Vietnamese Grilled Chicken Sandwich

banh mi ga

In my quest to master the art of Grilling Edible Food, I meant to explore a number of different marinades and glazes for chicken - we tend to eat a lot of chicken breast which really needs a bit of a kick to be worthwhile. Unfortunately, the first thing I stumbled upon was this recipe for five-spice chicken in vietnamese sandwiches, and we've pretty much been eating just this nonstop since. The marinade works wonderfully on chicken and almost as well on pork ribs, and it's pretty much perfection regardless of how you prepare it - grill, oven, pan.


Despite all the times we've had these sandwiches lately, they've been almost impossible to photograph. Not because they're ugly, it's just that the photos don't... happen. (If you come here for the pretty pictures, please be advised that the one above was taken around 9 PM while I was walking the cat. Also: yes, after three weeks of constant sunbathing, I'm still this pale.)

The meat is all well and good, then, but banh mi are really so much more. Thinly sliced meat chucked into a mayo-slathered baguette* along with cucumber, just lightly pickled julienned carrot and daikon, thinly sliced red onion and jalapeno peppers may not sound like the best summer meal ever, but believe me, it IS. In general I'm not much of a fan of pickled things, but together with the spicy-salty chicken... it's just divine. Everyone I've served them to has loved them.

I know julienning this much carrots and daikon radish may seem like a lot of work - I happen to find it soothing - but making a big batch is definitely worth it as they'll keep for several days in the fridge. (I just had some on a slice of sweet-ish rye bread. Talk about fusion.)


*you're meant to use light bread and I must say I prefer it, but sometimes you've just got to make at least a game attempt at health-consciousness, hence the more rustic baguette in the pictures.

Vietnamese Grilled Chicken Sandwich
adapted from Bon Appétit, Dec 2005, serves 4

3 skinless, bonless chicken breasts
2 tbsp soy sauce
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 shallots, chopped
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp five-spice powder
1 star anise, ground

100 ml sugar
100 ml white wine vinegar
pinch of salt
½ l julienned carrots
½ l julienned daikon radish

4 20-cm (or so) pieces of baguette

mayonnaise
thinly sliced red onion (soak in cold water for milder taste)
thinly sliced cucumber
1 jalapeño chile, thinly sliced
(fresh cilantro)
worchestershire sauce

Mix together the ingredients for the marinade in a bowl. Turn the chickens in it to coat and let marinate in the fridge for a few hours.

Stir the ingredients for the "pickle" marinade until the sugar's dissolved. Mix in the julienned vegetables and let stand in the fridge for at least a few hours, or overnight. Drain well before serving.

Grill the chicken on medium/high heat until cooked through. Let cool just a bit and slice thinly.

Cut the baguette slices open and grill the cut sides until slightly crispy. Spread mayo on the bottom half of the baguette, top with chicken, cucumber strips, carrot-radish pickle, red onion and (if using) cilantro. Sprinkle with jalapeño and worchestershire sauce, top with the top half of the baguette and eat.


(As for the original epicurious recipe: if you live in an area with ready access to "skinless boneless chicken thighs" please don't tell me about it, because I'm going to CRY.)

Recipe after the jump!

Leftover Tuesday: Roast Chicken Sandwich

AKA the dear lord, it's too hot to cook! edition. (Seriously, the thermometer on my balcony, which hasn't got any sun so far today, is showing 29.5°C. My personal comfort zone kind of ends around 20°, which I realize is totally wussy, but still. Make it stop!) This month, Leftover Tuesday is hosted by Pam of Project Foodie, so head over there later in the week for a round-up of inventively repurposed dishes. You know, something that isn't a sandwich.

It's a wonderful sandwich though, partly because the fabulous breakfast rolls that I already used for a Caesar salad are still perfectly edible - I toasted them lightly to hide the hint of staleness, and partly because fried onions, sun-dried tomatoes, goat cheese and herbs are all very very fine things indeed. Not to mention the actual leftover I used: grilled chicken (bought, not home-made - it was too hot to cook yesterday, too).

P.S. for more interesting use of leftovers here in quarkland, check out the chocolate pastries from this weekend.

Roast Chicken Sandwich with Sun-Dried Tomatoes, Onions & Goat Cheese
heavily influenced by Bon Appétit

Really, the title is pretty much the recipe. OK, somewhat more elaborately: chop 3 sun-dried tomatoes (per serving). Cut half an onion (per serving) into fairly thick rings and fry in a bit of oil - I used the oil from the jar of tomatoes - until nicely browned. Mix together a few tablespoons of goat cheese with some chopped herbs - I used basil - and spread it over toasted/grilled breakfast roll halves. Cut thin(ish) slices of roasted chicken; wash a small bunch of arugula. Sprinkle half of the onions and tomatoes on the bottom half of the roll, top with chicken slices, arugula, and the rest of the tomatoes and onions, plonk top half of the roll on top. Eat. Consider doing this lying down on the cool tile floor downstairs.

