Paris: Bánh Mì, Pork Rice Bowls and Vietnamese Wings | Milk Street TV Season 7, Episode 21

We venture to Paris to explore its Southeast Asian street food scene. Back in the kitchen, Christopher Kimball whips up crisp and salty-sweet Garlic-Lemon Grass Chicken Wings. Then, Milk Street Cook Bianca Borges assembles Fried Egg Bánh Mì, a Vietnamese sandwich topped with pickled vegetables and cilantro. To round out the episode, Chris and Milk Street Cook Wes Martin prepare Crisp-Skin Pork Belly Rice Bowls with Pickled Vegetables, a riot of crispy-tender-chewy textures and sweet-savory flavors.

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ – I’m here in Paris where, of course, you can find Vietnamese cooking, but you can also find food from Cambodia and Laos and Thailand. Now, why I’m here and why I’m excited is because now you can find street food from these places. We’re talking about donuts, and we’re talking about

Banh mi sandwiches or fried tofu or even fried chicken. So, let’s get started. Let’s take a tour of street food from Southeast Asia in Paris and find some recipes you really want to take home and make yourself. – Funding for this series was provided by the following: – Introducing Hestan ProBond,

Crafted from the resilience of cold-forged stainless steel. We collaborate with top chefs to redefine cookware and the kitchen experience. Italian craftsmanship meets innovation with Hestan ProBond. ♪ ♪ – Hello, I’m Khánh-Ly. I’m the chef of Nonette. So when we designed the concept for Nonette, I really wanted

Kind of mixed cultures all together in one single shop. The banh mi is super common right now, and it’s quite famous throughout France and Paris, specifically. So I wanted to have something that came from my other side of the family that lives in California,

Which is the donut part that I discovered when I was 18. Smile at your phones. (laughs) So, we’re about to cook a banh mi trung op la, which is a banh mi with fried eggs, the classic breakfast in Vietnam. Banh mi trung op la is a sunny-side up fried egg banh mi.

It’s a very common banh mi to eat in the morning. You jump on a scooter, you eat it from there, and you drink some coffee. Because it’s vegan, it’s made with the egg. I like when the eggs are a bit, you know, not too fried,

But a bit “globby,” however we call that in English. Cucumber, uh, pickled carrot, and daikon, with garlic and anise star and some fresh coriander. Add pickle. Banh mi is quite common to buy over on the street because it costs pretty much nothing. Most of the time, the corners are available all day,

From 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. the next day. With the pectin. I’ve had so many banh mis throughout Vietnam. I think I’ve tried, like, several dozens of them. Every vendor has a very specific recipe. I love the classic ones. I love the trung op la

Because that’s very common to eat this as a kid, and my dad used to bring this for us in the morning as well. ♪ ♪ – My name is Simon. We are here at Khantine. The idea is back from a trip in Cambodia, to find new recipes, to taste newer things, we’ve had the idea of a new way of seeing the Cambodian cuisine. The idea is choose a base, which is mainly rice. Choose a vegetables.

But we want to consider the meats are the topping and not are the main part of the dish. So the idea is to start with a pork belly, and we want to make the skin crispy. Firstly, we place the pork belly, in big pieces, in the water to make it boil to make it softer. Depending of the size of the belly, it could be between ten to 20 minutes. And after, the idea is to pierce the skin. Because after, when we will fry it, each time you pierce it will allow the oil to go in it, and it will make the skin crispy. We salt the skin because we want to make it dry. Important to remove all the salt,

Because if you do not remove the salt, when you place the salt in the fryer, it pops. And after, you deep fry it. When the color change and when the noise give you the idea that it’s hot and crispy, normally it’s fully cooked. You plate the vegetables and the sauce. You plate the chopped belly around. At the moment, people are trying to elevate the cuisine. But we want to go back to the base of it.

♪ ♪ – Hi, I’m Stephane. I opened Coupi Bar in 2015 with my wife. We are making, uh, Vietnamese street food. The fried chicken is wings. that we deep fry with, uh, potato flour. And then we prepare the sauce with sugar, lemon, fish sauce, and Thai chili. I learned to cook with my mom and my grandma. I used to watch them when I was little. But when I’m home, I usually don’t cook. I let my mom cook. The marinade, it’s garlic, lemongrass. It’s crunchy, and then you have the, the sweet and sour. ♪ ♪ I love to eat. This is how I cook. With love. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ – One of the great things about Paris is it’s beautiful,

But it also has an immense diversity of cuisine. And one of my favorite places is the Coupi Bar. It’s in the southeast part of the city near Montparnasse. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Buffalo chicken wings. But if you want something that’s light and bright with a fried chicken,

A little spicy, I think you’re really gonna like this. And it’s also incredibly easy to make. So we’ll start out with chicken wings, oddly enough, and we’ll just take… …the tips off because there’s no meat on that. And we’ll just cut the remaining part in half. So we have that.

