Let me be frank

Since the beginning of the lockdown, I've been setting a pace for my writing that would eventually become unsustainable. It's been around two months now (please verify?), and for the duration I've been trying to post a new recipe here every two-to-three days. Sure, it sounds like a great rate of production, but similarly to an awful lot of productivity culture it ignored the aspect of my own human emotional and energetic capacity. If an idea hadn't come to me after a couple of days, I would feel neglectful. Even now, it's only been a week since my last post, but it was as if I expected to return to wild vines growing between the HTML; the site in the process of being reclaimed by the cyber-ecosystem.

This is clearly ridiculous.

In an ideal world, everyone would be comfortable to subject their work schedules to flexibility and wouldn't feel as if well-being is some kind of bougie luxury. However, the concept of something being enough is not compatible with the strain of late-stage capitalism that we currently live under. I could be happy with posting once a week, but surely I don't deserve to be if I could be posting three times a week, or twice a day? And, yes, I get that writing a blog post technically isn't anything to do with an economic system predicated on hyper-driven production and consumption, but it's a regime that violates our own psychological boundaries.

I get, as well, that as a furloughed worker who is struggling to write a food blog, I am in an incredibly privileged position. There are many people who are still working within a full-time role, people who don't have the luxury to pursue their interests right now, who will also be feeling as if their contributions are inadequate. Parallel to this, I also need to put myself in a head space where I'm not feeling lazy or guilty for not being one of those people. I've written a post already about the conflicted feelings that come from being furloughed (and being in a position that is deemed non-essential for the company), and it is just a product of individual circumstance.

I don't actually have a recipe to share today. In the week between my last post and now I did try something out (which I'll detail below) that just fell short of the mark for what I consider worthy of sharing here, but it's something I'll adapt and try again with. For now, I want to talk to you about other things I've made (or, tried to make) that haven't been geared towards the blog. I wouldn't say that there is a huge difference between the food I make for the blog and other times of cooking, but the process is a lot different and there isn't a huge amount of transparency there. Food blogs are primarily a repository of finished products, without a lot of attention paid to the less successful aspects of the cooking process.

What follows is by no means a list of failures, but it does encapsulate a fair amount of frustration, which is fine. Learning how to cook teaches you that, for the most part, everything can be salvaged. You don't have to be personally overjoyed with the finished product, but it doesn't have to be all for naught. Not everything here is something that I was unhappy with, but it does present the difficulties of being a home-cook trying to learn and judge what is of a good standard to present. There is a pretty wide range of things that take place outside the scope of this blog, and this'll aim to capture just a few of them!

Soy & Mirin Glazed Squash with Wasabi Chickpeas and Farro

This is what I attempted to make for the blog; it was delicious, but there were certain kinks that still needed to be ironed out.

The planning process behind a recipe involves brainstorming, and worrying about the cost of ingredients (both for my own virtual wallet and because I don't want to present something that is frivolous). Usually at the end of this I get a sense of whether I'm excited enough by an idea to want to develop it. Let me tell you, I was very excited by the idea of this.

I'm not a big fan of the term "fusion cuisine" in general, but this felt like a way to present Japanese flavours in a Mediterranean framework. I'd been feeling out for a farro recipe for a while that really presented it as an integral part of the dish, rather than just something you serve to fortify it; this seemed like the opportunity to do so. That aspect of the dish worked pretty well.

It turns out, it's kinda hard to glaze butternut squash. If you've ever sliced into the flesh of one, you will appreciate just how illogically smooth they are, making them less-than-porous. I tried to thicken the glaze with a dash of rice flour but this was a siren-caterwauling big mistake; it burned in to the bottom of the pan and came out looking like volcanic basalt. The squash itself was pretty good, but that I felt like I couldn't publish that advice. The chickpeas were burnt and tough too, and while it wasn't unenjoyable, by that point I knew it would need work.

The concept is there, and that's what made it pretty delicious, and I do know that once I've worked out the procedural shortcomings I'll be able to give it it's own post, but it is a bit disheartening all the same.

Momos / Dumplings

If I know anything with certainty from the past 25 and a half years of life, it's that I'm not very delicate with my hands. Even so, that's not a foreclosure; it shouldn't preclude me from giving things a solid go. I spent a few months in Nepal in 2017 (get yer' groans in now) and my most solid food memory is biting into an intricately folded and fluted vegetables dumpling, dipped into a spicy and savoury tomato chutney; this is known, pretty adorably, as a momo.