Recipe after the jump!

Fish & Quips: Cottage Pie

I love English desserts. When I think of English food, it's not blandness that springs to mind (of course, Finnish cuisine is the only one inferior to the English, so my opinion shouldn't count for very much), but an abundance of hearty, unfussy sweets, laden with fruits and especially berries - take a look at summer pudding as a prime example. Not to mention trifles, and fools, and crumbles. (I've even tried to make my own clotted cream, with, erm, interesting results.) Oh, and custards. Homemade custard is so good... In fact, I think I've solved my what about Sunday's dessert problem, or rather, replaced it with its opposite: how to choose from all of those...

With all this love for English desserts, it may be a bit of a surprise that the dish I'm presenting for the English food isn't a joke-event, hosted by Sam of Becks & Posh, is a savory one, and it's not even an English breakfast (mmm, fried tomatoes and rashers and eggs and baked beans). And there's nothing funny about cottage pie other than the name - that the lamb version is a shepherd's pie is quite understandable, if you overlook the fact that it is in fact not the least pie-like, but rather a casserole. A layer-deficient casserole. But what's so cottage-y about beef mince?


Anyway, we all know how I like my casseroles, and the weather is obliging me by being very English (pouring rain and 10°C), so we're going to tuck into this hearty and comforting dish RIGHT NOW.

Cottage Pie

I don't really have a recipe for you: I made a mince sauce out of finely chopped onions, celery and carrots, half a package of bacon and about 800 g of minced beef, a can of crushed tomatoes and a squeeze of tomato puree, a bay leaf, some beef stock, and salt and pepper. (I let the sauce simmer gently for about half an hour, while preparing the mash topping and heating the oven.)

Then made a mash out of four medium-large potatoes and two parsnips by boiling them, peeled and cut into chunks, in salted water and mashing them together with an, ahem, generous amount of butter and some finely grated cheddar (not exactly kosher, but good), seasoning with freshly ground pepper and nutmeg.

Transferred the meat sauce to a large ovenproof casserole (plus some portion-sized ones) and topped with the mashed root veg, dotted the whole thing with butter, and baked at 175°C until it got a nice color, about 45 minutes.

And, erm. If you fill your baking dishes very full, make sure to have a piece of foil or something at the bottom of your oven catching drips.

Just saying.

Recipe after the jump!

Cold Roast Beef

Paahtopaisti / rostbiff

I don't really know that I'm using the right name here. What I mean when I say "roast beef" is indeed a big hunk o'cow, but the preparation method is fairly specific: the surface of the roast is rubbed with pepper and garlic, it's browned in a hot pan with a bit of butter, then roasted at a low temperature until medium-rare, then marinaded overnight in a garlicky, herb-infused brine-type... thing.


Um. Then it's sliced thinly (thinner than in my pictures - equipment at the cottage does not include sharp knives) and served cold. Or you could get it from the cold cut section in well-stocked groceries, but that's nothing to blog about.

Cold (Garlic) Roast Beef

originally from Stockmann's customer magazine

big hunk of beef roast - size doesn't really matter here, but this makes for excellent leftovers
a tbsp or two of butter
ground black pepper & salt
1 clove garlic, cut in half

1 l (4 cups) beef stock (I use commercial)
100 ml (scant half-cup) balsamic vinegar
1 large-ish onion, sliced
1 small leek, white & light green parts only, sliced
fresh oregano & thyme - quite a lot
5 cloves garlic

Bring the meat to room temperature, then rub it all over with the cut sides of the garlic. Rub in a generous amount of pepper and a dash of salt. Brown all sides of the roast in a bit of butter. Roast at 125°C/260°F until the internal temperature reaches 59°C/138°F.

While the roast is, er, roasting, throw all the ingredients for the marinade in a pot and bring to the boil. When the meat comes out of the oven, place marinade and roast in a sealed ziploc or roasting bag (that is then placed in a bowl). Refrigerate overnight, brush off stray pieces of herbs and onions, and bring to room temperature before serving.


If you have leftovers, they keep well wrapped in foil (only slice as much as you'll eat at once, though, as the thin slices will go dry and ucky). Makes for excellent sandwiches!

Recipe after the jump!

Rostad höna med chorizo & kronärtsskocka (Chorizo and Artichoke-Stuffed Roast Chicken)

I'm at the speaking in tongues thing again, this time for the Swedish food blog event Cyberkocken (check out the roundup here). Writeup and recipe in English below.

Så var det då dags att försöka blogga om mat på det andra inhemska (som visserligen är det första för mig, men ändå - jag har blivit van vid att både skriva om och tänka på mat mest på engelska, bisarrt nog).

