{Handmade} BAHN MI for My Mr.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~BAHN MI for My Mr.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My hubby absolutely loves a good Bahn Mi sandwich (sometimes hard to find) and has been hard at work all week, so I decided to surprise him last night with homemade Bahn Mi. Plus, I had leftover pork tenderloin I needed to use up, so win-win!

I have tried a bite of Bahn Mi here and there while dining out, but they often fell short for my personal taste...mostly because all have a plain mayo spread. If you take a bite that is mostly bread, it can be quite boring. Not my jam...so why not jazz it up?! For my Bahn Mi variation, I made a soy garlic mayo for lots of flavor in every bite! Also, the store didn't have daikon (which is more traditional) so I used radish.  I added extra veggies too for extra vitamins and crunch.


Yield:

 2 large sandwiches


Experiment Length:

40 minutes


Materials:

2 foot-long baguettes
0.5 lb. Pork tenderloin, thinly sliced
30 Cilantro stems
0.25 Cucumber, thinly sliced (about 16 slices)
Lemon wedges

Pickle Topper 
0.5 c. water
0.5 c. Rice Vinegar
0.25 c. Cane Sugar
1 tsp. Sea Salt
Few grinds pepper
0.5 White or Yellow Onion, thinly sliced
5 Radishes, thinly sliced
2 Carrots, thinly sliced in sticks
1 Celery stalk, thinly sliced cross-wise

Soy Garlic Mayo
0.25 c. mayo of choice
1.5 tsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. hoisin
0.25 tsp. honey (small drizzle)
Healthy squirt of lemon juice
Few grinds pepper
Large pinch garlic powder


Procedure:

Warm water, vinegar, sugar, S & P in a sauce pot over medium. Stir until dissolved and set aside to cool. Add sliced veggies & mix to combine. I like to use a snap-top glass container and shake to mix & coat every 10 mins. Set aside and allow the pickling magic to happen for 30 mins. You can pickle overnight in the fridge too.

Meanwhile, mix together Soy Garlic Mayo and set aside.

Bake baguettes if they are from frozen, or if already baked, warm & crisp for a few minutes in the oven. Allow to cool slightly, then half without cutting all the way through (like a hot dog bun). Soak Slather with the Soy Garlic Mayo, top with sliced pork, and allow bread to heat pork slightly.

Slide cucumber slices and cilantro stems under pork. Top pork with a generous heap of the pickled veggies and a squirt of lemon juice.

Smoosh together, halve, and enjoy!

Discussion:

Any lean protein would work nicely in this sandwich, so use any you like. That makes this sandwich a great one to keep in the hopper for when you have leftover meat. Don't you just love exciting leftover spins? Me too! I am building up my cilantro tolerance, but my Mr. loves it...so I used 10 stems for my sandwich & double/20 for his. I went a little overboard with the amount of veggies for the pickled topper because I thought it would be better to have too many than not enough. You can probably make half the amount if you don't want leftovers. They are delicious though, so I will be using to top tacos for dinner tonight. Yum!


Results:

So good! I liked better than any I've tasted at restaurants. And we each ate a whole foot-long each even though I thought they might be too big. Nope. The sandwich is so crisp & light & tasty that you feel satisfied, but not super full or heavy. The perfect dinner for a hot summer day. Which was a cool 110 degrees yesterday around Phoenix also known as the face of the red hot sun. Please try & let me know what you think!