So before we go too far with the chicken wings, let’s make our coating. Now, he used potato starch. You could use cornstarch, if you like, and a little turmeric. Now, that’s not gonna add any flavor because it’s only half a teaspoon. Might add a little bit of color, though.

Add a teaspoon each of salt and pepper. And when you’re cutting chicken, it’s always good to figure out where the joints are because it makes the cutting simpler. So we got that done. And now we’re just gonna toss this. Now, as I said, the cornstarch or potato starch

Is gonna give you a nice, thin, crispy exterior. And you want to make sure you really get it nicely coated. So that’s pretty good. So we have two quarts of peanut oil. This is at about 350. And we’re gonna fry them in two batches, ten to 12 minutes.

You could use all-purpose vegetable oil, but peanut oil seems to be the best in terms of smoke points. So we’re gonna cook these ten to 12 minutes. I’m gonna flip them halfway through. So I think we’re good to go with these. Nice and brown. It’s good to check the temperature of your oil

In between batches. So we’ll do the second batch now. So, prep is 90 percent of cooking. And the worst thing, besides garlic, you can prep is lemongrass because it is gnarly and tough. So you want a good, sharp knife. And you want to get rid of a good part of it.

And I’m just gonna trim off the bottom a little bit, too. The first thing you notice is there’s this tough outer layer. So… if you need to, you can just run your knife down there like that and get rid of that. So, one thing that’s also helpful– it’s like doing celery, too–

Is I like to actually cut it down through the middle, so you don’t get the big rings. And unlike doing something that’s soft like parsley, you really do have to slice down and through and make sure you actually cut through. And you want to do fairly fine cuts like this,

Because big pieces of lemongrass, we’re gonna cook this, like, in two minutes, another minute for the sauce. So, lemongrass, you really do want to get it fine. Okay. We have shallots. We have some Fresno peppers and some garlic, a little bit of oil. Now, at the Coupi Bar in Paris,

He didn’t cook his sofrito. He just added it to the chicken along with the sauce. We’re gonna actually do a little bit of cooking just to soften. Meanwhile, we have a sauce. We have equal parts, and this is the classic sauce, easy to remember, one part sugar, one part lime juice,

One part fish sauce, quarter cup of each. So this is one of those little formulas that good cooks, you know, keep in their head. And then finally, a quarter teaspoon of black pepper. Now, the goal here is not to cook it all the way down. Cook it for just a minute or two.

So now we’re gonna add the chicken to it. So we’re just trying to get it coated. It’s not gonna be sticky like some chicken is. This is gonna have a nice light coating to it. You know, normally at home, I would just eat it out of the wok.

I guess you should put it on a plate. A little cilantro, and if you like a little lime juice, that’s fine, too. So what I love about this is you take something fried, right? And instead of putting cheese with it, you have some heat to it, you have some lime juice,

You have a little fish sauce, you have some shallot, you have bright flavors, you have depth to it, and it just makes this such a bright, light dish. Mm-hmm. Oh, these are good. ♪ ♪ So, what do banh mi and donuts have in common? Well, they’re both featured at a food shop there

Called Nonette. It was there we had a fantastic version of the Vietnamese sandwich called banh mi. So first, to make the quick pickle, we’ll stir together two-thirds cup white vinegar, one-third cup water, two tablespoons sugar and two teaspoons of salt. And just give that a good stir until the salt and sugar dissolve.

Okay, now we’ll prep the vegetables for the quick pickle. And because it is a quick pickle, we need the vegetables to be in small pieces. So we’re gonna make them into a julienne. So we’re using carrots and daikon radish. Carrots are very long. It’s helpful to cut them in half lengthwise.

Then, you’ll cut long, thin planks, and you can see they got pretty nice and thin. Okay, so there we are. Julienne done by hand. Or you can always use a Julienne peeler. Keep the vegetable whole, run it down the side, and you get instant, long, thin strips. And we’ll just transfer them

Right into that pickling liquid and stir them all together. Then just let that stand for about 20 minutes for that quick pickle to take effect. Or you can cover and refrigerate it up to a week. Okay, now, bread for banh mi is really of the utmost importance.

