Banh For Mi

Yes, folks, we are still alive up here in Chi-town. A is working nights and I have been putting in more hours than normal at work due to multiple deployments of new web and mobile app functionality. Including two overnights so far - fun times!

In between the madness, we managed to carve out some time to try our hand at making one of our newly-discovered favorite dishes: Banh Mi. For those of you who aren't familiar, banh mi is a Vietnamese sandwich. It consists of a meat (usually pork of some sort), lightly pickled vegetables, jalapeno, cilantro, and a variant of mayonnaise, all on a rice flour baguette. They are SUPER delicious!

For our experiment, we brined our pork with some sriracha sauce and other fun things the day before. We also made the do chua - pickled carrots and daikon. Do chua is super easy. All you do is peel and slice carrots and daikon, knead them with salt until they're bendable, then marinate in a sugar-vinegar-water blend. Simple and tasty!

The next night A carved the pork into thin slices which we then pan-fried.

Lately Orion has been a very attentive sous-chef.

We made our own soy sauce/mayonnaise blend and even threw in some sriracha sauce for good measure. The baguettes we bought from a Vietnamese restaurant - they bake them fresh daily and use true rice flour. Super delicious! All together, it's one amazing sandwich.

Can you say yum?