Vietnamese Pickled Daikon and Carrot and Homemade Bánh Mì

Earlier this year I went on a trip to Vietnam.  I travelled from South to North; going from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi and stopping in Hoi An and Da Nang on the way.  The trip was really memorable, not just for the sights and the people, but especially for the food.  In fact, food was pretty much at the forefront of my mind when I decided to travel there.  That's right - I wanted to have an "authentic" Vietnamese food experience.

Even before we left, I was researching the best places to eat in each destination.  Here in Sydney, everyone was (and still is) going crazy for Vietnamese Pork Rolls - Bánh Mì.  The first time I tried one was on the recommendation of someone at work.  Working in Ultimo, I was surrounded by pork roll vendors - each one slightly different, but all really tasty.  And once I had tried one of these delicious rolls, it became a staple in my weekly lunch repertoire - and all for the bargain price of around $4.50 (my girlfriend tells me that her first Bánh Mì was a $3.50 roll at UNSW, which was a special uni price - she is also hooked).

I couldn't believe that I hadn't discovered Bánh Mì before - The French influences harmonising with the Asian flavours.  Rich Pâté.  Crusty baguette.   Putting chilli and coriander in a sandwich! Totally makes sense.

So naturally, I was compelled to find the best Bánh Mì in Vietnam. Anthony Bourdain provided me with the answer.  In his popular TV program "No Reservations" he was brought by his intrepid French business partner to what he believed was the most delicious Bánh Mì in the world.  It was located in Hoi An and was being served from a tiny stall near the markets.



I found a blog online that mapped out the location of this Bánh Mì stall, and after wandering around the markets a few times, we spotted it.  There were a lot of locals queueing up out the front - a very positive sign.  And when I finally had a bite of this local delicacy, it certainly didn't disappoint.

All of the best sandwiches tend to feature some kind of pickle, and it's no different with Bánh Mì.  They tend to include a very simple pickled carrot, and sometimes pickled daikon or white radish.

I've been having a bit of a daikon phase at the moment, probably because they're one of the only things in season!  After the success of the Japanese style daikon pickle I was keen on using the vegetable again.  So I made a Vietnamese style pickle which I could then use on my own homemade Bánh Mì.

 This pickle has similarities to the Atchara I posted a few weeks ago, but obviously with the distinct daikon flavour and texture, rather than green papaya.  It's crunchier and less salty too.

For my homemade Bánh Mì  I use slow cooked pork, rather than the standard lunch meat style pork that's normally used.  The coconut juice and the five spice add an interesting fragrance to the meat.  But I guess the question remains, "Is it worth making your own Bánh Mì?"  Well, in terms of flavour and using up leftover daikon - Yes.   But in terms of cost per sandwich - Hell No.  Go here instead.

Homemade Bánh Mì

What you need:

• 1kg of pork belly;
• Daikon and carrot pickles (see recipe below)
• 350ml of young coconut juice (a can's worth);
• 1/4 cup of soy sauce;
• 2 tablespoons of sugar;
• 4 tablespoons of fish sauce;
• 1 tablespooon of chinese five spice powder;
• 1 stick of cimnamon;
• 1 star anise;
• Salt and pepper to taste;
• Mayonaise;
• Bread rolls - try and get rolls from a Vietnamese bakery;
• Spring onion;
• Coriander;
• Mint;
• Pâté - we just used the standard stuff you can find in supermarkets;
• 1 Cucumber, cut lengthways into long, thin strips;
• Sriracha Chilli Sauce;
• Lettuce leaves (optional).

Sauce:

• 2 birdseye chillis, finely chopped;  
• 3 teaspoons of sugar;
• 1 clove of garlic, crushed;
• 1 tablespoon of fish sauce;
• The juice of one lime.

Making the Bánh Mì:

1. The first step is making the slow cooked pork.  Place the pork belly into a pot or slow cooker.  Pour in the coconut juice, soy sauce, fish sauce and sugar.  Bring the pot to the boil.
2. Place in the cinammon and star anise, along with some salt and pepper, and then lower the temperature to a simmer (in a slow cooker, place it on low).  Cook for 4 hours.
3. The next step is making the sauce.  Whisk the sugar with the lime juice and fish sauce until dissolved. Add the chilli and garlic into the sauce and stir.  
4. The order that I used to construct the Bánh Mì is:
• Pâté on one side of the roll;
• Mayonaise on the other side of the roll;
• Cucumber strip;
• Spring onions;
• Shredded pork;
• Daikon and Carrot pickles;
• Salad leaves;
• mint and coriander;
• drizzle with sauce.