A typical supermarket baguette will be soft and squishy. And that’s what you want. And you want a thin, brittle crust on it, too. You want about seven to eight inches of length for each sandwich. So, I think maybe we can get four out of this. And then again, here.

Now, these need to be split open to make a sandwich. The traditional banh mi keeps one side attached, like that, intact, like butterfly style. And you could certainly do that. But if you accidentally cut all the way through, or you want to cut all the way through, that’s fine, too.

See, that one came apart. So, there we go. We’ll let these toast in a 325-degree oven for about eight to ten minutes. Just till they get a little crispness on them. All right, our bread is just out of the oven, nice and hot and toasty. We have some soft, room temperature butter here.

And we’re just gonna spread each side of the bread with some of this nice, soft butter. Now, you may think you’ve got some really delicious eggs on here. Isn’t the butter a little bit overkill? But, no, it is not. We have the tartness of those pickled vegetables.

And the runny yolk does offer some fat. But we really need a little bit more fat to balance this whole sandwich. So now it’s time to fry the eggs. This is the last thing you do before you assemble the sandwich. All right, we’ll use a large nonstick skillet. Nonstick is important here.

We’ll put it over medium-high heat and add two tablespoons of oil, and let that get really hot, barely smoking even. Then crack four eggs into the pan at once. And use a silicone spatula to separate the whites of the eggs when they touch. Then sprinkle each egg with a pinch of white pepper.

White pepper is a fundamental flavor to this dish, and freshly ground is best. If you don’t have white pepper, of course, you can always use freshly ground black pepper To cook the eggs on top without having to flip them over, just tilt the pan a little bit,

And then spoon some of that hot oil over the top of the whites. In no time, they’ll be cooked as well. Okay, the eggs are ready. You want their yolks to remain runny. Each one of these sandwiches gets two eggs. Nice and crispy on the bottom. These are fantastic. Okay.

Now, typical seasoning for banh mi is a little bit of sriracha or some sort of hot red sauce. Another seasoning we learned from Chef Khánh-Ly Huynh at Nonette is to use Maggi. Maggi is sort of reminiscent of Worcestershire sauce, for say, or soy sauce, but it’s actually has a deep umami flavor.

So we’ll just do a few sprinkles over each egg. Let’s bring over our pickled vegetables, our sliced cucumber, of course, some fresh cilantro. And if you want… little bit of sriracha hot sauce. Lay some of these on top. You can already actually see the textures that are going to happen here.

You’ve got hot, runny-yolked eggs. You’ve got thin, crispy slices of cucumber. You’ve got semisoft, crisp, but very, very tangy pickled vegetables. And then the fresh cilantro. There we go. And then, this is completely optional, but I love that little bit of fiery bite from sriracha sauce.

And this is why we like the butterfly. Just close it up and dig in. (chuckles) This is our fried egg banh mi, first sampled at a small shop in Paris called Nonette. ♪ ♪ – So Chris came back from Paris after having that delicious rice bowl

With that crispy pork belly on top at Khantine, and definitely wanted us to work on a recipe for that. I can’t blame him. Pork belly is delicious. It’s become very, very popular in this country, as well. A lot of restaurants use it in a lot of different ways for many dishes.

It’s basically bacon with the skin on when you get pork belly in a restaurant. So, most restaurants prepare this in very similar ways. The first thing they’ll do is cook it briefly to pull impurities out of the meat and also begin flavoring it and softening up both the meat and the skin.

I thought I might try to replicate that in the oven rather than poaching it, salting it, as Simon did. So I’m just starting with about half of this. This is a two-pound chunk of pork belly. And just gonna put it with the skin side up

In the baking dish and try filling with water until it’s at least halfway up the sides of the meat. And what this will do is, while it cooks, is keep the meat moist and soft. And hopefully that skin will begin to render some of the fat out and begin to crisp up.

Now, a lot of restaurants, at this point, will season the meat before they cook it with a lot of other herbs and spices. But we’re gonna simply do it the same way that Simon did and use a little fish sauce, salt and pepper, just to flavor that meat.

So this first batch I’m gonna try is gonna be in a relatively cool oven, 325, just enough to cook that meat and start to render the fat under the skin. And then we will try to crisp it up. So this first batch that I braised in the oven, I let it cool down.

