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Me, Banh Mi?

I've already mentioned that I love, LOVE most Asian food, but Thai is probably my favorite. Yes, I know there are different regions in Thailand and that's a very broad, sweeping generalization, but I feel pretty good about saying I like quite the assortment of 'standard' Thai dishes. I like the Tom family of soups, I make a pretty decent Drunken Noodle (mmmm Thai basil), sticky rice is my spirit animal (I cook it by steaming it in cheesecloth in a bamboo basket over a Thai pot, I am HARDCORE with my sticky rice), and... what was I talking about? Yeah. So. I also like Chinese, and sushi, and some limited other Japanese dishes, and dim sum, and a teensy bit of Vietnamese, like pho. The Banh Mi sandwich is also on the 'approved' list. 

I can't even remember when I first had one, but it might have been downtown Raleigh near the Capital buildings, which isn't exactly what comes to mind when one thinks 'traditional Vietnamese food', but trust me, Raleigh has a lot of good eats. Or maybe it was in Boston; again, not the night market hot spot you'd imagine, but still, there's more than chowdah there.  Wherever I had it, I fell in love; the marinated meat with the perfect amount of sweet/salt and char; the pickle; the boundless cilantro; the sauces. It's been years since my last one, but I never forgot it, and since the nearest place to get one is at least 1-2 hours from me, it was time for a recreation.

Now, in case you hadn't already figured it out, if I am going to do something, I'm not going to half-ass it. Most often I'm going to overly complicate something unnecessarily just because. So if I was going to do this, I was going to have to make everything I couldn't buy, which included not just the meat and the bread, but the condiments also. I decided store-bought pate was ok, pate is a project for the holidays.

I started everything the day before I was planning to serve, since I knew I wanted the meat to marinate overnight. I ran a Facebook poll to see if my friends and family thought I should do pork or chicken, and the overwhelming response was, 'Is there anything else but pork?!'. So pork it was. I've made lemongrass chicken thighs before, cooked the same and served with a satay dip, and they were really good, so feel free to do whatever. I'm pretty sure this is the recipe I used, I need to get better at either remembering or notating stuff like this; https://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2009/04/vietnamese-restaurantstyle-grilled-lemongrass-pork-thit-heo-nuong-xa.html. 
I stuck the rubbed meat in the fridge and then about an hour before I was ready to grill I assembled everything on these totally epic lemongrass skewers that I made. RIGHT?! I was pretty pleased with the flavor of the meat, but I overcooked it like I always do (damnit, pork), yet managed to not get the nice char I wanted. So I have some work to do there. I think there might be some secret to brushing on a glaze at the last minute, I'll check on that.

The next thing I had to do was the special roll. My local store has an awesome bakery, but their usual stuff just wouldn't do. I didn't want to wuss out and settle for a baguette or ordinary bun. A Banh Mi roll should be light, fluffy on the inside but lightly crispy chewy on the outside. So that's why I had to be in the kitchen at 8:30a on a Saturday; there were going to be four separate dough risings coming my way. I'd gone ahead and ordered a French Bread pan, because it sounded like that was really the way to go, plus I've made French Bread a couple times before and plan to again, so I figured I was allowed. The special pan is important because it has tons of little wee tiny holes throughout, in addition to the special shape. This allows the all-important steam to get to the bread while cooking, which combined with a very high quick heat results in that fluff and crunch. Oh, and you also have to spritz them like a billion times while cooking them.
The bread turned out okayyyyyyyy but not perfect, so I need to play with the steam and the spritz and the temp some more. I think I also am going to try the Vitamin C trick next time (it apparently acts as a yeast 'enhancer', who knew? Something about ascorbic acid and gluten making friends). But hey, I bought/used the right yeast this time! So anyhow, I'm not sharing a recipe for that quite yet. I am also DESPERATE for a lame, a French Bread knife (pronounced 'lahm', according to the internets). The knife I used to score these babies wasn't sharp enough. Also, I should have separated the dough into six baby loaves instead of four, they were a little big. My dad sure loved it; he took a leftover piece home and had it with some jam and was super happy about it, so now I have to make him some baguettes I guess.

In between punching dough (hee hee) and threading pork (HEE HEE), I made the special mayo. Now, let's get something straight right now; I do NOT like mayo. I find it cloying and heavy and oily and just no fun to be around. I don't put it on ANYTHING. I grudgingly include it in potato salad and stuff like that, but use way less than I should. So I only made the mayo to learn something. Growing up my mum made homemade mayo, and I guess it was delicious and whatever, so I knew it wasn't hard to do. The special mayo I was making just had some really weird ingredients, some of them secret, some of them difficult to pronounce or find in a small Northern Ontario town, some of them potentially - deadly? Just kidding with that last thing.  Unlike regular gross mayo, the Kewpie mayo I was attempting to duplicate relies on the most bizarre mix of vinegar, but it's a secret as to whether it's rice vinegar, malt, or apple cider, and in what quantities. I mostly followed this recipe, https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/10/sauced-japanese-style-kewpie-mayonnaise-recipe.html, except I didn't have dashi or Japanese mustard, and MSG gives me migraines. I did have an odd little packet of disgusting dried fish unami (which I guess is close to dashi? I need to study more), so I used a pinch of that. It tasted ok, better than regular store bought mayo at least. My mum said it was delicious and she's basically put it on everything since the lunch date, so someone appreciated it.

Oh! And I forgot to tell you about the pickle! Arguably the most important part of the sandwich, because it's the part I liked the most, the traditional carrot and daikon radish pickle ('do chua') was also made the day prior to the festivities, for max fermentation time. I decided that this chick seemed to know what she was doing, so followed her recipe, and it turned out GREAT; I followed it EXACTLY for once. See, that's it, there in the big jar next to the grody off-white spread. I miss it already.
https://www.vietworldkitchen.com/blog/2009/05/daikon-and-carrot-pickle-recipe-do-chua.html

Finally it was time to build the Banh Mi. I'd invited my parents and brother to lunch, since I was going to all this work and would have a ton of food. They declared it 'restaurant quality', which is basically the highest compliment I can get in my books, and they wanted to take home leftovers, which is the true test of whether someone actually liked something, or if they were just trying to spare your little girl feelings.
Side note, I had leftover fixins' but no leftover special bread, and I was NOT going to substitute something else like a savage. So I made a 'Banh Mi Bowl' with everything (except the pate, I felt I could live without that), and topped it with a little Thai chili sauce, and it was GREAT. So if you're one of those crazy people who hisses when they see bread - do that. Don't ask me how many carbs the other stuff has. None, it has none, just eat it.


Would I make this again?
Surprisingly, yes, but only if I had a spare 18 hours laying around. It definitely made me want to play with that bread pan more. The kid has been recovering from a tonsillectomy so wasn't able to eat any of this and was ready to stab me, so next weekend when she is better there will likely be a bread day. Just remember, if you like to keep your house icy cold and drafty like I do, those are NOT prime bread making conditions - my trick it to turn my oven to Warm and then shut it off like 5 seconds later (or forget, and overheat it, and accidentally partially bake your dough); my mom always put her bread to rise in the oven since it was a nice large non-drafty non-fridge location.  And I'm all about hurrying that shit along however I can.


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