Bento contents:
- 1 small regular or bánh mi baguette (150cal)
- 1 1/2 cups All-season shredded vegetable pickle salad [1] (30 cal)
- 1/2 cup, approx. 2 oz / 60 g Rafute rillettes [2] (320 cal)
- a few Instant radish pickles [3] (10 cal)
- Parsley for garnish
Total calories (approx): 510 cal (how calories are calculated) [4]
Time needed: 5-10 minutes in the morning from pre-made components
Type: Sort-of-Vietnamese (Asian), bread based
A new Complete Bento finally! If you’re new to Just Bento, a Complete Bento [5] post around here means that the calorie and amount for each item is listed, plus recipes or links to the recipes of all components, even the box I used. I do write about a lot of other bentos [6] too, but Complete Bentos really give you the whole picture. What with all the travelling I’ve been doing to promote The Book [7] and everything, I haven’t had the time to do one of these in a good while. (And speaking of the book, a version of this deconstructed bánh mi sandwich bento appears in there too, but with different components.)
Anyway, I am fond of carrying my sandwiches in deconstructed form, where the fillings are carried separately from the bread and assembled just before eating. (See Complete Bentos no. 6 [8], no. 24 [9] and no. 74 [10].) No other sandwich is this method more appropriate for than the Vietnamese bánh mi sandwich.
The things that make a bánh mi a bánh mi, in my opinion, are the crispy light baguette and the combination of rich-tasting meat filling with crispy-crunchy-sour vegetable filling. But if you make a bánh mi to go, hours later when you’re ready to eat it the bread has turned all soggy, even if you do smear on a moisture barrier (usually a mixture of butter and mayonnaise). But if you carry along the components in a bento box, you can have a fresh-tasting, crispy bánh mi that you’ve made yourself, with just the parts that you like. And sure, a bánh mi is pretty cheap, but you can do it even cheaper by using leftovers and stock items!
This not-quite-authentic but still very tasty version has the homemade Rafute rillettes [2] that I posted about over on Just Hungry as the meat. On its own, shredded pork looks grey-brown and blah, so I’ve dressed it up a bit with green parsley and yellow lemon rind strips - a simple yet effective decoration. If you’re not up to simmering pork belly for hours ^_^;, shredded barbequed pork would be a great subsitute. If pork is not your thing, any kind of assertively flavored meat would be good here. Leftover roast something would be perfect.
The crisp-crunchy-sour-sweet pickle-salad is decorated with the ‘migrating birds’ cutouts that I described in the recipe post [1]. Again, another very simple but I think effective decoration! The radish pickles [3] are also sour-salty to counteract the richness of the rilettes.
The mini-baguette (it’s about 7 inches / 22cm long, and is called a parisette around here) was carried wrapped in a paper napkin, then in a paper bag, pre-sliced for convenience. Here’s how the sandwich looks assembled before the lid part goes on. The garnish is put to use too! (And yes, I did use parsley and not coriander. I like coriander/cilantro, but we have a member of the family who can’t stand it.)
And here it is all assembled and ready go to. Yep it dripped. I used paper napkins and the now-empty bento box to catch the drips.
The bento box I used
This is the same shape as the Ponyo box I used for no. 75 [11]. I like both because they have lots of inner dividers built in. It makes it easy to keep the food packed therein organized. I must say I am not overly fond of the too-bright red of this Hello Kitty model, but the Kitty herself accented with gold is rather cute. The box comes with a pair of chopsticks, a bento band and a matching drawstring bag. It used to be available from J-List/JBox, but isn’t anymore it seems - however this one looks like it’s the same box [12] with a different design on the lid. The white Ponyo box is still available [13].
The paper napkins are from Ikea - I just realized I’ve been using them for several bentos recently. What can I say…those napkin packs from Ikea are very nice, but huge.