Each week Joshua Bousel drops by with a recipe for you to grill over the weekend. Fire it up, Joshua!
I have yet to jump on the banh mi bandwagon, but my fiancée has been all over them. She's been singing the praises of the banh mi so much, that I felt it was my obligation to try them, so we can we ride this food craze together.
Having made a Vietnamese grilled pork not too long ago, I was looking for a different filling option. I came across this recipe for Vietnamese grilled meatballs that was just calling to me. I loved that this recipe had me mixing pork fat and sliced pork loin together in a food processor, along with the flavors I loved so much from my previous Vietnamese venture. This produced a very pleasing, fine-textured meatball with the great taste I was expecting—but the meatball wasn't what I set out to experience.
When I added these already delectable meatballs to a baguette, and stuffed in some pickled carrots and daikons along with a big bunch of cliantro, it was like being in flavor nirvana. The vegetables added a crunch and acidity that matched perfectly with the fish sauce flavored meat; and throw that much cilantro on anything, and I'm sold. Since I was the newbie, I had to turn to my fiancée and ask if these were the correct flavors of the banh mis she loves so much—to which she gave a big nod of approval, then promptly got up to fix herself a second sandwich.
Adapted from Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.
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