Classic Vietnamese Dishes | Marion’s Kitchen

Ultimate Vietnamese pho. Crispy traditional Vietnamese spring rolls. If there was such a thing as the perfect bite, this would be it my friends. This is really good. Classic Vietnamese pho. Just the most comforting bowl of noodle soup you could possibly imagine. And we are going to go through this one step by step to get the ultimate Vietnamese beef pho. The most amazing bowls of pho I've ever had always have the most brilliant, beautiful, crystal clear, beefy, fragrant, just amazing broth. It's all about the broth. So making that broth at home and getting it really super super super charged with a whole lot of flavor does take a little bit of effort. It's not difficult. A little bit of effort, a little bit of time. But we're going to go through it step by step and you guys are going to have the most amazing bowl of pho at the end. All right, let's get on to the beef first of all. So you want to head to your supermarket or your butcher and it'll depend on where you are and what you can get a hold of. But basically, we want some beef bones. Now I like to go with some bones with a bit of meat on them. So I'm using some short ribs here and I'm also using some oxtail. Now, oxtail is the important one here because the oxtail also has some really good gelatinous stuff inside those bony bits. So if you can't get oxtail, try and get beef knuckle. It's kind of the knuckly joint parts of the beef bones that have the gelatin. So you want to mix bones, gelatin, meat and you should be good to go. All right, so I'm going to get all of that into my pot. The biggest pot you've got at home would be great. I'm going to do about 5 litres of water here. So mine's about a 6-litre stockpot. And now in order to get that really beautiful crystal clear colour, what we need to do is kind of blanch these bones first and get rid of a whole lot of gunk that's going to come out of them first up. So pour the water in just so that they're covered and then bring this up to a boil and just cook it for like 2 or 3 minutes or until you see a whole bunch of gross stuff on the top. You'll know, trust me. While that's happening, we're going to char some vegetables. So yes, even the vegetables get the special treatment for this one. Now I really want to char the outside of these vegetables. So I'm going to use an open gas flame here. If you've got a gas stove top, that's great. If you've got a gas barbecue, you could do that outside. Otherwise, just roast these in the oven until they're really nice and black. First up, I want an onion, whole onion. Pop it on the flame and then a whole piece of ginger as well. What we're looking for here is kind of really burning the outside of these and then the inside will be nice and sweet and soft. That is noisy. Just keep rotating both of these. Kind of turn the heat down to about medium. I don't want to set the fire alarm off. But I do want, as I said, to get a really nice char on the outside here. It's going to take like 10-15 minutes so be a little patient. I really did mean burn the outside of those vegetables. You can see how charry they are. So just take the onion off first. And then what you want to do is actually take off most of that burnt stuff. So just kind of get your knife in here and just peel that off. Then give that a little bit of a rinse as well. All right, now just slice the onion up. Now same thing for the ginger. Just take off that burnt skin. I can tell that ginger is really nice and soft inside. So this is going to take away kind of that harsh onion or harsh heat from the ginger so that our broth ends up being infused with a really sweet onion flavor and a sweet ginger flavor. There is method to the madness, don't worry. Okay, just wash that ginger off as well. And then just give that a slice. And then what I like to do here to get even more flavor out of my ginger is just to kind of break it down with a pestle or a rolling pin. All right, so I did warn you about the horror show that was going to be the top of that liquid there. So just what we wanted... And see, this is what we don't want in our broth and we're getting rid of it. So let's take out those pieces of beef. Let's get them into some water or just rinse them under a tap. And then let's clean up that pot and start all over again. So clean beef bones, go back in the pot. And now for all the beautiful aromatics that makes a fir broth so special. If you have a look at the spices here, what I've got is some star anise, a cinnamon stick and some whole cloves. So they go in. And then I've always got spring onions kicking around the bottom of my fridge. They just always seem to appear there. So it doesn't matter if they're a little bit over the hill, don't worry about that. Pop those in. And now our softened onion and ginger. And now some fresh water. Now bring this up to a gentle simmer and then let it cook for about 2 hours. And the secret here, my friends, is keep it gentle. Keep it nice. Any kind of hard boiling here is going to make our stock really cloudy. And I want a really nice beautiful colour, crystal clear. So just let it do its thing, nice. Okay, so this is smelling truly amazing, my friends. It's incredible how much of the fragrance of the spices and the aromatics you get. The smell of a beautiful fir broth is truly a joy. Now I did sort of scoop off, used