Vietnamese Daikon and Carrot Pickles

What you need

• 2 large carrots, julienned;
• Around 500g of daikon, julienned (we used one large daikon);
• 1 tablespoon of salt;
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• 1 1/2 cups of white vinegar;
• 1 cup of warm water;
• 2/3 cup of caster sugar.

The pickling

1. Put all the julienned carrot and daikon in a large bowl.  Sprinkle a tablespoon of salt and a tablespoon of sugar over the vegetables, and then using your hands, mix them around, coating them in the salt and sugar.  This will draw water out of carrot and daikon.  Do this until the vegetables have softened and the daikon in particular is bendy (around 3-5 mins).
2. Now, rinse off the vegetables in a colander thoroughly and then drain,
3. In a bowl, mix the vinegar, sugar and water until the sugar has dissolved completely.
4. Finally, add the daikon and carrot into sterilised jars, pour over the pickling brine and seal.  They will be ready to use in a day or so.  

Rangpur "Lime" and Jasmine Tea Marmalade

On the same weekend that I was down in Canberra making Pickled Golden Beetroot, I also managed to bring back some fresh produce, mostly from my girlfriend's parents' garden where they grow heaps of fruit and vegetables. But also from next door...

My girlfriend's dad mentioned that the next-door neighbours had a large lime tree that was going a bit mental with fruit.  Being Canberra, neighbours are much more friendly than the ones near my place in the inner city (who tend to not have enough space on their tiny balconies to grow enormous lime trees).  Apparently, the neigbours weren't using the limes and were more than happy for us to use them so we went next door to pick  a few.  But I didn't end up with just a few...  I ended up with close to three kilos!

These limes were intriguing.  They had orange skin rather than green.  They had a similar fragrance to standard limes, but the pulp inside looked more like that of an orange.   And they tasted like sour mandarins.  Were these really limes?  My girlfriend's dad must have seen a puzzled look on my face and assured me that they were.  In the absence of any other information, I took his word for it and brought my haul of "limes" back to Sydney.

Back in Sydney, I did some digging on the internet and found out that the unknown fruit were actually Rangpur "Limes".  They aren't actually limes but are pretty much a hybrid of lemon and mandarin that can be used as a lime substitute.  Interestingly, they're named after a Bangladeshi city.

I flicked through recipe books and searched the internet to see what I could do with the Rangpurs.  Marmalade was the most obvious choice, and given the nice smell of the zest, I was pretty sure it would  make a decent one.

When I researched marmalade recipes, I decided to refer to a book I'd recently bought.  Saving the Season by Kevin West is one of the best books about preserving I've seen.  After reading an article about West in the Lucky Peach magazine and I was pretty keen to track down his book, so I shipped it in from the UK.  It has some really interesting recipes and some detailed explanations on the basics of making jams, marmalades, pickles and other preserves.  The book is easy to read and eloquently written, and has some beautiful pictures too.

West has several different recipes for Marmalade.  The one that inspired my recipe was for 'Fine-Shred Lime or Lemon Marmalade'.   The recipe runs over a three day period and is quite time consuming, but it's geared towards limes which have a lot of pectin, which helps the marmalade set.  I hoped that it would translate to the Rangpurs.

I also thought it would be nice to add something else to enhance the flavour.  I'd been to an awesome Chinese restaurant earlier in the week and had been drinking Jasmine Tea, which for some reason tasted better than usual - it was really fragrant and delicious.

Having also seen combinations with citrus and Earl Grey tea which really worked, I decided to experiment with the Jasmine Tea + Rangpur combination.   Luckily, I also had some really good quality tea in my pantry that I had brought back from a trip to Vietnam.  The tea is from the Sofitel Metropole Legend Hanoi, which is a really cool hotel, housed in an old colonial French building.

The marmalade making also coincided with a bake sale at work to raise money for a charity.  My boss had the idea that instead of baking cake, I could bring in some jars of the preserves I'd been making.  And given the harvest of Rangpurs I'd brought back from Canberra, I figured it was a perfect opportunity raise money via marmalade.  However, this just made me a bit worried that the end result wouldn't be any good - instead of selling Rangpurs, I'd just be selling lemons.

