cook: banh mi

I shopped my freezer this weekend, where there was pork belly. My fridge was super full with leftovers, but I made pickled daikon and carrots anyway in order to make Vietnamese sandwiches. I stabbed and scored the pork belly and then dry rubbed the meat with white pepper and garlic powder and then rubbed it all over with coarse salt and let it dry in the clubhouse refrigerator for 24 hours. I then put the salted pork into a 400 degree Fahrenheit oven on the roast setting for 40 minutes to render fat and to crisp.  

Vietnamese sandwich-making time. Requisite ingredients are the pickled vegetables, herbs, pate, and telera rolls as a substitute for baguettes. 

And mustn't forget condiments like Japanese mayonnaise, Chinese hoisin sauce and good old Asian-American Sriracha sauce.

Cecilia said it was my best banh mi ever. I think the pork belly is key because before I would use just roast pork or sautéed lemongrass pork cubes.

And that day, I also re-potted and cleaned up my little succulent pots. These pots will be the greenery to embellish my ceramic tableware for sale at the harvest fair next month.

I also brought the dogs that day with me to Central Park to peruse a library book on sashiko mending. 

Reading didn't happen that day as the dogs couldn't lay still, and so I let them run in the baseball field. Sundays are the best.