a ladle and scooped off some of that scummy stuff that rose up to the top just throughout the 2 hours of cooking. So this is what we're left with. And let's keep going because I really need to eat some fir. Now I can tell you that. Now I just like to get some of these big bits and pieces out of the way first because I do want to strain this. But it makes less of a mess if you kind of get these bits out first. Now I am going to keep that bowl of chunky stuff because I'm going to use some of that beef a little later on. In the meantime, let's take a look at our broth. Strain that out. Just look at that beautiful golden colour. Perfection. Now we're in the final stages of making our perfect bowl of fir. Now I want to get this beautiful broth back into a clean pot. And from now on, it's all about the setup. So the important part of our broth still to come and that is the seasoning. What I want to do is just try this and see where we're at. That star anise fragrance is so beautiful. And then you've got like the background beefiness. And then all those other little aromatics in there. So good. Now I do want to season with some fish sauce. And look, I find that you really need to aggressively season the broth itself. Because we're going to be adding noodles which are unseasoned. We're going to be adding more beef which is unseasoned. So you really want this broth to be the star of the show here. I want a little bit of sugar as well. And then a fairly decent amount of salt here. Okay, let's get that heating up. We're getting there. Just a little bit more salt for my liking. And that just has that beautiful fir magic. I mean not like furs and furry animals. But you know what I mean. The fir is amazing. That's what I'm trying to say. All right, so now let's get our meaty bits and pieces all ready. And because I use beef short rib. It means I've got a good opportunity here to use up some of this lovely slow braised beef. You won't always get good chunks of meat here. So say for example if you're using mainly knuckle bones or marrow bones. You won't get that. But if you've used some short rib, you will. And I am all about the fat and gristle. I have to say. It's not everyone's cup of tea. But it certainly is mine. And you can see because we've simmered that broth so slowly and gently. We've still got like a nice pink tinge to the meat here. And it's not bone dry. Which is good. Now don't worry if you don't have any meat that you can salvage from your bones. Because we're also going to use some extra beef on top. This is just a piece of round steak that I've had in the freezer for about 15 minutes. Putting it in the freezer means that we can slice it really thin far easier than if it was just at room temperature. Now you could use eye fillet here as well. I find the main thing you're going for for this cut of beef is you don't want too much fat or connective tissue. And I hardly ever say that because I am such a fat girl when it comes to beef. But if you've got big hunks of fat running through this piece of beef, the hot soup won't be enough to kind of dissolve it and make it really yummy. So just go for one that is all beef. And you want some really thin slices here. So if you pick that up, it should look like a stained glass window. You should be able to see the light. See the light. You should be able to see the light through the beef. All right, so we are finally at the assembly stage, which means we are nearly there, my friends. We can nearly indulge in our beautiful perfect bowl of pho. What I want you to do here is pretend that you're like Gordon Ramsay and get all really pedantic about the setup. Because the setup is everything here. Setup and timing. All right, so what I've got here are my noodles. I've had them soaking. These are some rice stick noodles. And I've soaked them in just some room temperature water because I want them to soften up and for some of that starchiness to kind of escape out of the noodles. That way, we're going to have a really clean, bouncy, snappy noodle in our bowl and not kind of like a soggy noodle. All right, and then we've got everything else here, our beef. I've got together a little seasoning plate here with some fish sauce and chili and lime and some Thai basil, bean shoots, spring onion, our sliced beef. We're ready to go. So grab yourself a handful. I like to do this bowl by bowl just because I get the right amount of noodle and everything. So noodles go into my rapidly boiling water here. You want to be quick about this. You want to keep the noodles moving. And literally, that was like, I don't know, 10 seconds. Pull them out. Straight into your bowl. Bean shoots, grab a bunch of those into the water. Again, few seconds only. Pull them out. I just want a little bit of thinly sliced onion here. Now you want a nice little bundle of some of this braised beef. For me, I like to go for the little fatty bits but that's just me. Some of those strips, wafer-thin strips of steak. Throw some spring onion on top. Your broth should be bubbling away. I want lots of steam here. It should be like facial time in your kitchen. Pour that on top. Pour that over the beef. You can see the beef changes colour straight away. It's cooking through there. That is it, my friends. One legit bowl of Vietnamese pho right there. When I am eating pho in Australia, a lot of the