When compared with the Kumquat marmalade I made a couple of weeks ago, I think this marmalade recipe has room for improvement.  Rangpurs are quite tart and they give the marmalade a bitter aftertaste.  I'm also not sure the tea really added much to the end result, other than a slight floral note.  But I'm really not the best judge of marmalade, especially given that I only rarely eat it.  When I do, I tend to enjoy it, but I'm not a marmalade fanatic like some people I know.

The marmalade-lovers who tried my recipe all seemed to give it a thumbs up (however, these "marmalade-lovers" also happened to be some of my friends, so maybe they were holding back their harsh, career-ending comments - that's what friends are meant to do... right?).  One criticism I received was that it was slightly crystalised and not globbular enough.  Originally when I made the jam, I used the cold saucer test to work out whether it was ready and I thought it had reached the setting point.  I was totally wrong.  The marmalade didn't set on the first attempt and it was still quite wobbly and runny in the jars.  The next day I had to scrape the marmalade out of each of the jars and then wash and sterilise them all again (took ages because I'd made so much) and then reduce it in a pan for an additional five or ten minutes. This probably resulted in the crystallisation.  It's also a pretty fruit heavy and chunky jam, which adds to the thicker texture.

Rangpur and Jasmine Tea Marmalade

Adapted from Kevin West's Fine-Shred Lime or Lemon Marmalade Recipe in Saving the Season

What you need:

• 1kg of Rangpurs (make sure you rinse any wax off the fruit in hot water if you purchased the fruit from a fruit shop or supermarket);
• 10 cups of water;
• 1.5kg of caster sugar;
• 3 tablespoons of Jasmine Tea or three Jasmine Tea bags; and
• Muslin cloth and twine.

Making the Marmalade:

1.  The first step is the most time consuming and finicky.  Peel the zest off the fruit in strips.  Once you have peeled all of the fruit, stack the zest strips and slice finely with a sharp knife (see photos above).

2.  Next, slice the remaining fruit into thin circles (see below).  As you go, pick the seeds out of the pulp and put them aside.

3.  Put all the seeds that you removed into a muslin cloth bag and tie tightly with twine.

4.  Place the sliced zest, the fruit circles and the seed bag into a large container and cover with the 10 cups of water.  Leave this overnight to soak.

5.  The next day, transfer the zest, fruit, seed bag and the liquid into a pot.  Bring the pot to the boil and then gently simmer the fruit and water for around 20 minutes.  Then allow the mixture to cool, transfer it back into the container and then leave it to soak overnight again.  

6.  On the third and final day, warm the sugar on a baking tray in an oven, preheated to 110 degrees celsius, for 15 minutes.  

7.  All of the white pith should have now disintegrated after the soaking, but put some gloves on and then use your hands to break up any remaining pith.  

8.  Put the Jasmine Tea into square of muslin cloth and tie it up tightly (if you're not using tea bags).

9.  Pour the fruit and liquid into a pot, along with the tea and the seed bag, and bring to the boil.

10.  Once it has reached the boil, add the sugar into the pot.  Skim off any white froth that bubbles up to the top.  

11.  Reduce the mixture on a high heat (preferably around 104 degrees celsius if you have a thermometer) until the marmalade gets to a "jam-like consistency".

12.  You can test the consistency using the cold-saucer test.

13.  When it's ready, turn off the heat, allow the marmalade to cool for a few minutes and then pour it into sterilised jars.   If using preserving jars, you can seal the jars by canning them in a water bath for ten minutes.

  

Food Flat-Lay 2 - Sashimi Platter Feat. Pickled Daikon

At the start of July I came up with the idea of doing Food Flat-Lays as a way of featuring the pickles and preserves that I'd made.  The first one I did was a cheese platter and it's been a month since then - I got side tracked pickling!  But I've now done a couple more and will hopefully be doing them more regularly now.

  

I may have mentioned previously in my post about Pickled Daikon, that I can't get enough of Sashimi.  I recently went to the Sydney Fish Markets to get some seafood from my favourite fishmonger there, Claudio's, because I was cooking lunch for my folks.  I also decided to buy some sashimi and oysters to try with the pickled daikon for dinner.

