Book Review: The Banh Mi Handbook: Recipes for Crazy-Delicious Vietnamese Sandwiches

I finally got around to making the sardine and tomato sauce banh mi from this book after procuring the tin of sardines roughly a year ago, maybe more.  Hey, I’m pacing myself.

As Agnes and I tore through the sandwiches, four things came to mind:

1. Dude, these jalapenos are seriously HOT!  Holy shit!
2. What idiot forgot to put the pickled carrots and radishes (do chua) on these?  O…right. Me.
3. I should have made two more sandwiches,
4. I need to get that book review done at some point. 

It would appear that some point is officially now and, FYI, taking a year or so to do a book review is not necessarily a bad thing. 

It gives one time to see if the book actually benefits your skillz, if the recipes produce really great food, if it is a frequent source/resource and bottom line is the book really worth recommending or just a shiny new thing that ends up taking up valuable shelf space on your already sagging shelf of cookbooks.

This book does all of those things:

1. No joke.  The resultant sandwiches are crazy-delicious and fine representatives of the banh mi form: savory, whispery sweet, spicy and that edge of je ne sais quoi that foodies (Die Foodie!  Die!) are currently calling umami, a fine, misappropriated, overused Japanese term,
2. Short of some readily available commercial condiments (Maggi, sriracha, fish sauce, etc.)  It provides recipes for every ingredient necessary to assemble banh mi from the bread, sauces, pickled vegetables, cold cuts, pates and even head cheese for the more adventurous.  As such, you are never left standing in the middle of your white bread grocery store with half a basket of ingredients that you will not use because you cannot find one or two essential flavors,
3. These recipes ain’t just for sandwiches.  You will recall that the original sandwich was comprised of re-purposed leftovers rather than assembled from the ground up as a stand alone entity.  To that end, many of the recipes especially the chicken sate and Hanoi chicken offerings make excellent entrees.  The Hanoi chicken marinade, in fact, works wonders on left over steak, a quick saucy swim, flash grilled and served over rice (white, garlic or leftover roast pork fried from Friday night’s take out,)
4. These recipes ain’t just Vietnamese.  I bring the pickled carrots and radishes to work for lunch, the citrus pickled cabbage is an excellent side with Agnes' pork schnitzel and the flavors are absolutely trans-formative when applied to a cheese free Philly cheese steak. 

Bottom line?  I recommend this book.  Buy it, borrow it from a friend or the library, Xerox and return it, or if of morally compromised fiber, steal it.

It is not a shiny thing that will sit on your already sagging shelf of cookbooks.  Trust me.