This site has now been retired. I've moved to my new site Silverknife, where you'll find new blog posts and all my latest projects and photos. These pages will remain for at least a while, as I know some of you are still looking through the archives, but I'm reposting my travel journals and many other articles on the new site. Come and check it out.
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Got over to my mum and dad's place today for a preliminary test of the tent in their garden, so as not to humiliate myself while standing in a field in Sheffield. Took me about half an hour (with a quick look online to see how to work the runners) and I'm very pleased with the result - it's damn spacious, being built to fit two people with a bit of room, so it'll take me and my rucksack comfortably.
The tent is an all-in-one, so no mucking about with flysheets, and has built-in netting so I can leave the flaps open in hot places despite mosquitos etc. Very satisfying! It was deeply weird looking into that space and thinking that this will be my only longterm home for significant periods of the next year...
Anyway, on with more important things like FOOD! As you'll have gathered if you read this blog much at all, I really like sandwiches. So the Vietnamese hot sandwich known as Bahn Mi was an immediate draw when I saw it mentioned on Achewood.
Once I found this (I believe fairly authentic) recipe, which has two different treatments of pork in it, I was completely smitten. I made these on Saturday and they were almost fatally delicious, to the point where we had to have a second one from the leftovers and then not move too much for several hours. Unfortunately I was too distracted by delicious pork to take photos, so you'll just have to make your own to see what they look like. I'll give the recipe in full as I modified it quite a bit for quantity and available bits as well as my own preferences.
Fry the tenderloin slices with a little soy sauce and salt and pepper till browned.
Dry-fry the 5-spice in a heavy-bottomed pan for less than a minute to bring out the flavour, then stir in the first half of the onion and garlic, and a bit of olive oil. Fry them together for a minute, then add the ground pork and curry paste and fry through. Add the soy, sugar and a good grind of salt and pepper and mix well.
Cut baguette into four lengths and split each one down the middle. Divide the ground pork mixture and tenderloin between them. Put them in the oven at 200 degrees centigrade for 5 minutes, to become lovely and soft inside and light and crisp on the outside. Meanwhile, fry the remaining onion and garlic.
Add a few slices of thick-cut cucumber, chopped scallion and whole basil leaves to each sandwich, and a good shovel of the separate fried garlic and onion.
Remember that your girlfriend actively dislikes extra onion and scrape it out again. Pile into your own sandwich with joy. Mmm...onion.
Eat with unreserved joy, and if you had two then lie on your back for several hours making an expression like a stunned sealion and occasionally moaning.
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