Naturally, I was desperate to try to make them as soon as I got back home and could cook for myself again. So anyway, three years later I gave it a shot! The first time went OK. I put too much celery into the filling, but other than that it was fine. The dumplings were structurally sound, but not neat, which I thought was fine for my first shot.

Here's where it goes downhill, and I come across like a terrible, terrible person.

Second time around, armed with the knowledge that I could produce something, I tried to do them again but make them a little bit neater. I made up the filling (which had no celery this time, and tasted all the better for it) and set it aside ready to make the dumpling wrappers. Attempting to work my way through a longer, yet still simple, folded pattern I encountered difficulties. Dumplings would tear even though I hadn't put much filling in, they would unfold and unravel, and then they wouldn't stick together as I tried to augment the mixture. This became very overwhelming, and I remember standing for at least 30 seconds (it felt much longer) not knowing what to do before taking everything and throwing it into the bin.

This is a big source of shame for me. I try to never waste food unless I absolutely have to. Dinners become leftovers, which then spawn other leftovers; my attitude is that if you can possibly eat it or save it, then you have no right to flagrantly throw something away. Yet, in that moment, that's exactly what I did. I know that I wasted flour, and vegetables, and halloumi cheese that could have gone to someone else just because my emotions got the better of me. I know that, as I type this, it will be decomposing in landfill and emitting methane gas. I know that we are currently in a time of relative scarcity. So, yes, I deserve to be ashamed about this.

I'm not the only one in the household to have undertaken dumpling making. After my first momo attempt, Owen also gave it go the difference there being that each batch of his were incredibly successful. I'm not a very territorial person when it comes to cooking, and generally it makes me happy for other people to do well at it and explore their own interests, but it was (and still is) difficult not to be a little bit resentful. I know that's dreadful, but I'm also kinda hoping it's something people can relate to a little bit. Maybe, or maybe not.

I'll try dumplings again, but it feels a little sensitive at the moment.

Black Beans with Braised Red Cabbage and Polenta

This sounds kind of fancy, but this was just a way of using up leftovers and store-cupboard ingredients without needing to go out and buy anything. A few days prior, Owen had knocked up a pretty incredible DIY sweet & sour sauce (reminiscent of the Chinese takeout variety) which we didn't use entirely, and therefore had been sitting in our fridge for a few days. We didn't have enough rice to go around, or really the right kind of vegetables to make something that would be coherently Chinese (takeout) style. But, what we did have were beans and polenta.

If I post something to the blog, usually it will have an underlying theme that ties everything together. After all, ingredients aren't a lottery and you've got to have some ideas about why they work well together. This was a very different kettle of fish.

The cabbage was shredded and oven braised in the sweet & sour sauce with some diagonally cut slices of carrot. For the black beans, the ended up in a thick and sweet tomato sauce that was probably on it's way to approaching barbecue. And, as for the polenta, well, it was just cooked in vegetable stock until it resembled a silky, savoury mash. It was incredibly mis-matched, but y'know what? It worked, and was very satisfying. We sat down and watched an episode of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat with it, and while Samin might not approve of the balance of flavours, it was great despite being unplanned and thrown together pretty incoherently.

Interestingly, this also left me with some leftover polenta for lunch the next day (the aforementioned leftover of a leftover). Can I please sing the praises of polenta for a moment? It seems fancy, but it is incredibly cheap and forgiving. I bought a pretty large bag quite a long time back, and it has lasted given how little of it you actually have to use to produce something substantial. I always feel that I cook it a little too haphazardly to post a recipe for it, but I do have a post about a polenta cake from a few months prior if you want to give that a look!

Rebecca's Birthday Cake

I think it's a good idea to end on a positive, don't you?

Yesterday was housemate-of-the-blog Rebecca's 24th birthday (cheers all around please) and naturally I wanted to make a cake for her; it's the very least that she deserves! The trouble with being literally quarantined inside with someone is that there are very few reasonable windows of time to make surprise cakes for them. I know, this is the true tragedy of COVID-19.

The night before the big day, we went down to a sandy bank of the River Thames near our house with a few ciders, sat on a washed up log, played "never-have-I-have-you-ever-have-I-wait-sorry-what-was-it-again?", before shivering our way home. We got back at about half-past ten, and soon after that Rebecca went to bed. Now was the time.

