Banh Mi

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Friday night in our house is take-away night.  However, living as we do on the very edge of the west coast of Ireland where the next village is Greenwich, New York, the choice of actual take-away is fairly limited so we make our own.  It’s the perfect little treat to end the working week and I tend to keep it simple but tasty – like homemade pizza with chilli and basil, yuk sung or juicy griddled chicken and pineapple with satay sauce.  The common theme is a bit of heat, lots of flavour and not too much effort.  Banh Mi fits the bill perfectly – it’s a Vietnamese sandwich consisting of crusty fresh baguette, spicy meat, crunchy pickled carrot and cabbage, creamy mayo and hot hot chilli sauce.  For the meat element I make spicy pork meatballs but you can use any meat you want, as long as there is lots of flavour.  Whilst the meat should add some spice to this the real heat comes from the chilli sauce and I use Sriracha, which is fast becoming one of my favourite things.  It’s a seriously hot inexpensive Thai sauce and leaves behind a tingle to the mouth that has to be good for you!  It’s available in Asian supermarkets and I got mine in Eurasia on the Fonthill Road in Dublin.  Just one tip on the roll – proper Banh Mi calls for crusty French baguette and some of the inside bread is scooped out to leave a shell to hold the fillings.  If you are really lucky to live near a great bakers and can get your hands on good baguettes then perfect, but the ones available around here are a certain brand that is part-baked in store and too heavy and dense for my liking so I use fresh salad rolls from the local bakers that have the requisite crisp outer crust and a really light interior so I don’t bother to scoop any bread out as they squish down perfectly to accommodate all of the filling when you take a bite.  There is enough here to serve 4 which means that in my house there is usually leftovers for a Saturday afternoon lunch for me too.  I use three meatballs per roll (in the pic above I have cut each meatball in two so there are six halves spread out on the roll).[Read more…]

Filed Under: Barbecue, Dinner, Lunch, Pork, Simple Suppers Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Barbecued Pork Fillet with Vietnamese Caramel Sauce

From Bill’s Everyday Asian

For my second experiment with Everyday Asian I had to try this recipe – I couldn’t resist the promise of barbecue, caramel and chilli so I apologise for posting another pork recipe so soon but I think you will forgive me if you try this out – it is really delicious!

Similarly to the last recipe this has few ingredients and is a really quick and easy dish to prepare. I was curious to know how the caramel sauce would work – I wasn’t sure if it would be too much but it works perfectly thanks to a little sourness from the lime juice and heat from the chilli.  I also admit to being a bit sceptical when I removed the pork from its marinade – the fish sauce was quite strong but once cooked it gives the meat the most amazing savouriness – I imagine this is similar to the umami effect of pairing anchovies with lamb.  My husband and son wanted to eat the pork straight from the griddle pan.  Don’t be put off by the ‘barbecue’ in the title – although I am sure it would be great cooked outside on a char-grill it can also be done on a griddle or frying pan.  I didn’t quite reduce the sauce enough – it was still delicious but next time I will give it a little more time on the hob which will make it that little bit thicker and stickier. The recipe says that the pork should be cut in to two pieces however I did 4 which made it that bit quicker to cook. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Barbecue, Dinner, Pork, Simple Suppers

Stir-fried Chilli Pork

From Bill’s Everyday Asian by Bill Granger


Last year I made a conscious decision to cut down on the amount of cookbooks I was buying – not only was I running out of space but I just didn’t have enough time to try out all of the recipes that I wanted to.  This means that I am a little more select now in the books that I do buy and that’s no bad thing really.  I had my eye on this book ever since it was released last year – I am fast becoming a big fan of Mr Granger since receiving my first book of his, Bill’s Basics.  I always find around New Year that I start craving simple but spicier food after all the rich indulgences of Christmas so Bill’s Everyday Asian made perfect sense as the first book purchase of the year. And this book really didn’t disappoint – there are so many inspiring, simple, fresh and no doubt delicious dishes in here – I love that in the introduction Bill states that his one rule is “that nothing should require a list of a hundred hard-to-find ingredients”.  This is my type of cooking. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Dinner, Pork, Simple Suppers

Yuk Sung

In my last post I mentioned how similar I thought Donal Skehan’s Asian Pork Lettuce Cups were to one of our favourite Chinese restaurant starters, Yuk Sung.  My husband would happily ‘eat a bucket’ of this stuff (his words!) and I believe him.  I once tried a recipe that I found online that required boiling the pork mince first and it was a bit long winded, the results weren’t anything like the Yuk Sung I was used to and my fried rice noodles were too greasy, so when I tried Donal’s Asian Pork Lettuce Cups I decided this would be the ideal starting point to making Yuk Sung and with just a few little tweaks the results tasted exactly like the restaurant version.  After trying Donal’s Pork Lettuce Cups I prefer this type of dish without the fried rice noodles – it is so much lighter. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Pork, Simple Suppers

Homemade Sausages with Cider & Mustard Gravy

  

Bangers and mash must be one of the all-time great comfort foods which for me  instantly brings back memories of childhood.  This weekend I decided that instead of a Sunday roast I would make these lovely big rustic homemade sausages with some cider and mustard gravy.   This is a great way to feed the family – your sausages have a high meat content and you can control exactly what goes in to them and they are also very economical – I used four boneless loin chops which yielded 11 (if I had been more careful there could easily have been 12) good sized sausages and I found 2 was enough for me but my husband demolished 3!   I served the sausages with creamy mash, oven baked carrots and my first sprouts of the season – delicious! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Dinner, Pork, Simple Suppers

Roast Irish Pork Loin with Cider Gravy

 

This evening I cooked the remaining half of the fabulous loin of Irish pork kindly sent to me by Bord Bia.   I decided to cook a traditional sunday roast with rich cider gravy, served with oven baked carrots and potato and spring onion croquettes.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Dinner, Pork

Irish Loin of Pork – Char Siu Style

 

With much thanks to the lovely people at Bord Bia and the amazing Donal Skehan of the Good Mood Food Blog I was the delighted recipient of a parcel this week containing a wonderful big loin of Irish pork.

The loin was approximately 6lbs in weight and, as there were only 3 of us here this weekend, I decided to cut the loin in to two equal portions which enabled me to cook two very different meals – the first of which was an aromatic, sticky, deeply glazed, roast pork char siu served with noodles.  A 3lb joint will easily serve 4. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Dinner, Marinades, Pork
February 2016
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