VIETNAM: THE FOOD

Man, what a week. First of all, it was the first week back to work and school after the holidays, so it was already gonna be a struggle. Then halfway through it, we had to deal with an attempted coup. And the stores were out of a few of the ingredients I needed, so I was forced to improvise. To top it all off, my daughter decided she wanted to bake her best friend a chocolate cake for her birthday but wanted to get all fancy with it (even though this is her first cake she’s baked [eye roll]). We tried, and it was just too crumbly, so I ended up having to go buy one. This sets the scene for my second baking fail of the day when I tried to make Vietnamese Banh Mi.

Definitely too small for sandwiches, but they make fantastic baguette breadsticks.

Banh mi can refer to the bread as well as the whole sandwich (a type of word called a synecdoche). I tried to make the bread, but I think my yeast was dead because it turned out to be baguettes the size of breadsticks. Here’s what I did: In a bowl, I mixed in the flour, yeast, dough improver (which I Googled and came across a blog that said adding ¼ tsp of ground ginger is one old substitute), salt, and sugar and whisked them together. Then I poured in my water and stirred until it all came together as a smooth dough. I poured in a small amount of oil in the bottom of the bowl and rolled the dough to coat, kneading it for several minutes. Then I formed it into a rectangle that was about an inch thick and divided it into 12 equal pieces. I took each piece and flattened them out, folded them lengthwise, flattened them again, then rolled each piece like a worm, trying to taper the ends. Once I placed these on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, I set them in the cold oven with a pan of boiling water and let them rise for 30-60 minutes (mine did jack squat). When that time was up, I took the baking sheets out of the oven but left the pan of water. I set the oven at 500ºF, and when it was ready, I baked them for about 20 minutes until they were golden brown. They never rose, even during baking, but they certainly tasted like a baguette. They’d be good dipped in some melted chocolate or something, but definitely not large enough to make a sandwich out of. I made an Aldi run, and they were also out of baguettes, so I had to opt for top-cut brioche hot dog buns.
 

My first time eating a banh mi, although I've heard so much about them. 10/10, would recommend.

Now it came time to make the sandwich. There are tons of options on what goes into a banh mi, but I chose to make Grilled Lemongrass Pork Banh Mi, which was neither grilled nor used lemongrass. The first thing I did was make the pickled vegetables: I cut a couple carrots and part of a daikon (Japanese white radish) into matchsticks, soaked them in salted water for about a half hour. Then I drained them, added a bit of sugar and some vinegar to them, and put it in the fridge. Then I prepared my pork by cutting it into bite-sized pieces and soaking it in a marinade of soy sauce, worcestershire sauce (in place of fish sauce), sugar, white wine, and black pepper. I let that sit for about an hour. Because I couldn’t find lemongrass, I sauteed some onions with a quarter of an actual lemon (minus the rind). Once the onions started to turn brown, I removed the onions and lemon pieces to a bowl. I took my pork out of the fridge and sauteed it in the same skillet as the onions. When the pork was done, I added the onions back in and let everything cook down together for a few minutes. To make the sandwich, I took my brioche hot dog bun I bought and spread it open. On one side, I spread some mayonnaise (I always use the fake stuff since I hate real mayo. The real recipe called for it to spread pâté on the mayo, but I’m not a fan of pâté, so I left it out.) Then I added the pork mixture and topped it with some sliced cucumber, sliced onions, jalapeñoes, the pickled vegetables, and some cilantro. There was so much stuff packed into that sandwich, it reminded me of a Brazilian hot dog. I thought it was fantastic. The rest of the family didn’t like the pork, but I thought the pork was amazing. I had two sandwiches and the rest of my son’s. Despite all my troubles with the bread and finding ingredients, it was really good in the end.

Basically the sandwich was my whole meal, so here's a picture of Phantom seeing mylar balloons for the first time today (they were on the ceiling). She stood like that for five minutes just staring.

I was also going to try making some Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls with shrimp, but I also couldn’t find any of the rice wrappers, only eggroll and wonton wraps. Traditionally, I suck at making any kind of dish that requires wrapping food in other food. This includes almost every kind of dumpling, cabbage rolls, burritos, eggrolls, and anything that is similarly put together. Perhaps I will try the recipe later. (I did buy eggroll wrappers, so maybe I’ll amend my recipe and make some for dinner one night this week.) It’s been a day of patience to be sure. As I told my daughter earlier tonight: you can’t cry if you’re eating breadsticks.

Up next: Yemen