NOTE: Eating three times a day and blogging only once a day means that gas•tron•o•my has a hefty back log of food posts leftover from Vietam. Here’s the first of many to come—I’ll get caught up to the present one of these days!
Banh trang tron is a hodge-podge salad-type creation that I’ve only encountered in street food form. Whereas most of Saigon’s pavement eats are sold on some sort of rolling metal cart, banh trang tron is sold exclusively by conical hat-donning women carrying weighty baskets over their shoulders.
The surest sign that you’ve stumbled upon a banh trang tron dealer is the small hoard of business suit-clad women crouching around her baskets waiting for their take of the stuff.
The base of the dish is banh trang (rice paper), which are cut into strips and kept dry as a bone. A packet of flavoring agents that includes chili powder and MSG are added to the banh trang strips. Next, an abundance of fresh rau ram (Vietnamese coriander) is torn into the mix, followed by a squeeze of sour Vietnamese kalamansi juice and hard boiled quail eggs. The vendor combines (tron) the ingredients with her hands and serves up a portion in a plastic bag with two skewers serving as makeshift chopsticks.
Even though banh trang tron is a painfully dry dish, it manages to meld all of the ingredients into a cohesive flavor. Although edible, it’s just not all that appealing, especially the clumps of chili powder. The Astronomer conjectures that this dish was thought up during an era of extreme poverty to spruce up plain old rice paper. I think he may be on to something.
