By Gwendolyn Richards, Calgary Herald
I remember eating my first Vietnamese sub.
Grilled lemongrass pork banh mi
It was on a Saturday afternoon in the newsroom and several of us were hunkered down writing stories when one of my colleagues offered to do a lunch run. Did I want a banh mi?
With no understanding of what it was, I said yes, starting a now 10-year-old love a air with the Vietnamese sandwiches.
The combination of rich, spiced meat against the cooling pickled carrots and strip of cucumber on soft bread with a crisp crust had me from the first bite. So many flavours in one edible package.
I’ve never strayed from my usual order of beef sate (hold the hot peppers, please and thank you), even though I know there are many more options. It was only as I cracked open Andrea Nguyen’s The Banh Mi Handbook: Recipes for Crazy-Delicious Vietnamese Sandwiches (Ten Speed Press) that I realized just how many versions there could be. Between types of breads, pickles and sauces, the options are nearly limitless.
Nguyen breaks down the components that make for a good banh mi – finding the balance between flavourful filling, tangy pickles, and sauces and seasonings. For each filling, she gives suggestions on the best toppings, while encouraging experimentation, as well as options for holding everything. While all of the bath mi I’ve eaten were on a crusty French-style elongated roll, Nguyen suggests everything from slider buns to Cubano rolls or the Chinese steamed buns usually reserved for slices of pork belly and hoisin sauce. Those who have a hard time finding the right bread should note that she has even included a recipe for making the crisply crusted rolls traditionally used for Vietnamese sandwiches.
I appreciated all the options and her desire for people to take the recipes and make a sandwich that is truly their own. I also appreciated that basic beef sate was not among the recipes; it forced me to try something new.
For my first foray into the world of making banh mi, I settled on a more unconventional option: a sandwich filled with a deeply aromatic chicken curry.
The Sri Lankan Black Curry Chicken is well spiced – but not spicy – and was incredible aromatherapy for a couple of hours of cooking. Simmering the sauce down to nothing leaves the bits of tender chicken thighs coated in rich flavour, which works nicely with a simple carrot and daikon pickle, as well as the usual accompaniments of cucumber, cilantro and jalapeno slices. The sandwich was all the things I wanted in a Vietnamese sub. And with the leftover pickles in my fridge, I’m already plotting what other fillings I should tackle next.
Sri Lankan Black Curry Chicken
This sandwich is Nguyen’s nod to Viet people’s habit of dipping pieces of baguette into the spiced coconut sauce when they eat curry. In this case, she has put chicken cooked in an aromatic sauce inside the baguette and then topped with the usual banh mi fixings. Most of the spices can be found in a standard grocery store. I bought the brown mustard seeds at Fairmount Spiceland, but have spotted them also in the ethnic food aisle at Superstore. Nguyen suggests assembling these in sandwiches with just a bit of mayo on the bun, some carrot and daikon pickles, cucumber, chili and cilantro.
Read the full article by Gwendolyn Richards from Calgary Herald.