Ingredienserna till Cyberkocken var ju då citron, chorizo, kronärtsskocka och bröd. (Se alla bidrag här.) Färsk kronärtsskocka hittade inte jag (har faktiskt ingen aning om när det är säsong) så tanken på en gräddig, chorizospäckad gratäng fick jag begrava redan i startgroparna. Samtidigt var det ett tag sen jag rostade höna, faktiskt var det före jag började matblogga här, så då kom det ju sig naturligt att (istället för att hitta på ett riktigt recept) bara blanda ihop alltihop i en fyllning till en (eller i det här fallet två; brodern min var tillväntad till söndagslunch och honom får man reservera gott om kött åt) höna och sedan bara slänga hela härvan i ugnen. Eller?


I praktiken satt jag sen där med en hel massa fyllning (jag brukar kalla det stuffing vid julbordet och få förebrående blickar från den äldre mer språkvårdande generationen) som inte rymdes i hönan, men kom på att i *host* salmonellahysteriska trakter så tillreds stuffingen (hjälp! kan inte tänka på det med rätta namnet!) ofta separat. Så då blev det diverse små formar i ugnen också.

Att rosta kyckling/höna i ugnen är lätt som en plätt, det var det ingen som berättade åt mig före jag själv, med stor bävan, försökte mig på en av Nigellas allra simplaste versioner. Fortfarande räknar jag ut stektiderna enligt tabellen i How to Eat: 30 minuter i 200°C + 20 minuter för varje halvkilo. Har man fyllning med skall vikten av den räknas med, och även så gäller det att inte packa den för tätt. Men annars är det inget att vara rädd för (så länge själva fågeln man får tag på är någorlunda saftig) och framförallt ser det väldigt imponerande ut. Vilket man nog inte kan säga om fyllningen själv.



To recap in English:

Cyberkocken is the Swedish equivalent to the Paper Chef event - you get a certain number of ingredients and prepare a meal or dish using all of them. This time the ingredients were lemon, chorizo, artichoke and bread. I'd been dreaming of a chorizo-specked creamy artichoke gratin, but couldn't find fresh artichoke so I guess I'll have to keep on dreaming for a while. In the meantime it had been a while since I last roasted a chicken, so instead of actually coming up with a recipe, I threw all the ingredients together for a stuffing.

In fact, I got a little bit carried away and wound up with way more stuffing than I actually needed. Luckily salmonella fears have taught me that stuffing should can be prepared separately, so the leftovers went into these lovely new cocottes.

The great thing about a roasted chicken is that it looks pretty. And more complicated than it is - the first time I roasted one whole I couldn't imagine winding up with anything other than a complete mess on my hands, but no, it's really easy and fairly foolproof. My formula for roasting times comes from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat - 30 minutes at 200°C/400°F + 20 minutes for every pound (500 g).

Rostad höna med chorizo & kronärtsskocka
1.5 liter brödtärningar
225 g riktigt stark chorizo, också den tärnad
1 msk olja
1 lök, skivad
4 vitlöksklyftor, hackade
2 burkar kronärtsskockshjärtan (det skulle säkert gå fint med färsk också), sköljda ock skurna i bitar
färska örter (själv hade jag bara persilja, men det gick helt bra)
2 dl hönsbuljong
1 msk torr sherry
1 citron
1 (eller 2) hel kyckling
salt & peppar

Toasta brödtärningarna lätt i en 150-gradig ugn (skaka om då och då) - ca 20 minuter.

Fräs löken och vitlöken i oljan (med chorizon om den är rå och inte rökt som min) tills de är mjuka, blanda i kronärtsskockan och örterna (och chorizon). Rör om tills allt är varmt. Just före du skall stoppa i fyllningen blandar du i brödet och en slurk hönsbuljong med sherryn iblandad. Peppra enligt smak.

Värm ugnen till 200°C. Skölj och torka fågeln och nyp bort ev. fjäderrester (uck). Salta och peppra både ytan och innanmätet, fyll på med så mycket av fyllningen som ryms. Peta in citronskivor under skinnet på bröstet (eller släng i dem tillsammans med fyllningen - under skinnet ger mer smak tycker jag men det blir såklart mindre vackert). Gnid in lite olivolja i skinnet och bind eventuellt upp vingarna. Stek på galler (eh, med en ugnsform under, såklart) i 30 minuter + 20 min för varje 500 g, pensla ytan med lite hönsbuljong några gånger under stekningen.

Resten av fyllningen häller du i en smord ugnsform (eller flera - det kanske bara är jag som har fnatt på portionsformar men i det här fallet var det också praktiskt för en större form hade nog inte rymts i ugnen) och steker täckt med lock eller folie i ungefär en kvart och sedan otäckt (hrm) en kvart eller så till, tills ytan blir vackert krispig. Att sätta in formen ca 20 minuter före hönan skall vara färdig borde fungera bra, för den kan gärna sitta kvar i ugnen en stund medan hönan vilar på skärbrädet.

