Do chua (pickled veggies) and banh mi (Vietnamese sandwich)
Author: 
Recipe type: To Go
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 1
 
A basic recipe for the classic Vietnamese sandwich.
Ingredients
Pickles
  • Pickle jars. I used two old jars of jam, as we have a big jam eater at home.-
  • 3 medium-sized carrots (you can mix and match with daikon as well, say a carrot and a daikon, but I can get carrots way more easily than daikon...)
  • 4 teaspoons sugar, 2 teaspoon salt
  • ¼ cup sugar
  • ½ cup rice vinegar (white vinegar if you really can't find rice vinegar, but I'd recommend rice, it's less astringent)
  • ½ cup warm water
Sandwich
  • a 7-inch bit of baguette (a demi-baguette for the French amongst us)
  • chả lụa, sliced into sticks (you can buy it in Asian stores)
  • dồ chua
  • seeded cucumber sticks
  • leaves from 3-4 coriander stalks, chopped roughly
  • maggi seasoning sauce or soy sauce
  • chilli slices (optional)
  • butter or mayonnaise (optional)
Instructions
Pickles
  1. Peel the vegetables, and chop them into matchsticks (roughly 2'' long, and reasonably thin).
  2. Rub the 4 teaspoons sugar and the 2 teaspoons salt into the vegetables, and leave to rest. Water should accumulate at the bottom of your vegetable holder; wait until they've softened a bit (I leave it for 30 minutes; I believe the standard way is to wait until the carrots have softened enough that you can bend them and have their ends meet).
  3. Wash the vegetables, gently pressing on them to make them disgorge further water. Leave them for a bit so that they dry.
  4. Meanwhile, mix the pickling liquid: put the warm water, the vinegar and the sugar, and stir until all the sugar has dissolved. Put vegetables and pickling liquid into pot: the vegetables should be entirely covered with liquid. Leave to rest for at least one hour.
Sandwich
  1. Slice bread in half, and scoop out the soft part to create a trough in the baguette (yup, I'm not teaching you anything if you already know how to make a sandwich...).
  2. If the bread isn't firm and crunchy, toast it first, then let it cool for a bit before proceeding.
  3. If using butter or mayonnaise, spread it on the baguette (I don't, I prefer my sandwiches the diet way. But butter or mayonnaise makes it easier for the rest of the ingredients to stick to the bread, which can come in handy).
  4. Sprinkle the maggi sauce or soy sauce (a few drops go a long way). Then add the rest of the ingredients, et voilà.
  5. You'll notice I'm not giving any firm guidelines as to quantities, as it depends very much on what you like. The main component is the meat (which can be chả lụa, which can be marinated pork, xá xíu... the possibilities at this stage are endless); the rest adds a little breathing space, and how of that much you want is up to you (I'd suggest having at least one bánh mì, to have an idea what it's supposed to taste like, but it's not a very firm recipe).
Notes
The pickled vegetables can be kept in the fridge for a few months.
Sandwich variants: as mentioned above, change the meat to xá xíu, marinated pork, eggs, meatballs... You can also put less chả lụa, and spread French pâté on the sandwich (again, not my thing; but it's a common variant).
Recipe by Aliette de Bodard at https://www.aliettedebodard.com/recipes/chua-pickled-veggies-banh-mi-vietnamese-sandwich/