time, the restaurants will have hoisin sauce and sriracha sauce to add into this. That's great and I grew up kind of eating pho that way. But when I went to the north of Vietnam, in Hanoi, they would eat their pho completely unadorned. Just like this with a little bit of fish sauce, some lime and the herbs. Which I think if you're going to go to the trouble of making your pho soup from scratch, why not really be able to taste it? I'm going to leave mine like this but feel free to add hoisin and sriracha if you like. Now I'm going to add in a couple of chilies. Thai basil. A little squeeze of lime. A little extra fish sauce because I don't know, here in Asia you always add a little bit of extra fish sauce. We do in Thailand anyway. And then mix. Now after waiting half a day, let's make sure that it's all worthwhile. It looks like such a simple dish but as we know, because we've just walked through the whole process, not so simple. It does take some time but wow, is that worth it. And that soup broth, pure beefiness, saltiness, herbaceousness. All the things. All the nesses. It's really one of those beautiful pleasures in life. A good bowl of pho. I hope you guys love this one as much as I do. Yum. So good. Crispy, traditional Vietnamese spring rolls. These are such a delight to eat. Especially with a really beautiful tangy nuoc cham dressing. This is my version of Vietnamese fried spring rolls. So guys, these Vietnamese spring rolls. I love to eat them but can I say, there are quite a few dangerous things that can happen with these spring rolls. There's a few tips and tricks to master here but I'm going to walk you through it. It's okay. If I can do it, you can do it. Alright, let's go. The noodle we want here is called a bean thread vermicelli noodle. It's also known as mung bean noodles, glass noodles, cellophane noodles. Now the tricks start early here my friends. With these noodles, if you boil them in a pot, they will go all soggy and soft and they will not be good. So what you need to do is just soak them in some hot water. It doesn't need to be boiling. Just move those noodles around with a fork. Make sure they're getting an even soaking. There's no clumps anywhere. These will just take a bare 2 minutes. So they're nice and soft. I want to make sure they don't cook any further. I'm going to put them into some room temperature water. Now you want to drain these really well. One of my little tricks here to get these noodles really dry is just to pop them into a clean tea towel. Then give them a really tight squeeze. The reason we want to make sure there's not too much moisture in these noodles is because moisture inside of these spring rolls is going to mean explosion when it comes to frying time. Trust me. That's about as dry as we're going to get them. Pop them into a large bowl here. Now to make these noodles more manageable, I like to go at them with some scissors. I always feel like my mum's going to come over and get angry at me whenever I'm chopping noodles with scissors. Because of course, there is this Asian superstition that chopping noodles is bad luck. There's a lot of bad luck happening here today, guys. Now for the rest of the filling. We're going to do some pork mince and some red Asian shallots. You could also use some French eshelots as well. The key here is that we want them chopped really nice and fine. I also want some prawns. I need these really finely minced. Now to flavour our filling, we need some fish sauce, some sugar, and some white pepper, and a pinch of salt. Then to bring it all together, we need to bind it with an egg. Give this a really vigorous mixing. You want to kind of work the proteins in the pork and the prawn, so that everything becomes quite firm and quite sticky. For the wrapper, we're going to use rice paper. This is what you're looking for. When you're going to buy your rice paper from an Asian market, from the supermarket, try to look out for one that's a blend of rice flour and tapioca flour. The tapioca flour seems to make it softer and more manageable. A lot of the plain rice flour ones can be overly sticky and hard to work with if you're not used to working with them. So there's a tip for buying those. Now for preparing them, there's a couple of things we need to do here. Because we need to wet these in order to roll the spring rolls. But on the other side of the coin, any kind of moisture that goes into hot oil results in an explosion. That's what we don't want. There's a couple of ways around this. First of all, we want to prepare the water that we're going to use for soaking. For that, I need some hot water. A little trick that you might not have thought of is to add some sugar into the water. The sugar is going to help the wrappers to caramelise and brown quicker in the oil. Just give that a stir to dissolve. Now to combat that moisture on the outside of the wrapper, I like to put a tea towel down first. That will soak up some of that moisture as we roll. Now the other secret here guys is that you don't want to leave the wrapper in here long enough that it gets soft. Because that's when you're going to be in a bit of trouble because it'll stick together. Dunk it in. Make sure you get every part of the wrapper submerged. Pull it out. At this stage, it's still quite firm. Don't worry. It'll soften up. So pop that onto your tea towel. I'm