I'm not sure why, but there's something incredibly enjoyable about making a cake overnight. There's something a little conspiratorial about it. Using the Smitten Kitchen cake builder from Smitten Kitchen Every Day (which I also used for Ellen's birthday cake) and a tub of Betty Crocker salted caramel frosting, I made a three layer chocolate and vanilla cake and got finished just as the sun was starting to rise. Okay, yes, clearly I didn't get a strictly healthy amount of sleep that night, but who cares; I got cake. I mean... Rebecca got cake.

There's something very non-threatening about making cake for friends. I don't feel that the end product is going to be scrutinised for imperfections (of which, there will be multitudes) or has to perform in any way; it just has to make people smile. Which, in turn, will make me smile!

Happy birthday Rebecca (for yesterday - even though I was there with you for the majority of the day!)

What now?

So, I'm not too sure when I'll be posting with a recipe next but I'm going to try to aim for it to be within a week. Perhaps I'll give the squash/farro/chickpeas another go? Or maybe one of the 592 recipes I have squirreled away in my neglected "bookmarked" folder on Google Chrome. We'll see.

I do have a blog post in the works which I'm incredibly excited about that was suggested by the font of wisdom and friend-of-the-blog Bee, however I'm currently waiting on an electric hand-held whisk (yes, I'm finally graduating from manual whisking) to be delivered in order to do this. That's all I'll say on that matter for now!

Until next we meet, dear readers - thank you for being patient.

From the forge of utility

The first meal that I learned to make was bolognese. It was a functional choice, based around the notion that learning to cook can help with budgeting and frugality. It's a recipe with a similar structure to others; once you've made it, you can also make chilli con carne, the base of a shepherd's pie and countless other things too. Occasionally, I'll wish that my formative years were charmingly idyllic, where I helped my parents prepare cakes and pastries that we could leave to cool on the edge of a countryside windowpane (disclaimer: my childhood didn't feature any homemade baked goods, and I'm always amazed by those who did) but that just wasn't the slant of my upbringing. Cooking in our house was about functionality first, and pleasure second.

I realise that this is the antithesis of the culinary coming-of-age stories featured on most blogs. I could sit here and gripe about the fact that people from more, let's say, affluent upbringings have richer anecdotal deposits from which they can mine, but where's the fun in that? Instead, I want to track my own personal chronology with bolognese, and how that caused me to branch out in all sorts of (chaotic) directions. Think of an aerial photograph of a river's tributaries, and you'll probably have a good visual metaphor for my own development. How did I go from cooking for utility to viewing food as something worthy of prose?

Making bolognese for the first time broke down a few barriers for me. Prior to that, I had an image of cooking as a science governed by strict precision; you must use the right combination of ingredients in the right quantities to achieve the result you want. Actually going through the process allowed me to appreciate how flexible and instinctual preparing a meal. Although my mother was (and, still is) very much concerned with how to budget, the taste of the finished product was still an important factor. This meant, you could actually sample the food as it cooked, a very alien notion to me at the time. You could even add in an ingredient that wasn't on the printed recipe sheet if you had the urge to; it felt like a revolution.

It took cooking this a few times to see the formula in a classic flow-chart style. You fry the vegetables, you cook the ground beef (or, alternatively turkey if we were feeling financially leaner), you add the tomatoes, you season and you wait. Nowadays, I'm not so inclined to see the cooking process as a sequence of inputs leading to the finished product. However, when you're younger, having that basic blueprint to making a meal is incredibly helpful. Bolognese turned out to be the gateway preparation into other types of food, such as curry or chilli. I remember being amazed by how such a similar process could produce dishes of such diverse tastes.

That kind of cooking was firmly in my canon throughout my teenage years. I remember being sixteen and inviting my then-first boyfriend over when my parents had gone away for the week, and making spaghetti bolognese for him. Although this featured a malfunctioning electric can opener (I had to use a kitchen knife in the end), it felt unspeakably adult to invite someone over for a home-cooked meal. Of course I lit candles and dimmed the lights, it being still a dominant cultural trope of the age.

