Last week I emailed my sister Jen a recipe for a banh mi sandwich.  She thought it looked good but took offense with the inclusion of cilantro.  We exchanged emails:

Jen: “I love the pickled vegetables although I absolutely detest cilantro. (I read recently that there may be a gene responsible for the emphatic love/hate relationship people have with cilantro.)”

Me: “How can you hate cilantro?  That’s one of the best parts!”

Jen: “I find cilantro inedible.  I can’t even stand the smell of it.  If I get pho or something where I know they’re going to add cilantro, I always ask them to leave it out.”

I must have the “Love cilantro” gene.  (Who identified this by the way? That must have been an awkward conversation with the colleagues: “You know guys, mapping the human genome’s cool and all, but uh… I think I’d like to identify the cilantro gene.”)

Tonight I made my very first banh mi, originally planning to follow a recipe from Eating Well magazine until Jen sent me a link to perhaps the greatest website ever — it’s called Battle of the Banh Mi and on it you’ll find everything you ever wanted to know about this glorious sandwich, including a state by state directory of banh mi shops. Brilliant.  The site also has numerous recipes; I wrote a few things down and got cooking.

Started by shredding several carrots and a daikon radish with the handy dandy slicer. Managed to do it without taking off a finger, too!

The recipe calls for the carrots and daikon to be pickled in a jar, but I didn’t have one so I used a bowl instead.  Added 3 cups of warm water, 3 tbsp rice vinegar, 2 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp of salt, and set it aside for an hour.

Next I sliced up a pound of pork butt (figured it wouldn’t dry out as much as loin). The pork butt was $2.39/lb at Kam Sen. Incredibly cheap.  I highly recommend buying meat there.

I marinated the pork with 2 tbsp chopped onions, 2 tbsp fish sauce, 2 cloves chopped garlic, 2 tsp sugar, 1/4 cup veg oil, 1 tsp sesame oil and freshly cracked black pepper. Into the fridge for an hour.

After an hour it was time to get the bread ready, so I threw a Trader Joe’s “Bake-at-Home” Ficelle into the oven — 375 degrees for ten minutes.

Threw the meat onto the griddle.

And moved it around until it cooked through and developed a seared crust.

For the assembly: a layer of meat, sliced cucumbers, the pickled vegetables, and — Jen, avert your eyes — a heap of cilantro. On the bread a thin spread of non-fat mayonnaise dressing, and because I like everything spicy, a generous squirt of Sriracha.

Oh.  My.  God.  It’s like a party in your mouth.  Savory, herby, meaty, spicy, tangy, salty, crunchy, chewy… it’s got everything. What a sandwich.  All this time I’ve been craving a banh mi and all I had to do was make it myself!

Next time I’ll marinate the pork even longer and pickle the veggies for a few days in a jar.   I suppose if you truly despise cilantro you could leave it out or substitute it with another herb, but for me, that’s an essential part of the sandwich and Vietnamese cuisine.

I know Jen was making her own banh mi tonight, so I’m curious how it turned out.  I’m guessing it didn’t include cilantro.