Asian food in Paris

I've been a bit disappointed by the Asian food in Paris. Like most things, it's alright, but just not the same. Whether its Vietnamese, Korean, or Chinese, I keep comparing to restaurants I frequent in California. The Japanese food here, however, is pretty good. Though once I went to a Japanese restaurant and ordered spicy tuna rolls and to my horror discovered they were made with soy paper instead of seaweed, and with cooked tuna instead of raw. Gross.

I've taken to cooking a lot of my favorite dishes at home. One of them is pho. When its cold outside there's nothing quite like a hot bowl of noodle soup. I fill mine with brisket, steak, meatballs, and tons of fresh veggies.

When I was last in California, I also picked up some seaweed, Japanese mayo, bonito flakes, okonomiyaki sauce, and okonomiyaki mix. Making the batter is a just a matter of mixing in water, egg, and julienned cabbage. I like to make mine with bacon or shrimp.

Another Vietnamese dish I really love is banh cuon. It's the Vietnamese version of filled crepes. The batter is made with a mix of cornstarch, rice flour and potato starch, but you can just buy it in a mix at any large Asian store. You mix the powder with water to form a very liquidy batter.

For the filling, I mix about 500 grams of pork, a good handful of re-hydrated black wood wear mushroom, onions, pepper, and a bit of fish sauce. Of course you could probably fill it with anything you like, but mushroom and pork are the traditional filling.

The crepes are cooked quickly in a skillet, flipped out onto a cutting board covered with greased aluminum foil (they're VERY sticky), and while still hot, filled with the pork/mushroom mixture and rolled up into little packages.

Banh cuon is served with bean sprouts, basil, fried shallots, fish dipping sauce (nuoc mam), and sometimes cha lua, which is Vietnamese pork sausage, or what I call Vietnamese "SPAM".