I'm not sure what happened, but around the time I went to university I begun to scorn the spaghetti bolognese as if it were something that wasn't particularly authentic. I know, coming from someone who will happily wrap a Mars bar in a tortilla wrap and microwave it, that seems beyond the pale. It's not as if my tiny student kitchen was a veritable forge of bona fide Italian cuisine*, but suddenly my inaugural pasta sauce seemed basic. Though this was an undoubtedly loathsome attitude to hold, the other side of it was curiosity; I wanted to try making things that I'd never heard of previously, and when things such as laksa and kalops were popping up, there was less room for the bolognese. Becoming a vegetarian in my third year didn't do much to rehabilitate it's tarnished status, either.

In the roughly four years (no, surely not?) between then and now, I've wholeheartedly embraced foods that might have previously been considered basic, yet I never really thought to make bolognese. A vegetarian diet didn't lend itself to making a pasta sauce where the primary flavour is, in fact, the meat. This had been the case until about a couple of months ago (let's be real - listening to the Spilled Milk episode about bolognese got me thinking) when I remembered that varieties with lentils (or other replacements) also exist. The problem is, where does the savoury taste come from? In the UK, we make the tomato flavour a lot more prominent than it is in Italian or American preparations, ironic given how bad our tomatoes are reputed to be. That's not really what I wanted to do here either; I wanted something that would not quite replicate, but resemble the meatier variety.

Needless to say, I now make this differently to my 11 year old incarnation. For starters, we never used carrot and celery (I can't bring myself to refer to this as "mirepoix") in the initial preparation, but I've been won over by the aromatic base that such simple ingredients provide. More importantly, where does the savoury taste come from? Although my parents make their bolognese with the tomato at the forefront, my mother likes to add light soy sauce to hers (I augmented this slightly and use dark). I also add splashes of balsamic vinegar and fish sauce for a touch of the oft-vaunted umami; if you're wondering why I'll justify fish sauce and not ground beef, I wrote about this kind of thing here! At it's core, this dish is an exemplar of the need for balance, so I add some lemon juice for a touch of acid too.

I think it's important to say too, before I plough straight into a recipe, that bolognese is very much forged by individual preference, and I think it is a great template to explore the effect that different ingredients will have on the end product. This is probably why it was such an ideal foray into cooking for the first time. This is a recipe that can be totally stripped down too, if circumstances (or, even, preferences) necessitate this. You could, in theory, cook lentils in a couple of cans of tomatoes and a bit of vegetable stock and serve with pasta. Therein lies the utility, and the other ingredients represent the pleasure and are contingent on the inhabitants of your store-cupboards.

Go-To Lentil Bolognese

Preparation time: 25 minutes

Cooking time: 40 minutes

Serves: 3-4

Ingredients

1 medium brown onion, finely diced

2 medium carrots, coarsely grated

2 celery stalks, finely diced

5 cloves of garlic, crushed and minced

1/4 tsp of dried chilli flakes

250g of chestnut mushrooms, quartered

150g of green lentils

1 tbsp of unsalted butter

2 x 400g cans of chopped tomatoes

200ml of vegetable stock

50ml of full-fat milk

1 tsp of regular or vegetarian fish sauce

1 tsp of dark soy sauce

1 tsp of tomato puree

1/2 tsp of lemon juice

1 tsp of balsamic vinegar

1 tsp of ground paprika

1 tbsp of fresh basil, finely chopped

2 bay leaves

1/2 tsp of salt

1 1/2 tsp of sugar

1 tsp of double cream (strictly optional)

Method

Melt the butter over a medium heat in a large saucepan or wok. When the butter has melted, turn the heat up to a medium-high and add the onion, carrot and celery (referred to otherwise as the mirepoix, if you really must). Saute for 4 minutes, until slightly softened and then add the garlic and the chilli flakes, cooking for an additional 1 minute. Add the mushrooms into the pan and stir them through the mix, before cooking for 2 more minutes.

Add the tomatoes, tomato puree, vegetable stock, milk, fish sauce, soy sauce, lemon juice and balsamic vinegar to the pan and stir until combined completely (it may be helpful to measure these all in to one receptacle before you start cooking). Add the lentils, turn on to a high heat and bring to the boil. Once this has come to a boil, turn the heat down to a medium low and add in the paprika, bay leaves, salt and sugar and stir through, before simmering uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring approximately every 5 minutes.

After 30 minutes, taste the recipe to check the seasoning and adjust as necessary, as well as checking that the lentils have cooked through. When everything is to your liking, add the basil and the cream (if using) and cook on a medium low heat for an extra two minutes.

