With Tô Thiện Thành, chef of traditional cakes and dumplings

Home-made prawn crackers

I've been to Việt Nam's southernmost Province of Cà Mau and saw with my own eyes how locals made their prawn crackers, one of their favourite answers to junk food. When I tried these freshly made crackers, the taste was so delicious and different from what I've bought in the supermarkets.

Here's my recipe for you to try.

Ingredients:

-340g shelled shrimp flesh

- 320g cassava flour

- 80g all-purpose flour

- 10g garlic powder

- 5g MSG (if you don't like it, leave out)

- 10g sea salt

- 5g ground pepper  

- 65g sugar

- 20g oil

- 6g dried yeast 

- a pinch of shrimp roe for colouring

- 20g chopped spring onion

- 5g ground chilli

- about a litre of boiled water 

- 3 egg whites 

Chef Tô Thiện Thành

 Mixing the dough

- Shell the shrimp (buy 500-600g shrimp for 340g meat), take off the black string on the back, grind in a mixer with a few splashes of water.

- In a big bowl, add the ground shrimp with all other ingredients and mix well with a ladle until well blended

- Leave the mix to rest for 30 minutes. You can steam the mix on a boiling pot with a thin cloth cover. Ladle the mix on top of the cloth cover, cover the lid to steam until cooked, then use a bamboo knife to lift the crepes on top of a bamboo rack to dry. When dry, cut into smaller rectangular pieces of 10 x 15cm, or to your liking.

If you don't have the tools to steam it, you can fry the mix in a non-stick frying pan, but remember to reduce the water in the mixture

- Dry the crackers under the sun or in a food dryer until crispy. Test if they are done by trying to break them with your fingers, if the crackers snap then they are sufficiently dried. 

- Keep in an air-tight container, and fry in boiling hot oil when desired.

Bon appetit!