On one cold evening a friend of mine and myself decided to go get some Vietnamese soup to warm ourselves up. It’s on the menu of the tiny, yet inviting Vietnamese restaurant that I discovered this shrimp dish. As I was marveling at how delicious this deceptively simple looking dish was, the friend that I was with, who is from Macau, assured me that this was a very easy dish to prepare. And so the first thing that I did when I returned home was look for a recipe for these Chao Tom.
Although I had taken care to remember the name of the dish, finding a recipe was no easy feat. My friend had given me some easy instructions: ” just cut the shrimp in very small pieces, add some garlic and one beaten egg white”. As I looked for recipes that mentioned these steps and ingredients, I was slightly overwhelmed by the number of variations. I finally settled on one.
After preparing the paste, I attempted to steam and then grill the shrimp paste skewers as recommended in the recipe, but one or both of these steps went wrong, because I ended up with very chewy chao tom, that did not resemble the delicious ones I had had at the restaurant. When I reported this culinary incident to my Macanese friend, he laughed and said “you’re supposed to fry them!”. So I went back to my kitchen and prepared more shrimp cakes. This time around I minced the shrimp in small pieces instead of blending all the ingredients in a mixer, and fried them. The shrimp paste was a lot easier to handle and “stuck” to the sugar cane a lot better. The result was a lot different and significantly more delicious.
The Chao Toms are delicious on their own, but they can also be served as a wrap along with some vegetables, inside rice paper, and then dipped in a fish-sauce dipping sauce.
vietnamese sugar cane shrimps Recipe
Print recipe| Prep time | 1 hour |
| Cook time | 15 minutes |
| Total time | 1 hour, 15 minutes |
| Meal type | Appetizer |
Ingredients
- 1.5lb raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon fish sauce
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- sugarcane sticks (cut in 4 lengthwise and about 5 in (10 cm) long)
Directions
| 1. | Mince the shrimp in small pieces, and combine it in a bowl with the garlic, sugar, paprika, salt, pepper, fish sauce and olive oil |
| 2. | Beat the egg white to a foam and incorporate it gently into the shrimp mixture |
| 3. | Let the mixture rest for at least 1/2 hour in the fridge |
| 4. | With wet hands, shape a large scoopful of the mixture around the sugarcane sticks |
| 5. | Heat the vegetable oil in a deep pan or a wok. Fry your skewer until golden brown |
| 6. | When the shrimp is cooked, scoop the skewers out of the oil with a slotted spoon and place them on paper towel to remove some of the excess oil |
Note
adapted from http://www.theravenouscouple.com/2009/07/chao-tom-vietnamese-sugarcane-shrimp.html