Remove the bay leaves, and serve with pasta or polenta (or anything else you might be partial to).

A note on pasta

Hi, it's me again! Persistent as ever. I'm not going to be so prescriptive as to give you a recipe here, but I want to let you know what I do with the pasta I serve the bolognese with. It's super quick and it really makes a difference as an accompaniment.

I like to use some form of long pasta for this. Ideally it would be linguine or perhaps tripoline if it's available (this time around, it was spaghetti) - you can use any pasta you have a preference for.

I cook the pasta as per the instructions on the pack (I think al dente works best here) before draining away the water, and adding in a couple of teaspoons of olive oil as well as a sprinkling of salt and black pepper. I stir this through, before adding a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg. This gives the pasta a very subtle woodiness that is only just perceptible against the flavourful bolognese. You can experiment with this too, but I would recommend not adding in anything to the pasta that will be particularly dominant.

Notes & Adjustments

*Have I ever mentioned how much I hate the word "cuisine"? I don't have a clue why, it just rubs me up the wrong way, not unlike the word "mirepoix".

• One thing you might have noticed as anomalous about this recipe is that I don't use wine. Although I did consider buying a bottle, we don't really have any wine drinkers in my flat and I felt that it might be wasteful to do so if we weren't going to drink it. You can add in a tbsp of wine (there is a whole debate about whether to use red or white that I haven't waded into) but I would recommend halving the amount of balsamic vinegar if you do.

• If you want to make this vegan, then use olive or vegetable oil instead of butter, use vegetarian fish sauce (if you can find it - if not, add a tsp of light soy sauce), soya milk in place of dairy and soya cream at the end if you should choose to do so.

• Some recipe writers use MSG to create a savoury taste within bolognese, which I almost certainly would have done if I had any to hand (we have, tragically, run short). If you do have any in your store cupboards, you can add in a 1/4 of a teaspoon.

• For the lentils, you could use brown or puy lentils in place of the green if that's what you have. I don't recommend using red lentils, as they don't really keep their structural integrity through the process of cooking. You could use tinned lentils; these won't need to be cooked for nearly as long, but they probably won't hold their shape as well.

• I had an idea while I was preparing the... mirepoix, that it would be interesting to replace the celery with fennel. The addition of fennel seeds adds an interesting dimension to tomato-based sauces, so it did make me wonder whether the anise flavour it provides would work well here. Alas, I had no fennel (it's a very purposeful purchase, I find), but if you do have any and are feeling experimental then do feel free to try!

• If you don't like mushrooms, then you could leave them out. Perhaps add a sliced red pepper just to bulk the dish out a bit more if you are to do this? Regarding the type of mushroom too, I think chestnut works well and is widely available, and plain white ones would be good too. There is also a variety of mushroom called "forestiere" mushrooms that are delicious, but I think they're exclusive to Tesco. Don't go out of your way to pick up a pack, but if you do shop there then perhaps keep an eye out.

The flight of the night owl breaks the day

Okay, so I need to disclaim something. I made a thing that I'd been thinking about making since the start of this blog. I have a very fixed story behind it. It's a travel story. Yes, I'm sharing a travel story during a time of almost global immobility, so basically I am every force of Hell incarnated as a food blogger. I'm just like the people on social media sharing throwbacks to their prior travels; yes, the people that I've been systematically blocking from my timelines. So, here, I'm sorry, I'm the worst kind of hypocrite, but the, *ahem*, global pandemic only just dawned on me as I begun to write. If it makes you feel better, imagine me in a potent state of mortification as I cringe throughout this entire retelling. I won't judge you if you skip straight through to the recipe.

Okay, onward bound! Just over a year ago, I took a trip to Hanoi with my mother as a travelling partner. Somehow we'd found a package for flights and a hotel that was reasonable enough for the both of us to feel like we could justifiably go (not an easy feat, and probably not a replicable one at that). Given our modest means, Mum's plan was to go to see New York for her 60th birthday (which is this October, so we're monitoring that situation closely) and that would be it for travelling. Save for an impromptu whisking away to South East Asia, of course.