going to put my filling here. Then the key to this is to shape your filling into a cylinder first. Because the other thing we need to do here is make sure we're expelling as much air as possible. Air pockets are going to be another reason why your spring rolls will explode in the oil. Now rolling time. Roll over from the bottom. Try to, as I said, get rid of any air pockets. Keep rolling. Fold the sides over. Keep rolling. Keep everything nice and tight. Then pop this on a tray lined with baking paper. Baking paper because this stuff is sticky. It will stick. There's one more thing we need to do here. I know there's a lot of little tips to remember for this recipe. I want to put these into the fridge for about 30 minutes uncovered. That's going to help those wrappers to dry out a little bit before we put them in the oil. While that's happening, I'm going to make our dipping sauce. I want to start off with some fish sauce. Some sugar. Some finely chopped chilli. Some garlic. And some lime juice as well. I nearly forgot. I want a little bit of white vinegar as well. Just whisk that quite vigorously so that sugar dissolves. I just love that magical combination of the sweet, the tangy and the salty. Perfection. Here we are at the moment of truth where the spring roll is going to meet the hot oil. All those little precautions that we've made will hopefully, fingers crossed, they all work out. I'm going to test the oil first. I want to make sure it's hot. Don't want it too hot because overly hot oil and explosions aren't good. But I want to see some nice bubbles here. Okay, now definitely do this in batches. As I said, these guys are sticky and they will want to stick to each other like there's no tomorrow. I like to put in about half a dozen depending on how big your wok is. Then you're going to need to get straight in there with some chopsticks and keep them moving and separate them as they're frying just until they get a little crunchy. Once they've gotten crunchy and hard on the outside, they'll stop sticking together. Now we're looking good. These guys are going to happily fry, not stick together now. You can see we're getting a little bubbling effect on these spring rolls. The wonderful thing about these guys is their imperfection. There will be some little bubbles, some little gnarly bits on the outside and that's okay. It's just the way they are. Once these are golden and they're starting to get some dark brown spots, that's when I know they're ready to go. Now to serve these up, I like to just snip them into smaller pieces. Obviously, we're serving them with our nuoc cham dressing and then on the side, just some lettuce leaves and some herbs. The way we want this to go is grab a lettuce leaf, add a little chunk of spring roll, some dressing and some nice fresh herbs. Now that gets all wrapped up and goes straight in my mouth. Texturally, this is beautiful. The crunch and that soft savoury filling. Flavour-wise, my goodness! The fresh herbs, that porky prawn mixture and that tangy dressing that just brings everything together. Every mouthful right here is an explosion of flavour. Amazing! One of Hanoi's most iconic dishes, turmeric grilled fish topped with heaps of beautiful dill and fresh herbs. This is my version of char kha. Whenever I land in Hanoi, I am beelining to get some char kha at one of the famous char kha restaurants there. Hanoi's most iconic dishes, char kha and it's a turmeric and dill fish. Have a look at this. Look at this sizzling pot. So gorgeous! This is one of my favourite restaurant dishes there. I've tried to recreate the same flavours so that you guys can experience it at home. One of the main things we want to do is get some marinade going for our fish. I'm going to start off with some spring onion here. Then I want some garlic as well. As always, a little pinch of salt, which is going to help to break down the fibres in these aromatics. Then we just want a rough paste here. This is the kind of texture that you're looking for. Pop that into a bowl. Now to that, we want to add some turmeric. This dish is all about the turmeric, so be generous here. This is probably not a traditional ingredient, but I like to add just a little dash of curry powder. It gives the spiced element of this dish a little bit more depth. Then a little dash of sugar. And some fish sauce. And a little bit of oil as well. Our other most important ingredient in this dish is dill. We really want a lot of that dill flavour. So we're going to put some into our marinade, as well as finish off the dish with it. Just give that a mix. I love how gorgeous and sunshiny this marinade turns out to be. This makes me very happy. Now let's talk about the fish. In Hanoi, they use a local river fish, which obviously we don't get here in Thailand, and you might not get at home. What you want is just a firm, white fillet of fish. It needs to be firm so it doesn't break up too much while it's cooking. I've just got some sea bass here. Just give that a mix. This doesn't need long to marinate at all. I would just set it aside for a few minutes while you're getting everything else ready. The next thing we want to make is a little dressing that we're going to serve with the fish and the noodles. It kind of binds everything together with a sweet, tangy flavour. I'm going to start off with a little bit of