Grilled Sausage Banh Mi

I was in Vietnam for 48 hours last year for a stopover but that was enough time to try a couple of banh mis and I'm going to show you one that I tried over there. It was so good. It was Vietnamese sausages with a gorgeous pickle of daikon and carrot which is quite traditional but what made it so special is a pop of sweetness and they added some lychee to it. Yes, lychee. It works really well in this recipe. So I've got some daikon here. Daikon you can find from all good Asian grocers. You can also find it from supermarkets now. It's a radish and it's got a lovely crunchy texture. So I've just cut them into batons. I've also got some carrot. So just fine julienne of carrot. So we'll pop them together and this is for our pickle. Now for the pickling agent I've got some water on the boil. So boiling water. To that we're going to add some sugar. Just some caster sugar or just regular sugar and vinegar. Lots of white vinegar. I also like to season it with a good pinch of salt and we'll just give that a swirl and we'll just wait for that to come back up to the boil and allow that salt and the sugar to dissolve. Okay let's prepare our lychee. Now I'm using frozen lychees because lychees aren't in season all year round. So this is a great ingredient to have on standby in your freezer. So all of the gorgeous juiciness is retained. So you can see that I'm just chopping them into little bite-sized pieces. You want it to be roughly the same size as the daikon and a little goes a long way with these lychees. That pop of sweetness makes this into a very unique banh mi. All right let's get our pickling agent. You can see all of that sugar dissolved and we're going to pour that hot liquid over the top. So we'll just pop that to the side and let that cool down while we get on to our sausages. Now I'm using pork sausages. You can use whatever sausage you like. So I'll add a little splash of oil. Not too much oil because there's already a lot of fat in the sausages. We just don't want them to stick. So just a thin amount of oil and then on they go. Now I don't like to have my pan too hot. We just want to render the fat out of the sausages. So a medium heat is just right and these won't take long about 8 to 10 minutes. Okay these pork sausages are cooked. Let's get on to assembling the banh mi. So crispy bread rolls, really fresh and then we're going to cut that about three quarters of the way through. You want to really open that up. See how soft they are inside. Just the best. I think this is what makes this one of the world's most famous sandwiches because it's all about the texture. Crunchy bread rolls, soft inside and all the layers of pickles, vegetables and meat. So pate first and this is the French influence coming out in this sandwich. Also some mayonnaise. You could make your own if you like. I'm just using a good quality whole egg one. On to the other side. Be generous. Now for our sausages. You could pop that in whole. I like to just cut it in half. Okay and then we'll just pop that straight on to the pate side and then we can start building. So some cucumber. A few strips of cucumber can go in. Some spring onions. Again roughly the same size and our lovely pickles that have been sitting here. We want an even amount of the daikon carrot and the real hero here in the pickles which is our lychees. So pop them in there. If you like some heat, some fresh chili over the top. I'm using a long red chili but in Vietnam they use those small red chilies which are piping hot. A bit too hot for me so I'm going to stick to the long red chilies and some coriander and with the coriander you can use the stalks in this. So just pop that like that and I've got this cute little lunchbox that I'm going to serve it in. How great does that sandwich look? I love that it's different and I love traveling because that's when you get inspiration. Usually you think of a banh mi with crispy pork belly and just a simple chili, coriander and daikon but adding those lychees to it makes such a difference. I can't wait. I'm gonna have a taste. I'll cut this in half so it's easier to manage. Oh look at that, lychee's there. So juicy, saltiness of the sausage, sweet pop of that tropical lychee. I think I'm onto something here. This combo is that good.