We had a few ups and downs on the journey to Vietnam as well as the first day. I don't have a wealth of flying experience, but the crew on Thai Airways were pretty delightful, however I made the more-than-a-little-questionable choice of choosing The Favourite as one of my in-flight movies. Have you seen The Favourite? You have? Great! Have you seen it with relatives perched in viewing distance? No? Take it from me, it's not one for the "watch with parents" pile. More awkwardness then ensued as we found ourselves in the lobby of the hotel, being informed that our booking could not be found despite our printed references. Images of sleeping in parks flashed through our minds, until the booking was finally located!

As this was the first day, we took it pretty low key. We went for a wander around the neighbourhood, and stopped for a Hanoi-brand beer in a large flower garden with a windmill (this one, in fact). Side note: one of the key things to do in Hanoi is to stop for beer at least once every day. Specifically, find a cheap looking place with plastic chairs on the curbside and pick between the Hanoi or Saigon varieties; they'll be the ones to bring you out a bag of free redskin peanuts with your drinks. Then, spend the next half an hour just watching people go by on their motorbikes. I'm not a fan of day-drinking generally, but this was a mandatory experience.

As the evening dawned, we needed to find somewhere to get something to eat. Mum wanted to go to the branch of Loving Hut, just down the street from our accommodation. For those of you who don't know Loving Hut, it's a global chain of vegan restaurants established by the Vietnamese cybersectarian spiritual leader Ching Hai (given that she calls herself the Supreme Master, I'm verging on calling this a cult). We've been to a couple of the chains in the UK and one in Amsterdam, so we figured it would be a safe bet as something we already knew. Cult-status notwithstanding, we didn't end up there on the first night (but we did make it there eventually), as we walked past a place called The Night Owl, about two minutes from where we were staying that boasted a vegan buffet.

The night we walked in, the bar was being run by two Gen-Z guys; one had dyed silver hair, and the other with stylishly oversized hipster-esque glasses and they both spoke to us fluently in English before we had a chance to garble through any Vietnamese we may have absorbed. The place had an indoor rock pool, and several colourful wall murals, a very youthful energy overall. I can't really remember what was on the vegan buffet, apart from the fact that it was delicious, but what I do recall very vividly is that they had a resident cat called Mango, as well as a tiny dog that occasionally visited too; her name was Meatball. We also saw that they had a breakfast menu too, and knew exactly where we'd be going the next morning.

As day break came, we walked past the vendors from the nighttime flower market packing away their produce on the way to the bar. Walking into the establishment, we were greeted with a very familiar scene. Two jovial older ladies ushered us to a table and handed us menus immediately. Unlike the guys from the night before, they didn't speak English so we had a chance to try out our clumsy language skills. It took me a few attempts to say "tôi muốn bánh mì và ca phe sua nong" (I would like a bánh mì and coffee with milk and sugar) in a way that was at all intelligible, but we got there in the end. Being able to practice language in a place where people are not only tolerating your incompetence, but actively smiling encouragingly as you struggle is a big confidence boost, maybe it's one of the reasons why we continued to visit this place?

Okay, but the main reason we kept coming back is for the vegan bánh mì. The usual cold-cuts were replaced with marinated and fried tofu, and placed in a baguette with julienned vegetables pickled in rice vinegar and a scattering of coriander leaves. This is a classic dish replicated across the entirety of Vietnam (and, I believe, it's become a college food staple across the US too) and we adopted it as our breakfast virtually every day. This would always come with a coffee, sweetened with condensed milk. Vietnam has an incredible cafe culture, and coffee is served in unique and incredible ways (but perhaps I'll talk about this sometime else).

In the year following the trip, I made bánh mì a few times, alternating the filling each time. I've made it with marinated firm tofu, and also one ill-advised time with silken tofu (yes, it disintegrated, but I still remember enjoying it somehow?). Another time I made it with an egg omelette which was also fantastic. My favourite incarnation, however, was the most recent; instead of meat, I used king oyster mushrooms sliced into flat strips down their length and marinated. If there's anything notable about the king oyster mushroom, it is the dramatic protrusion of the stalk. When fried, this takes on an incredibly meaty texture and is a fabulous repository of flavour. So, this is an offering I bring to you today!