The result is the platter above which includes:

1. Pickled Daikon.  I was happy with how the pickled daikon turned out.  It was really similar to the pickled daikon you get at Japanese restaurants, but I'd say a little bit sharper and as a result, fresher on the palate.  The funky radish flavour along with the rice wine in the brine made it taste completely different from other pickles I've made, and the ginger in the brine makes it perfect for Japanese food.  My colleagues at work often order in some Japanese food from Wafu for lunch.  The food is really wholesome and delicious.  I gave a few of them jars of this daikon, which works really well with the food.  It also looks great.  The turmeric in the brine gives it a lovely yellow tinge on the plate.  Another batch I made which included some red radish filled the jar with the colours of a sunset.  
2. Salmon Sashimi.  I love the flavour of raw salmon, which is oilier than Tuna or Kingfish.  It has a good bit of umami too.  
3. Tuna Sashimi.  While I concede that Blue Fin Tuna stocks worldwide are at all time lows, and that we should be reducing our intake of Tuna generally... I do enjoy a bit of raw tuna when I can get hold of it.   Salmon doesn't quite compare to the delicate flavour of tuna.  This piece was a lean part of the Tuna, not the deliciously fatty Toro section.  But it really is like eating a mouthful of the ocean.  
4. Oysters.  Medium Sydney Rocks.  Nothing better! 
5. Seaweed Salad.  A perfect accompaniment.  

Atchara - Filipino Pickled Green Papaya

Being of Filipino background, I always wonder why Filipino cuisine isn't as popular or prevalent as other Asian cuisines.  There's only a handful of Filipino restaurants in Sydney.   And it can't be because there's a small volume of Filipino immigrants in Australia - there's actually a large community of around 190,000.  

A strange mix of influences shape Filipino cuisine.  Writer Monina A. Mercado cleverly explained that "Filipino food was prepared by Malay settlers, spiced by Chinese traders, stewed in 300 years of Spanish rule, and hamburgered by American influence".  So surely there's something to appeal to everyone!

Growing up with my mum's cooking, I learned that a really important feature of Filipino cuisine is contrast - particularly the sweet/savoury, or sweet/sour combinations.  When we ate dishes like Lechon (roast pork) or something fried (i.e. 50% of Filipino cuisine...) Mum would always serve Atchara as an accompaniment.  

Atchara is a Filipino pickle that uses green papaya as a base.  You can't easily find green papaya out of season in Australia, but you can get them during summer at the food markets or at Asian grocery stores.  Admittedly I'm posting this article months after I made my batch of Atchara, but it keeps really well and still tastes great!

I tracked down some green papaya at a grocery store in Haymarket. Two large ones yield quite a few jars of Atchara.  Grating or julienning all of the papaya takes a long time, so I'd recommend using a mandolin.  The green papaya is mixed with onion and carrot, and sometimes even capsicum, so you get a great combination of colours in the jar.  

After a thorough inspection, my folks approved my first attempt at Atchara, but their only criticism was that it wasn't as sweet as they usually like it. They love having something sweet to balance something savoury. But my girlfriend really likes it and thinks its the most versatile pickle I've made.  

We ate the Atchara with some pan-fried Sand Whiting.  

Atchara Recipe

What you need:

• 1 large green papaya (around 2kg), julienned or coarsely grated depending on how you like it;
• 1 onion, finely sliced;
• 2 carrots, julienned;
• 8 cloves of garlic, finely sliced;
• 1 green or red capsicum, sliced (optional);
• 1 thumb sized piece of ginger;
• 1/3 cup of sea salt;
• 2 cups of white vinegar;
• 1 1/2 cups of caster sugar;
• 2 tablespoons of peppercorns;
• 1 birdseye chilli, finely sliced (optional).

The pickling:

1. Firstly, sprinkle the salt over the julienned green papaya in a bowl.  Make sure the salt coats all of the papaya and use your hands to mix it through.  Cover and place in the fridge overnight.
2. The next day a lot of the water from the papaya will have been extracted.   Place the papaya in a strainer, rinse off any excess salt and then squeeze out any additional water (this can be done in a muslin cloth).
3. In a large pot add the vinegar, a large pinch of salt, peppercorns, ginger, garlic and chilli (if using).  Simmer the pickling brine on a low heat for about 5 minutes until the vinegar has been infused.  Allow the brine to cool.
4. Fill sterilised jars with the papaya, onion, capsicum and carrot, then top them off with the pickling brine.