And now I want to try to get that skin crisp. Of course, Simon threw it in a deep fryer, the whole piece. Most people don’t have deep fryers at home. So we’re trying to figure out a way around that, so we can still get that shattering skin with the moist meat underneath.

So I’m gonna try just shallow fry, skin side down in a non-stick pan. Just starting with a little vegetable oil. I think it’s probably good to start in cool oil, too, because that’s where you really get the sputter and pop is dropping something into hot oil.

I can already tell this was a bad idea. That moisture in that skin is coming out and it’s popping, popping, popping, and splattering grease all over the place. Starting to fry there, but it’s not as good as throwing in a deep fryer, and I don’t want to deep fry.

So, I think I’ve got to figure out how to rely on the oven to make this happen. So my next round, I want to work with the oven only. I want to try high heat here. I want to get that skin crisp in a hot oven

And hopefully see how well that meat underneath cooks. So, I’m gonna just take this other piece of pork belly. I’ll start skin side down. I still want to season this meat with the same combination of just a little fish sauce and some salt and pepper.

And then I’m gonna flip it right side up. And this piece, I’m gonna dry off the top, as well because I don’t want any moisture on there. I want that skin to, hopefully, get crisp in the oven. So, I’m gonna try this batch out in 450-degree oven until the meat is cooked through,

Until I start seeing that skin getting crisp. So, we definitely have cooked pork here. It looks like it might be a little bit over. The meat probably dried out. Skin’s started to crisp. But let’s have a look. Yeah. It’s probably a little charred, but I want to cut into it

And see where we are. Oh. Nice, crisp. Not bad. Nice crispy bit on the top there. I want to give it a taste and see. Crunchy. Yeah, unfortunately, those beautiful layers of marbling in the pork belly, at that high temperature, just kind of melted out, and you can see it. So I’m getting close to that pork belly in Paris. I need to figure out the right ratio of temperature and time to get the skin crisp,

But the meat moist and juicy. A little more work to do. ♪ ♪ – So how did we figure this out? – Well, we found a dual method of low and slow cooking and then jacking up the heat to really crisp up the skin

Is the answer. And it’s all… – So, there’s no poaching? – No, all hands off, hands off, all in the oven. But just a couple of steps to do before we get the pork in the oven is to season it and then to prepare the skin so it will crisp nicely.

So if you want to start, the basics for the seasoning here is just fish sauce. We’re gonna single-handedly take the fear out of fish sauce, Chris. We are using it as a element of flavor for this, in particular. It’s sort of neutral. So, what we’ve got is a two-pound piece

Of pork belly, of course, what they would cure to make bacon. So I’m gonna flip it over, and then if you want to just pour all of that right on the meat, I’m gonna rub it in. And this is, surprisingly, with that fish sauce and a little extra salt,

Really, really does flavor this meat. As you learned, in order to get it nice and crisp, you want to poke the skin so that more moisture releases, but also so it doesn’t shrink up. If we didn’t treat the skin, and we put it in the oven,

It would shrink up into one big piece, and then we’ve lost it, we want a piece of, a little of the skin and a little of the meat and a little of the fat all at once. So in order to do that, we have what’s called a Jaccard. And this is,

Basically, a meat tenderizer. It’s got all these little blades in it, these little, like, nails. And you want to get all over the skin. You don’t need to go all the way through the meat. And that will open up that skin, so moisture releases, and it will crisp

And still hold its shape. – So this is not ideal. I would use a knife probably. – Yeah, you can use a boning knife with a nice sharp tip. A skewer that’s got a nice sharp tip will work, as well. If you’re gonna use a knife tip, you just want to pierce

As much as you can all over. This one, of course, makes millions of little holes. But this one will work. You just want to make sure that most of the surface has some holes poked in it. So now I’m just gonna pat it dry. So if there’s any moisture.

Now, you saw in the restaurant what they would do. They would poach it the day before. Then they would lay it in a tray of salt, put it in the walk-in overnight. And that salt, just as if you salt a chicken, like dry brine, is gonna pull excess moisture out as well.

But we found that it didn’t really make that much difference. And if we roast this on low, and then crank it up to high, it does the same thing as throwing it in the deep fryer. So this goes into a moderate oven. 325, low and slow, for about two hours.

Then we’ll crank up the heat to 425, 100 degrees higher, for about 45 minutes to an hour. And that will make that beautiful, shatteringly crisp skin on top. – I like that. Shatteringly… – Shattering. – …crisp. Good salesman. I like it. I’m sold. – All right, in it goes.