A note on bread must be given here, and this may seem very basic but it is of crucial importance. The baguette used in Vietnam for bánh mì is very specific; it is by no means a fancy bread, but it is the most suited for purpose. It has a slightly tough outer layer, but yields very easily to softness within (as the best of us do). Going by a tip from the venerable Ottolenghi from his own version of this dish I used a part-baked baguette from a supermarket which you finish in your oven, and I suggest you do this too. Not only are they cheap and delicious, it also means you get oven-warm bread at the end of it. Oven. Warmed. Bread. No further illustration is needed, but it does have the perfect texture for the purpose. Failing this, I've also found hot dog buns to be OK for this recipe, but I much prefer the part-baked baguette. Don't even think about touching anything with the word "artisan" or "rustic" in the description. You will find yourself mired in regret as all of your filling makes a hasty escape from your forlorn sandwich. I trust you to do the right thing. For yourself; for all of us.

King Oyster Mushroom Bánh Mì

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 10 minutes

Makes: 2 baguettes, or 4 half-baguettes

Ingredients

2 part-baked white baguettes

2 king oyster mushrooms

60ml light soy sauce

1 tbsp honey

1/2 tsp sesame oil

4 tbsp mixed vegetable pickle (see recipe below)

2 tbsp fresh coriander leaves

2 tbsp mayonnaise (ideally not low-fat, vegan mayo is fine)

1 tsp lime juice

A few sprays of cooking oil or 1 tsp vegetable oil

1/2 tsp sugar

1/4 tsp salt

Method

Pre-heat the oven to the temperature specified on the instructions of your part baked baguettes. When the oven has come to temperature, cook the baguettes in the oven for the specified time. I usually do this while I am preparing the mushrooms.

Slice the mushrooms into 4-5 flat slices that run along their length. Don't worry too much if they aren't of a consistent thickness; this won't matter too much!

Mix together the soy sauce, the honey and the sesame oil. Place the mushroom slices in a bowl (a flat-ish bowl works best here, but any one will do) and pour the soy sauce mixture over them. Fold the mushrooms into the mixture until they are evenly coated.

In a separate bowl, mix together mayonnaise and lime juice until fully combined, and then add the sugar and stir through until it has been incorporated.

Spray a medium sized frying pan with spray-able cooking oil, or alternatively add 1 tsp of vegetable oil and use kitchen towel to spread it around the pan. The rationale here is that you want a relatively dry fry for the mushrooms (I wouldn't usually advocate fry-light, I promise). Heat the oiled pan over a high heat before adding the mushroom slices, making sure that they don't overlap. Fry for 2 minutes on each side before taking off the heat.

Cut your baguettes open and spread them with the mayonnaise-lime mixture. Layer each baguette with the fried mushrooms, the vegetable pickle and the fresh coriander.

Carefully cut each baguette in half and serve.

Mixed-Vegetable Pickle

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Fills a 400ml jar.

Ingredients

1 medium carrot

1/2 a cucumber

1 small Korean radish

2 medium-heat chillis

250ml rice vinegar

Method

Slice each of the vegetables into thin strips, removing the seeds from chillis. Add the vegetables strips into your jar, alternating the type as you go to ensure an even distribution. If you push the vegetables down as you pack them into the jar, you will be able to fit more in and less rice vinegar will be needed.

Once the jar is full of the vegetable strips, pour over the rice vinegar until it reaches the rim of the jar.

Leave for 15 minutes before serving. The pickles can be kept for up to one month.

Notes & Adjustments

• You may be wondering what else you can use the pickles for. Really, anything that benefits from some sour crunch will do, but things such as hot dogs and burgers (vegetarian, in my case) go wonderfully with them. You can also have them with salad or on top of noodles. They're incredibly versatile and keep a very fresh taste to them, so try them whenever it feels right to do so.

• Not a fan of coriander? You can substitute it for basil, mint or parsley. I feel like a combination of the three would be fantastic. Maybe even try Thai Basil?

• The vegetables you use for the pickle are really up to you (within reason). I forgot to buy cucumber, so I didn't use it. Which, perhaps, is just as well because no one in my house really has any other use for cucumber. You could potentially use things such as courgette, pink radish... maybe parsnip? Who knows. I would definitely include some kind of chilli, and at least one thing that's going to provide some crunch.

• If you can't get rice vinegar, then normal pickling vinegar will do but may impact on the fresh taste of the vegetables. This is sold pretty commonly in the world foods section of supermarkets, but you can find it much cheaper in Asian grocery stores (perhaps consider an online order?)

• I know that you can get king oyster mushrooms in Tesco. I can't vouch for other supermarkets however. If you can't find them, I would suggest perhaps using the large chestnut mushrooms, and slicing them into long strips across their dome.