Hur man vackert skär upp en höna får ni lista ut själva, för det kan inte jag.



Chorizo and Artichoke-Stuffed Roast Chicken
1.5 l (6 cups) breadcubes
225 g (½ lb) chorizo, cubed
1 tbsp olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 cans artichoke hearts, drained, rinsed and cubed
fresh herbs (I used parsley)
200 ml chicken stock
1 tbsp dry sherry
1 lemon
1 (or in this case, 2) chicken
salt & pepper

Toast the breadcubes in a 150°C oven for about 20 minutes, stirring a few times during baking. Soften the onions and garlic in the olive oil (together with the chorizo if it's raw), then add herbs and artichoke hearts (and chorizo) and stir until it's heated through. Just before stuffing the bird(s), mix in the bread cubes and a splosh of sherried chicken stock. Add pepper to taste.

Clean and dry the birds and salt and pepper inside and out. Add some stuffing to the inner cavities and lemon slices either together with the stuffing or pushed in under the skin on the breasts of the chicken.

Roast at 200°C for 30 minutes + 20 minutes for every pound (500 g), basting with the remaining chicken stock a few times during roasting.

Pour the rest of the stuffing into one or several greased oven-proof bowls and bake, covered, for about 15 minutes, and then uncovered another 15 minutes or until crisp on the surface.

Recipe after the jump!

New Tricks for the New Year

I've never been good with meat. (Except chicken. I'm good at chicken. Unfortunately, this is probably more because of the easiness of chicken than any lurking prowess in me.) Usually I labor for hours and wind up with something bland (hello, pork roast of doom), or dry, or just stringy as hell. Regardless, I have decided to forge on and Improve Myself in spite of genetic discouragements - my mother isn't good with meat, either. (I can't believe I just said that in public. Hej mamma!)

I think we were all pretty astonished to find ourselves seeing in the Lunar New Year with tender, flavorful, succulent morsels of twice-cooked five-spice lamb (recipe at Epicurious). No-one more so than I, knowing that this wasn't the lamb shanks called for in the recipe, but a large hunk of unspecified mutton. Apparently if you cook anything for fifteen minutes in a lot of boiling water and then braise it for almost four hours in a mixture of simple syrup, ginger, soy, garlic, chilies and five-spice, it will turn out OK.

(My only gripe here would be that for something containing the word chiles in its title, this isn't very hot. Not everything needs to be, of course, but next time I'll up the chili a bit.)

We also had these pot stickers (first dumplings ever!), but they were all gone by the time I got to the picture-taking stage. As was an alarming amount of the lamb. I think that qualifies as a definite YAY.

Recipe after the jump!

Orange Marinated Pork with Pistachio

This recipe is a bit of a mess, actually. A bit like the photo, really (not sure WHAT I was thinking with the angle, except that my family hasn't quite adjusted to this whole "wait for photographs to be taken before tucking in" thing).

With all those distinctive flavors (orange marmalade! chili pepper! Dijon mustard!) you'd expect it to have some serious kick to it, but as it turned out, not so much. The salad of sweet potatoes, asparagus and chickpeas served with mâche we had to go with it totally stole the show, there. (This will be blogged about when we make it again, because my pictures turned out all sucky.)

The award for most superfluous ingredient (and there's lots to choose from, unfortunately) goes to the pomegranate seeds that just totally disappeared during roasting, leaving no discernible taste to either meat or drippings, although to be perfectly honest, the pomegranate I had wasn't anything to write home about. (Think that could have something to do with it?)

Still, it's not like it was a TOTAL disaster, so here is the recipe:

Orange-Marinated Pork with Pistachios (and some other bits and bobs)

adapted from Kodin Kuvalehti

for the marinade:
100 ml orange marmalade
2 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp crushed chili flakes
2 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp lemon juice
100 ml chopped mint
1 cinnamon stick

top loin or neck of pork, about 2,5 kg (ours was a lot smaller)
pomegranate seeds, pistachio nuts and sliced oranges

Whizz together the ingredients for the marinade in a food processor, rub into meat. Marinate in the fridge overnight. Let sit at room temperature for a few hours before roasting.

Stud the meat with pomegranate seeds, pistachio nuts and orange slices (this is where the mess came in). Roast, fatty side up, at 225°C for 20 minutes, then at 175°C until internal temperature reaches 70°C, about an hour and a half. (The recipe called for an internal temperature of 85°C which I'm choosing to call a typo and not a deliberate attempt to sweat out everything that is enjoyable about meat. Ahem.) Take out of the oven, cover with tinfoil and let rest for about ten minutes before serving. Drizzle with pan juices.

Recipe after the jump!