So the next steps are the elements that we’re gonna need to make to put the rice bowl together. First is the pickle. – So we’re gonna throw little vegetables in this to make you feel better about the pork belly? – Well, you only need to eat one piece of pork.

So you’re going to julienne some carrot there. You can use a julienne peeler. If you don’t have one of those, what works beautifully is the large holes on a box grater. Just want a nice shred. And I’m gonna make the pickling liquid that goes on top. The beautiful thing about all

Of these elements is you can make them well ahead. These can be made four or five days in advance. So I’ve got some sugar, starts with sugar. And I have unseasoned rice vinegar. Now, seasoned rice vinegar, when you find that in the grocery store, can be a little confusing.

That’s typically what they’ll make sushi rice with. It’s got more sugar in it, and a little more flavor. This is more tart, like a white vinegar, but it is sweeter than white vinegar. – It’s also a little lower in acidity, which… – Yeah, yeah. So, unseasoned rice vinegar and then some water. Sugar.

And teaspoon of salt. So, we just want to heat this up well enough to dissolve that sugar. So in the meantime, I’ve got that pork. We roasted it for two hours, 325. I raised the heat to 425 and going about 45 minutes to get that skin crisp. – Okay.

– All right. – I say I’m done. – I’d say you are, too. So now we have the pickling liquid is ready. The sugar is melted. It’s hot. I’m just gonna pour it right over carrots and cabbage. So we’ll give it a toss, and then we’ll make the sauce for the bowls,

And we’ll put it all together. So, Chris, here we go. Beautiful pork belly, crispy skin, simple as pie. – I’m impressed because that looks fried. – Yeah, it’s like… – But it ain’t fried. – We don’t have a big old deep fryer here, so we did it in the oven.

The final element here is the sauce, and remember that we did not really flavor that very much. We’re gonna accomplish that with the sauce here. So, if you will mix together some oyster sauce, we’ve got a little more fish sauce here, some soy, and a little more sugar there, a little more vinegar,

And some grated garlic, finely grated on a rasp grater. Now, the final ingredient here is chili garlic sauce to add a little spice. Now, chili garlic, there’s always a lot of confusion between chili garlic and sriracha. What is the difference? Well, chili garlic sauce is made, of course, from chilies with the seeds,

A little vinegar, garlic and sugar. And it’s kind of more of a paste. It’s on the milder side of the Asian hot sauces. Sriracha, which of course is smooth, is made from red jalapenos, and it’s fermented. So we’ve got so much ferment flavor and umami in that sauce with the fish sauce

That we don’t need more of that in the sriracha. And it’s also… can be a little spicier. So it’s always a good idea when you get that jar home, to taste it and see how hot it is. So, I think we’re ready to go, the last thing to do

Is to slice that beautiful pork. Now, as we saw Simon slice the pork that he made in Paris, we want to do that the same way. And the reason is, if we turn it up sideways and cut through, you can kind of press the meat apart.

It’s nice and tender, and it will fall apart. It’s still a little warm. Turn it up, yeah. – Okay. – And then cut down about half an inch. – Oh, that’s easy. – Yep, yeah. And that’s a big crispy skin piece on the end that I want. (chuckles)

In the meantime, I’m gonna get some rice for us. We have some jasmine rice. It’s three cups of rice with five cups of water, cooked with a little salt for about 12 to 15 minutes. All right, so we’ve got our rice in the bowl. We want a little pickle, a couple of slices

Of the pork, and then a drizzle of sauce over the top, and then we’ll garnish. So not only are there a lot of different flavors in this, but this bowl has delicious textures. It’s beautiful. – Mmm. This would not be a great meal for a first date. – Oh, I don’t know about that. Depends on who your date is. You really have nice roast pork flavor with that crispy skin. It’s not inhibited with a lot of spices on it. But you get all of the balance of the dish

With the sauce and the pickled veggies. – So a big thank you to Simon at Khantine in Paris with a Cambodian rice bowl with crispy pork belly. Three hours in the oven, and that’s pretty much done. So, also, a big thank you to Wes.

So, if you want this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street, just go to milkstreetv.com. Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos. Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

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For $27, 40% less than the cover price. Call 855-MILK-177 or order online. – Funding for this series was provided by the following: – Introducing Hestan ProBond, crafted from the resilience of cold-forged stainless steel. We collaborate with top chefs to redefine cookware and the kitchen experience. Italian craftsmanship meets innovation with Hestan ProBond.

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