks, because it's covered by fruit, vegetables and so on...! My husband especially found the rice really yummy and aromatic, I guess a real change from the usual fried rice. It's not very complicated to make either.

The rice uses coconut juice and vanilla leaves, which I think really accentuate the beautiful aroma of the rice.

Ingredients - serves 2
Adapted from Quick and Easy Vietnamese Home Cooking for Everyone

• 1 cup jasmine rice, rinsed and drained
• 10 cm Asian vanilla leaves
• 2 cups coconut juice (not coconut milk...!)
• 1/2 cup Chinese sausage, diced
• 1/2 cup Vietnamese ham, diced
• 1/2 cup chicken fillet, diced
• 60 g long beans, sliced
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions
• 2 salted eggs (use only chopped yolks)
• 2 thin omelets
• 1 teaspoon chopped garlic
• 1 teaspoon sliced chili, seeded
• 5 - 6 quail eggs, hard boiled
• 1/2 teaspoon each, sugar, salt, pepper, soy sauce
• 2 tablespoon oil for stir-frying

Instructions

• Cook rice with vanilla leaves and coconut juice in a rice cooker.
• In a non-stick skillet, make 2 thin omelets and shred finely. Cut up all the remaining ingredients, except for quail eggs.
• Heat oil in a wok and stir fry all ingredients except quail eggs. Season with sugar, salt, pepper and soy sauce.
• Place hard boiled quail eggs in a rice bowl.
• Press down the meat mixture to line the bowl. Add cooked rice and press hard. Turn over to unmold.

Note: I didn't add the quail eggs to the rice, as it's actually meant to be, because I wanted to make some cute characters with them.

Filling: Vietnamese Empress Rice, slices of mango, grapes, blueberries, red currant, strawberries, tamagoyaki (Japanese rolled omelet), flower sausages, cherry tomato, broccoli, hard-boiled bear, chick and piggy quail eggs.

Howdy everyone...! Some people think that my Kuririn Hamster Bento looks like Hamtaro. This made me thinking, that I should make a character from the Ham-Hams society ;). I chose to make Howdy, because I think he looks adorable. The brown rice is made out of rice and soy sauce. Eyes, nose and lips from nori. His sumo shop apron is made out of surimi and his paws of a sausage. I wanted to use cheese for his tooth, but was afraid that it would look too light in pictures, that's why I used a corn kernel instead (not a very good idea, I think...! Yellow tooth??).

I spent probably three hours preparing this bento. I never plan what to use or what to make in advance, that's why I always waste my time in the kitchen, thinking what I should do. Anyway, I made Vietnamese summer rolls and Vietnamese Lemon grass Chicken. I bought the chicken nuggets, crab claws, har gow and mochi from an Asian market.

We didn't manage to eat Howdy and the Vietnamese Lemon grass Chicken (in the claypot). It's good because this means I can bring Howdy to work tomorrow (my first bento to be brought to work ;)!) and my husband can have the Lemongrass chicken for tomorrow's lunch.

I don't know what to name this soup, but I know that I wanted to make pho-like soups, that's why let's just call this noodle soup Vietnamese style noodle soup à la moi :).

Ingredients
Broth

• 500 gr pork bones
• 500 gr beef bones
• 7 cups water
• 50 gr ginger, broiled until brown
• 2 medium onions, broiled until brown
• Fish sauce, salt, pepper and sugar to taste
  

Toppings

• Tapioca or rice noodles
• Thinly slices beef steak
• 2 fish balls
• 3 prawns
• 1 hard boiled egg
• Spring rolls (filled with shrimp and green onion)
• Chopped green onions
• Chilli slices
• Mint leaves

Banh Xeo ist eine vietnamesische Spezialitätet. Sie sieht wie eine Crepe aus, aber die Hauptzutaten für den Teig besteht aus Reismehl, Wasser, Kokosmilch und Kurkuma, um die Farbe des Teigs, gelb zu machen. Ich habe nie zuvor Bahn Xeo gemacht oder gegessen, aber ich habe schon viel über diese Delikatesse gehört und gelesen. Heute habe ich entschieden, diese Crepe zu probieren. Es war eigentlich gar nicht kompliziert, sie zu machen. Man kann eigentlich auch die Zutaten in Deutschland sehr leicht finden. Reismehl, Fischsoße und Nuoc Cham (süße Chili Soße) sind normalerweise immer erhältlich in Asia Märkte in Deutschland. Bitte die Bilder des Kochvorgangs aus meinem vorherigen Post anschauen.

Zutaten
Der Teig (für 30 Minuten stehen lassen)

• 1 Tasse Reismehl
• 1 Tasse Wasse
• 1 EL Kokosmilch
• 1 EL Kurkumapulver
• 1/4 TL Backpulver
• Salz und Pfeffer

Die Füllung

• 100 gr Garnelen
• 100 gr hackfleisch
• 100 gr Sojabohnensproßen
• 1/2 Zwiebel, dünn schneiden
• Frühlingszwiebel, dünn schneiden
  
• 2 EL Fischsoße
• Salz und Pfeffer

Mit Nuoc Cham und frische Gemüße od. Kräuter servieren. Viel Spaß beim Probieren...!

I made Banh Xeo for my lunch today. It's my very first Banh Xeo - I'd never eaten Bahn Xeo before but had heard and read a lot about it. That's why I really wanted to try to make one myself today. I got the recipe from Quick and Easy Vietnamese Home Cooking for Everyone by Andre Nguyen and Yukiko Moriyama, but I changed the measurements for the ingredients a bit here and there. My Banh Xeo turned out to be very good, although it was quite tricky to make sure that my crepe didn't break - I suppose the trick is to make sure that the batter rests for quite some time.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients (makes 3)
Batter

• 1 cup of rice flour
• 1 cup of water
• 1 tbs of coconut milk
• 1 tsp turmeric powder
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• a pinch of salt and pepper

Filling

• 100 gr prawns
• 100 gr minced meat
• 100 gram bean sprouts
• 2 tbs fish sauce
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 medium onion, sliced
• Spring onions, chopped

The ingredients

The cooking process

First, combine all batter ingredients in a bowl and let it rest for 30 minutes-1 hour. Heat 1 tbs of oil in a skillet and cook the ingredients for the filling, set aside in a bowl.

Grease skillet and pour a quarter portion of batter into it. Make a thin omelete-like crepe. Sprinkle the crepe with some of the cooked filling - you can actually also add the bean sprouts now, instead of frying it together with the meat and prawns, but I just don't like the taste of raw or almost raw bean sprouts, that's why I pan-fried it longer with the meat and prawns in advance.

Fold the crepe in half. Make 3. Serve with lettuce, cucumber slices, carrot slices or any kind of greens of your choice. Don't forget the Nuoc Cham (sweet chilli sauce) dipping sauce! You can get this sauce in most Asian supermarkets.

I hope this recipe can help anyone who wants to have a go at making their own Banh Xeo! Enjoy!