garlic. And some chopped chilli. And then some fish sauce. White vinegar. And sugar. Then for that beautiful alchemy of the tangy and the sour and the sweet that a lot of Vietnamese sauces have, we really need to add some lime as well. This is the kind of sauce where you really need to use your own senses. The limes could be more or less sour in your region. The type of fish sauce that you're using might be more or less salty. Start out with a little bit of these ingredients. Give it a mix. Quite a good mix in this instance so we can dissolve that sugar. Then just taste that sauce. I love that beautiful chemistry that happens with fish sauce, sugar and those sour ingredients. I am going to add a little bit more lime juice for my taste though. One last thing we need to do before we start cooking our fish is get the finishing herbs all ready. I want some spring onion for this. I want some really fine strips here. Lengthways, slice them through and then into battens. Some dill. I want the dill to be fairly chunky here. I don't want a fine slice. I'm just going to cut some pieces. Once you kind of get to the stem part, because this is going to cook really quickly at the end, I don't want any of these big, thick bits of stem in there. I want to take those out. Just leave the tender leaves. Into a wide pan, I just want to add a little bit of oil. In goes my fish. You want to spread that fish out, so each piece gets some good contact with the heat at the bottom of that pan. Just let that fish cook on that first side. Don't disturb it too much. You don't want that fish breaking up. Just want to wait until it lifts naturally from the bottom of the pan. Smell is just like pure joy. I'm telling you, the dill, the garlic, the turmeric and the curry powder is all just smelling delightful. Now I want to gently flip my pieces over. I find chopsticks are the best way to do this. Now just look at that beautiful colour we've got on that fish. Amazing. Now I'm going to add in my herbs. Make sure I get a good mix of dill and the spring onion. This is done tableside when you're eating it at a restaurant in Hanoi. I just love the drama of the sizzling, the herbs and the steam. You do want to add a little bit of water to create that sauce. Then one final squeeze of lime juice. Some extra flavour there. That is it. The smell of this is so amazing. I like to serve this at the table with some of that nook chum dressing that we made. Then just those extra herbs as well. As in Hanoi, I would always serve these with some vermicelli noodles. This is how you build your bowl. I'm going to get some beautiful pieces of the fish. Then a little spoonful of that dressing. Don't forget some of that amazing sauce in the bottom of that pan because that is pure flavour, my friends. Pour some of that on top. This is just a little bowl of sunshine. The beautiful marriage of that dill, the spring onion, the turmeric, and then that sweet-sour dressing and the noodles. This is just... It's so good, I'm lost for words. Ever since I've been to Hanoi, I have been craving this dish. Bun Cha is one of those classic Hanoi street foods but it can be difficult to get right at home. So I've got a few tips and tricks up my sleeve. The first one is getting the marinade just right. So we start off with a little bit of fish sauce and then some dark soy sauce for a little bit of colour and some sugar and then some finely diced red shallot. You could use eshelots as well or some red onion if that's what you've got. Then you want some garlic as well, finely chopped and a really good hit of pepper. To me, it's that garlic and pepper combination that really makes this a classic Vietnamese marinade. Now half this marinade is going to go into some pork mince and we're going to make some epically tasty little pork meatballs with that. Give that a good mix. Start off with the spoon and then you're just going to have to get your hands in there because you really want to mix and work that pork and then you want to get your hands in there because you really want to work that pork until it becomes nice and sticky. You'll see how the texture changes. It's almost like you're kneading a dough because we're working those proteins in the meat and then we want to start slapping. This is exactly where my mum does it to get the right texture on her Thai fish cakes. It works just as well with these meatballs. We want some decent-sized little patties here. Now to get the most flavour out of these guys, you really want to let them marinate for at least a couple of hours. Overnight is best. Now let's talk about the sliced pork. I'm using pork belly because I love pork belly. It has a beautiful amount of fat and flavour. If you would rather use a leaner cut, go right ahead. All you want to do is slice it into pieces I'd say about half a centimetre thick. A delicately sized piece of pork belly if you like. Now the rest of our marinade goes onto that pork. Just mix that through. Again, you want to let this have some time to really develop some flavour. So at least two hours or overnight. Now the dressing. This part is one of the most crucial. It's really all about getting a balance of sweet, sour, tangy. First of all, we want a little bit of fish sauce. Well, a little bit. A lot of fish sauce. And then some sugar, a little bit of vinegar, and some water. Now you want to heat