Last week, I actually bought some new cookbooks. You’d think, as a regular cook with a bookish bent, I’d be awash in the things, but some terrible stinginess always takes over whenever I approach a bookstore. (Have I mentioned how much I love the public library? The only problem with checking cookbooks out of the library is that inevitably some jerk has torn out the page for the one recipe you really want.)

But last week I was at Barnes & Noble and had a moment of weakness. Not right at first, though: Once I squeezed past the Rachael Ray endcaps, I was reminded of the paradox of cookbooks: On the one hand, no publisher claims to want to buy them, and yet the racks are stacked with totally unappealing, readership-of-three titles like All Shrimp All the Time, 365 Salt and Pepper Recipes, and Lose Weight Eating Rhubarb.

Amid all the dreck, one book did catch my eye: The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. Intriguing title on its own, but I admit I had gotten a random PR email about it the week before. I’m incredibly suggestible. Inside, there was a lot of the faux-handwriting font I’m not so fond of, but otherwise it looked pretty nifty: low on glossy food porn shots, high on food I’d like to know more about (African, Japanese), useful restaurant recommendations and, and, AND a recipe for Bahn Mi [sic?]!!! It even ended with the words “You can easily make them at home.” Oh, the French–they make everything look so effortless.

So I actually shelled out real cash. Just a couple of years ago, I would’ve hunkered down in a corner of B&N and discreetly copied the recipe into my notebook. I’m bourgeois now, baby!

A while back, Peter and I made a couple of attempts at the banh mi, and they turned out very tasty, though not quite as balanced as they probably should’ve been. Let’s just say ham-handed is a word that’s rarely used to describe Vietnamese food.

So I set Peter loose with this recipe–and he actually followed it more than I’ve seen him follow any recipe in his life. It was a little unnerving. But it was highly successful as the first test of this cookbook, because the recipe yielded some mighty fine banh mi.

The crux of the matter, of course, is the pork. The cookbook recipe, from a restaurant called Thieng Heng, calls for first making a caramel sauce (as my urge had been the first time around), then adding that to a puree of shallots, garlic and ginger in which the pork is marinated for a little while. I never would’ve thought of that technique–and certainly not of adding the ginger. After that, the pork is cooked under a broiler and sliced.

Uh, except we only had ground pork. But that worked fine too. And Peter couldn’t believe that the pickled veggies wouldn’t have fish sauce in them, so he glugged some in there.

Perhaps to make up for these infractions, Peter then did follow the recipe when it said “spread mayonnaise on one half of the bread.” Bizarre. This kind of restraint is not familiar to me. It must be an ethnic Paris thing.

Anyhoo (or Bref…, as I just learned in French), the sandwiches are good. Damn good–good enough, in fact, to make me feel glad I plunked down my $30, which is roughly ten times the price of a banh mi from a deli.

Next up, from the “Africa sur Seine” section: the Bushman Cocktail (cognac, Cointreau, ginger juice, chilled champagne).

RECIPE: BANH MI
(adapted from The Ethnic Paris Cookbook–we couldn’t really stop ourselves from messing around. I mean, who puts one clove of garlic in anything?)

This makes enough for four modest-size sandwiches, or three sandwiches for total pigs. With this in mind, you’ll need four six-inch lengths of baguette. Or, if you’re in the NYC metro area, those small Portuguese sourdough loaves (not rolls) work pretty well–they’re a little bigger, for the three-serving-yield option.

First, for the caramel:

1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup water

Bring to a boil in a heavy saucepan and cook till dark brown, about 10 minutes. Off the heat, add:

4 tbsp hot water

It will spatter–stand back. Once everything has settled, add:

2 tbsp fish sauce (nuoc mam)
2 tbsp soy sauce

Restrain yourself from slurping this all up. Turn to the marinade:

2 cloves garlic
1-inch piece of ginger, peeled
2 shallots

Dump these in a blender or Cuis (chop ’em up a little if you’re using a blender, to help things along) and puree; add the caramel mixture and

2 tbsp vegetable oil

and blend till you have a nice saucy paste. Pour this over

1 lb. or so ground pork

and mash everything together lightly. Let sit for half an hour or so, while you work on the pickled vegetables:

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup rice vinegar
2 tbsp fish sauce

Stir this all up in a nonreactive bowl–you will have quite a lot. Then cut your veggies into thin strips or slices:

1 seedless cucumber
1 carrot
1 small red onion
1 small daikon radish

Dump these into the vinegar-sugar mix and let sit.

Also, prep your garnishes:

Coriander sprigs (not just leaves–the stems give a nice bit of crunch)
Jalapeno slices (optional)

Now you’re ready to cook. Preheat your broiler. Drain most of the liquid off the pork mixture (surprisingly, a lot will have gotten absorbed) and place the meat in a cast-iron skillet. Spread the mixture into a large patty shape, but let the surface stay craggy and uneven. Stick the skillet under the broiler and let it go till everything is nice and crusty brown–depending on how hot your broiler gets and how long it has been preheating, this can take anywhere from 3 minutes to 8 minutes. Flip the patty over (as well as you can’t doesn’t matter that much if it breaks up) and brown the other side. The pork will have almost certainly cooked through by this time; if it hasn’t, just set the skillet lower down in the oven for a couple minutes more.

Keep the broiler on to toast your bread very lightly. If your bread is very bready, you might want to pull out some of the soft inside to make more room for filling.

Slather your toasted bread–top and bottom–with:

Mayonnaise

Drizzle on some:

Sriracha or other red chili sauce (optional)

Lay a quarter of the ground pork on the bread (if you’re being restrained), then top with pickled vegetables and the coriander and jalapenos.

Squash down the sandwich to make sure everything holds together and the flavors blend. Slice in half and serve.