Banh Mi (Vietnamese Sandwiches) with Homemade Baguettes

On this sunny Sunday, Nathan and I joined some friends (as well as the entire city of San Francisco, it seemed) in Golden Gate Park for some free live music, courtesy of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Really, how can we turn down a line-up of Bonnie Prince Billy, Iron & Wine, and Gogol Bordello? And of course, you must know by now that I would never even think of setting out for a day in the park without packing some rations. Due to lack of time, though, we decided to just walk through the Sunset and buy some Vietnamese sandwiches to snack on. Which then reminded me that I have delayed blogging about Banh Mi for far too long.

To tell you the truth, I didn’t discover the glories of Banh Mi until I started living on a grad student budget. Until I tasted my first Banh Mi, I would never have believed that a hearty, delicious lunch can be had for $3-$3.50 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Now that my eyes have been opened, I’m totally obsessed and can seriously eat one of these every day and be happy as a kitty.

You might wonder with Banh Mi already so cheap, why would you even want to make your own? Well, because this cruel, cruel world has decided not to put Vietnamese sandwich shops anywhere near my school! So until the school’s cafe wises up, I either have to trek downtown every afternoon or to take more drastic measures and make Banh Mi at home.

 

Homemade Bacon

Wow, sorry for the lack of posts in over a month! I’ve been away on three different trips since the middle of May, so you can imagine that doesn’t leave much time for cooking or blogging. The only cooking I got to do while I was away was with Nathan for a double-lasagna dinner for all the relatives in Wyoming, which ended in a smoky kitchen but relatively happy diners. (Hi Mary! Hi Jodi! I forget who else from Wyoming might be reading this - Hello!)

Before Wyoming, I was on this whirlwind tour of China, Singapore, and Taiwan for work. Even though the schedule was literally packed with talks and meetings, I ventured out to eat as much delicious local foods as I could. Perhaps there’ll be a future post about this … although I won’t have any recipes and will thus violate rule #1 of this blog. Before Asia, we went to Banff for our friends’ Brian and Michelle’s beautiful wedding!

To ease back into blogging, I thought I’d start with a recipe that requires not much work but does require much time and patience. We got a slab of uncured pork belly from our subscription to the meat CSA and after emailing the CSA members for ideas on what to do with it, we decided to make our own bacon!

The whole week our bacon-to-be was hanging out in our fridge, I was constantly worried that it had a weird, grayish tone since supposedly, one reason you add sodium nitrite is to keep the meat pink. So because the meat was not pink, I thought I must have not added enough sodium nitrite and that we will certainly get food poisoning from eating our own bacon (because the other, more important reason you add sodium nitrite is to prevent botulism). But after slowly roasting in the oven, the bacon came out beautifully pink and gorgeous and it turned out Nathan’s right (again) that I worry too much.

I’ll follow up this post with a recipe using said bacon soon. The only major note about this bacon is that it’s quite salty so it’s best used it in a dish rather than eating on its own, breakfast-style.

 

Coffee-Rubbed Lamb Chops

On Valentine’s Day this year, I went to a yoga class taught by Les at Yoga Tree, one of my favorite yoga teachers in the city. Although I can’t really afford to go to Yoga Tree all the time, especially given the availability of cheap and decent yoga at my school’s gym, I still try to take classes at the studio about once a month. Les’ Vinyasa classes are always on top of my list because even though they’re pretty sweaty and hardcore, they’re also surprisingly calming and meditative. On top of that, he just seems like such a sweet guy! For example, during last Thursday’s class, he reminded us to “not let Hallmark tell you to love only one single day out of the entire year!” Aww…

While I agree that the whole idea of spending lots of money on flowers, cards, and gifts on a random day in February seems a bit silly, I do like the idea of celebrating the company of someone you love with a special dinner. (Of course, you can always count on it to me to justify the food part of any holiday!) Last year, Nathan and I decided that instead of spending a ridiculous amount of money on one of the hundreds of prix fixe dinners offered in SF, we would splurge on some fancy groceries and cook at home - deliciousness and quality together-time minus the crowds and stress!

Our plan was so successful last year that we did it again this year (I feel like I can’t really call it a tradition yet, because this is only the second time we’ve done it). Since I’ve been whining about doing yoga all week, Nathan sweetly took charge of the shopping. When I got home, I was greeted by pink flowers, a glass of rosé, fancy chocolate bars, and a dozen of freshly shucked oysters with Nathan’s famous mignonette! Yum!

In between slurping down those yummy oysters, we also made an awesomely delicious and awesomely stress-free dinner: Coffee-rubbed Lamb Chops, Green Garlic Mashed Potatoes, and Creamed Spinach, paired with this gorgeous bottle of Ridge Syrah I’ve been saving for a special occasion. By the way, if you’re looking to cook a semi-fancy dinner without fussing over complicated recipes, you’re going to love me by the time you finish reading this post! But just remember what Les said… don’t just love me for today! Ha!

 

Chile Verde

One of my presents from this past Christmas was a Macy’s gift card (thanks, John and Pam!). Although I had every intention of going into the store and buying some much-needed new jeans, I “accidentally” strolled into the kitchen section. There, sitting on a shelf with a big “50% off” tag on it, was a shiny red enameled cast-iron pot! No, it wasn’t a Le Creuset. It was a “Martha Stewart Collection” but when one is a grad student, one cannot be too picky.

So it was that we came home with Nathan lugging “Martha” up the stairs. A few days later, Martha ventured out of her box and onto our stove, where she helped us prepare a deliciously huge pot of chile verde. We even bought masa and made fresh corn tortillas to celebrate her maiden voyage. *Sniff* She made us so proud.

And honestly, who needs jeans when one has chile verde??

 

Caldo Verde (Portuguese Kale and Potato Soup)

Yay! Kale is here!

I’ve been awaiting the arrival of a big bunch of kale in our CSA box, just so I can make this soup. I first had caldo verde in Lisbon (’ooo look at the world traveller…how globe-trotty are we’), where it was literally on the menu of every restaurant we went to. Finally, the last night at dinner, I wanted to see what the big deal was and ordered a bowl of caldo verde along with bacalhau, another Portuguese standard. Ever since then, this soup has been one of my favorites to make at home.

Caldo verde is really a very simple soup, where the creaminess comes from pureed potatoes. Actually, I find that I always prefer a potato-derived (or bread-derived) creaminess in soup rather than a cream-derived one. It may sound moronic to use something other than cream to achieve ‘creaminess’, but I like drinking a lot of soup and honestly, I’m not too fond of the idea of drinking a lot of cream. So I’m all for faux ‘creaminess’.

If you want to go vegetarian, you can of course omit the chorizo and compensate by adding more salt to season the soup. The final drizzle of olive oil when serving, however, is essential.