3 | The sandwich
My messy, messed-up madeleine
Don’t get me wrong, I get the appeal of a crisp sandwich. A chip butty. Fish fingers between two slices of cheap bread. The humble jambon beurre. Hell, even that most wretched of corrugated parcels, the Prêt meatball wrap, wolfed down at your desk in a vegetative state.
But my formative sandwich is none of these. I’ve only had it once, and have spent a lifetime trying to recreate it.
Let me set the scene. It’s the early 1980s and we’re standing on the tarmac at Ho Chin Minh City airport. It’s hot and dusty. My feet are swollen and sore. I’m three, maybe four years old, tired, grumpy and very, very hungry. There’s no food to be found in the terminal, no space to lie down to shake off the worst of the jet lag. After a long, broken flight from Europe, we’ve been here for hours, curled up uncomfortably on metal airport chairs. We’re the first foreign family to be allowed to travel to Cambodia, now that the country is slowly reopening. My father’s pulled on mysterious strings to make this insanity happen. There have been interminable waits to get papers stamped; bribes, no doubt, have been pushed discreetly across tables. The country is still at war, the capital locked down under martial law. We have the laissez-passer, but no planes are flying to Phnom Penh.
Here’s what I remember from that first trip to the motherland: the slick of citronella oil on my skin, to keep mosquitoes at bay; the soft whirr of cyclos in the streets; rifles waved in our faces; the scent of jasmine lingering in the night. My mother vomiting outside the gate of her old high school, the infamous S21 prison (now a genocide museum); the coils of electric cables used to torture inmates; the dried splatters of blood on the white-and-orange floors; the victims’ portraits, sullen and silent, staring at us from the walls. The Killing Fields, still wretched mounds of upturned earth then, human bones white and bright in the drying soil.
And the sandwich. We’re standing on the tarmac at Ho Chin Minh City airport. It’s hot and dusty. My feet are swollen and sore. I’m three, maybe four years old, tired, grumpy and very, very hungry. The small propeller plane has a large Red Cross on it. Its entrails are being loaded up with supplies, held down by netting we’ll have to climb around to find our seats. There are no seatbelts, just holes in the plastic chairs to hold on to. The pilots have agreed to let us hitch a ride. And they’ve brought us food: charred, messy burgers topped with pickled carrots, handed to us in floppy cardboard boxes. The juices run down my arm. A painful lump forms in my throat as I wolf it down too quickly. And then the propellers turn, the air fills with the smell of fuel and the deafening roar of flight.
I clutch the plastic seat with my still greasy hands. I’ve found myself suspended there, in mid-air, ever since: a hungry girl, high on fear and adventure, waiting for the first true taste of home.
Pork and carrot buns
Over time, my memory of that hasty meal has changed. Was it beef, or pork? Cubed, or minced? Was the whole thing topped with peanuts, with onions? The recipe changes, but its soul remains the same: grilled meat, zingy carrots, and a soft, squishy bun that won’t stand up to much.
For the patties
500g of pork mince
1 large onion
3 fat garlic cloves
3 lemongrass stalks – tender white part only, chopped very finely
1 generous teaspoon of honey
1 teaspoon of fish sauce
A pinch of salt, and a generous grinding of pepper
For the garnish
2 carrots, peeled and grated
Half a bird’s eye chilli, seeded and chopped finely
1 lime, juiced
1 tablespoon of fish sauce
1 teaspoon of sugar
A small handful of chopped coriander
4 burger buns
In a bowl, mix all of the ingredients for the patties together. Divide the mix into four equal portions and, with your hands, form four large, round meatballs. Chill them for an hour or two (or better yet, overnight) to let the flavours develop.
Dress the grated carrots with the lime juice, fish sauce, sugar, chilli and coriander. Heat oil in a hot pan and add the meatballs, pressing down on them to form plump patties. Turn the heat down and grill them gently, flipping them over occasionally, until they’re cooked through. Add a splash of soy sauce (I use Pearl River Bridge Mushroom soy sauce) and let the patties caramelise in it for a few moments. Remove them to a plate, then mop up any remaining juices in the pan with the inside of the buns. Assemble the sandwich, add the pickled carrot garnish and get messy.
This week…
There’s no interview this week: the blistering, righteous, overdue sweep of protests has left me reaching inwards rather than out. Try these instead:
Read Black erasure in the British food industry
Follow @Passthedutchpot on Instagram
Order A kimchi subscription box
Subscribe to Pit Magazine
Listen to Nina, protests and the Backlash Blues on Radiolab
Try Durian shells as roadblocks
That’s it for today. I’d love to hear about the best sandwich you’ve ever eaten: drop me a line, find me on Instagram, or leave a comment on this post. Coming up soon: snobbery, break-up food, and the summer glut.