Vietnamese night

One of my favorite sandwiches in the world is the Vietnamese sandwich (Banh mi), yup, those little sub-like sandwiches packed in paper bags at your local Asian grocery store. They are cheap, usually around $1 - $2, with a layer of fat, pate and crunchy picked vegggies. Banh mi is really "in" in the food scene right now, different variations of Bahn mi were featured on Top Chef (thanks to Chef Angelo Sosa, I LOVE this guy), on the new food network show The Great Food Truck Race (hosted by Tyler Florence, and yes, my son is named after a celebrity chef!!! LOL) and also in David Chang's Momofuku cookbook.  So of course I had to try making it.

One would ask, why would I waste time and money to make Banh mi at home when you could get it for $2? But that is what cooking is all about for me, I am always looking for recipes to transform everyday food to something extraordinary. The first thing needed to assemble the Momofuku Banh mi is the chicken liver pate, that is the layer of meaty goodness in the sandwich. The hardest part of making this pate is finding the chicken liver, and thanks to my trusty Foody Mart, I found it with no problem. Making pate is much easier than I thought, this chicken liver pate made up of chicken liver, ground pork, shallot, garlic, and seasoned with five spiced powder, sugar and some fish sauce.

 

Everything were chopped and mixed in the food processor, and baked in a water bath.

The mixture was pretty gross looking!

 

 

The pate loaf came out of the mold very easily, it wasn't pretty like a store bought pate (which was also mentioned in cookbook), but gosh, it was D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! Hubby and I practically licked the loaf pan.

Yes, it looks like dog food, but it was soooooooo good!

The next part of the sandwich recipe was a ham terrine, but since this was meant to be for a weeknight dinner, I skipped this part and used a stored bought Vietnamese sausage instead. One thing I did managed to make was the pickled carrot and turnip recipes from the cookbook. Chang's recipe is super easy, consisting of rice wine vinegar, sugar and salt. The shredded carrots and turnips were pickled for 2 days, and the texture was perfect, crunchy, tart and sweet.

Can someone tell me why there is a baby on the kewpie mayo packaging?? WEIRD!

The Bahn mi assembly was also pretty easy, a layer of Kewpie Mayo, with the sliced Vietnamese sausages on top, a thick layer of pate spread on the other side of the bread, the sandwich is then baked for 15 minutes. Add the picked vegetables, and ta-da....The BEST sandwich ever! The mayo was oozing out of the side, and the pate had a really meaty flavor! It looks like a lot of work, but it was all worth the effort. I will definitely be making this again, and trying out the ham terrine next time!

To complete our Vietnamese night, I also managed to make some Shrimp summer rolls. These are very simple to make, all the components can be made ahead of time and assemble right before dinner. These summer rolls consist of shrimp, shredded pork, carrots, rice noodles and lettuce, all the ingredients (except for the lettuce) were cooked separately in boiling water flavored with fish sauce, sugar and black pepper.

 

Once all the ingredients are cooled, you can start assembling. The rice paper is soaked briefly in water to soften, each roll is stuffed with a slice of lettuce, a few pieces of shredded pork, 2 pieces of shrimp a few sticks of carrots and a small bunch of noodles. 

 

These rolls are refreshing and a perfect accompaniment to the sandwiches. I made a quick dipping sauce with fish sauce, water, lime juice and chili peppers to go with these rolls, they are simply addictive!

 

They taste better than they look, definitely need to take some photography lessons!