Brooklyn Forager

Bon Appetit says that 2010 is the year of the meatball.  I say, what year isn't? But I do appreciate the number of twists on the traditional Italian meatball or the Chinese lion's head meatball that I generally think of when I hear the word. 

One take on the meatball that they offered up recently was the Pork Banh Mi Meatball.  Before you say that Banh Mi is so 2009, just remember that now we're talking meatballs.  A refreshing twist, then, on both the meatball and Banh Mi. 

This recipe caught my eye even before the Tigress Can Jam started, but it immediately popped into my head the other day when I wanted to come up with more uses for my Vietnamese Carrot and Daikon Pickles.  Let's face it, this dish is what my pickles were meant for in the first place!

The complete recipe in the link above shows you a quick way to achieve a similar result in case you don't have jars of Vietnamese pickled vegetables crying out for a spicy meatball sandwich.  I haven't given it a try, but I'm sure they will do. 

I made a double batch of these meatballs and they kept very well in the fridge, feeding us for at least 6 meals.  Next time around I'll try freezing them.  I meant to do that this time, but they were so good that we just kept eating them! I ran out of bread part way through, but these were equally excellent in a bowl of rice with pickled vegetables, cilantro and sriracha. 

Also, I skipped the mayo mentioned in the original recipe because I am a no mayo sort of lady.  That may be banh mi blasphemy.  I just used extra sriracha since that can never be wrong, but you may want to check out the original recipe if you're into that whole mayo thing.

Pork Banh Mi Meatball Sandwiches (adapted from Bon Appetit)

 

I've been focused on big batch cooking to keep our take-out to a minimum both to save money and eat more healthfully in general.  It's no secret that a hard-boiled egg makes a good quick snack with lots of protein.  It probably is also no secret that they can get a bit dull. The answer to that in our house is to make our hard-boiled eggs Chinese-style.

To make hard-boiled eggs a more interesting treat, I went to Steamy Kitchen.  Her recipe calls for you to crack the already hard-boiled eggs by tapping lightly with the back of a spoon (keep the shell intact, just crack it all over).  Then place the eggs in a pot of hot water with soy sauce, two black tea bags (there could be a lot of tasty substitutions here if you want to get creative), star anise and peppercorns.  Simmer for 40 minutes and then let the eggs steep for anywhere from a couple of hours to overnight. 

When the eggs are ready, they have a built-in sweet spicy salty flavor and are beautifully marbled, making them very pleasing to the eye and the palate! The inside of the shell is particularly artful even in the early stages of steeping and the eggs themselves get more dramatically marbled the longer they are in the tea mixture.  Our first egg  (below) was tested after about four hours of steeping.  I let them continue to sit in the tea overnight, but those eggs got gobbled up to quickly to document.  All in all, very successful and so easy to snack on in the afternoon.