Banh xeo, as Vietnamese call these crepes, is one of my favourite dishes to eat in Vietnam. The large, sizzling hot, turmeric-scented crepe filled with pork, shrimp and bean sprouts is a hands-on dish: with chopsticks, you tear off a section of the filled crepe, wrap it in a lettuce leaf and dunk it in the dipping sauce. It's a delicious mix of temperatures, textures and flavours: crunchy, cooling lettuce, tender crepe, the hot filling, with basil, mint and the salty-sweet pungent fish sauce.

In Vietnam, I've watched as vendors spread raw bean sprouts plus the partially cooked shrimp and pork on top of the crepe in the wok, slap on the lid, then let everything cook together briefly, before folding the crepe in half and sliding it onto the serving dish. Because I want to eat at the same time as those I am cooking for, my technique is a little different: I make the crepes first, cook all the other ingredients separately, then fill and fold the crepes at the table. I also make the crepes much smaller, so everyone can have their own.

Most of the recipes I've seen use rice flour as the only starch in the crepe batter, but I found the cooked crepes a little too delicate to fold easily, so I add a small amount of plain (all-purpose) flour.

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