this up until the sugar's dissolved. Sugar's dissolved, that's looking good. Let's just have a little taste. Tangy, sweet, sour, love it. Now here's my big tip when you're making this kind of dressing. Let this cool down. Once it's cool, pour it into a bowl and then add in your lime juice. If you add the lime juice in at the beginning when you're cooking the sauce, you lose all the freshness and the tang. Now speaking of pork, here we go. My favourite part. Just brush your pan with a little bit of oil. And then here we go. Now would you look at that colour. This is why the marinade is all important. That little bit of sugar and that seasoning is giving us a beautiful crust on the outside of our little meatballs. These are looking super delicious. Let's take these off. I've got quite a bit of fat left here in the pan. I don't think I'll add any more oil. I'll just get those strips of pork belly straight in there. These pieces really take no time at all. Just want to wait until you've got that lovely colour on the outside and then flip them straight away. Pork belly will stay really nice and tender as long as you cook it really quickly. It's either a low and slow or a very fast-cooking meat. I'm just going to pour a little bit of that marinade in there as well. Give it some extra flavour and some extra sizzle. Who doesn't like extra sizzle? It's looking good. Get those pork pieces out. Now here's the thing with this pork. We're not done with it yet. A few pieces of pork belly and a few of those little pork patties go into a bowl. Then that dressing we made earlier is actually to dress this, the pork. Pour that dressing over the top. What you get is this amazing marriage of porky juices, sweet, sour, tangy dressing. That is what's going to make this noodle salad extra special at the end. Everyone has their own individual bowl and it's just about picking up bits and pieces and mixing it and it all getting delicious. Start off with a little bit of noodle. Of course, you want a few pieces of pork, along with some of that amazing dressing. Pick off a few little pieces of herbs, some lettuce. I want some of that pickled papaya. The recipe for that's on my website if you want to give it a go. It's really easy. Everyone can add their own little dash of chilli or garlic to taste. Mix it all up and create your own perfect bite. That, guys, it's amazing. I look really bad when I eat noodles, don't I? It's never pretty. Here it is, my ultimate banh mi sandwich. Why is it so ultimate? Because there's this sticky, slow-cooked pork which is just out of this world magnificent. First things first, let's get this sticky pork going. We need a marinade and a very good one at that. We're going to start with some hoisin sauce. A little bit of light soy sauce and a little bit of dark soy sauce. Mix that together. I'm using a pork belly here, a skinless pork belly today because I'm all about the sticky today. Not about the crispy skin for this one. Just pour that marinade all over the top. Get your hands in there. Give that pork a nice little massage with all those lovely flavours. Because this is a very sweet marinade, I'm going to add a little bit of water just to the side of that pork because I don't want it to stick or burn too much on the bottom of the pan. You want the water about halfway up the side of your pork belly. Wrap that in foil. That goes into a very low oven for about 2.5 hours or until it's really sticky and pork tender. While that pork is doing that thing, we've got plenty of time to get our other ingredients ready. One of the key things for me about a banh mi sandwich is having that pickled vegetable, that sweet tanginess, the crunchiness. I'm going to do some pickled carrot. All we need to do is just add a little bit of sugar and some white vinegar. Mix that up and just set that aside until you are ready to assemble your sandwich. Let's have a look at what we've got. That pork looks so epic already. I'm just going to pop this back under a really hot grill in the oven. I just want to get some colour on the top of that pork. Just while that pork is cooking, I'm going to get everything else ready for my sandwich. Now I need some cucumber. I just want some nice slices. Cut those into batons. Some red chilli. Then that carrot that we've had pickling. What I want to do is grab a hold of that and really squeeze and get rid of all of that liquid so that we're left with a nice pickly carrot without all the juices. Now we just have to wait for that pork. Look at that! Heaven! Now this pork is incredibly tender. So I'm just going to carefully get it out onto my board. Just slice through. Now I'm barely even touching that pork and it's just falling apart. Amazing! I'll just have one small piece. So good! That's very exciting. For your banh mi, you definitely want a really great crusty bread roll. There are a few elements here that you need. First of all, you just need some pate. I've just got a pork pate here. Then I like to add some mayonnaise. Not strictly necessary but just like adding extra bits and pieces. I want some of that pickled carrot and some cucumber. And some of that ridiculously amazing pork. Now I just want a couple of sprigs of coriander and just a sprinkling of chili. And that my friends is one hell of a sandwich. Now excuse me, I'm going to be busy for a while. This is really good.