Despite what the weather keeps telling us, it really is summer now, and therefore grilling season. Even if it’s raining, darn it. At least the sun came out for a few minutes while Jon was grilling these Vietnamese tamarind pork skewers – just long enough for us to eat our dinner outside, before getting cold and going back in. Yay, June.

We had gotten a pork roast out the freezer a few days ahead, but hadn’t quite decided what direction to go with it. Jon pulled out all of our meat cookbooks and finally settled on a Bruce Aidells marinade with tamarind, fish sauce and shallot. He also made the included recipe for pickled shredded zucchini, and since we had a bag of radishes and some carrots on hand, he pickled those as well. All I had to do when I got home from work was cook up some rice noodles.

The thing that took the longest was threading the thin pieces of meat onto every skewer we had in the house.

Because he didn’t pack them tightly onto the skewers, they only took a moment to cook over the hot charcoal.

We made a sort of modified bún, piling the grilled meat and pickled vegetables over soft rice noodles with a spoonful of reserved tamarind marinade. I could have added lettuce and fresh herbs, but was too lazy. It was delicious anyway, with a minty mojito to wash it down.

The next day we bought a soft baguette at the farmer’s market and made banh mi. This was one of those times when my desire for blogging material was overridden by greed, and no pictures were taken before we had demolished the sandwiches. Take my word for it, they were great. Mayo, tamarind sauce, cilantro, pork, pickled vegetables, all squished into an airy baguette with a chewy crust. We will be doing more of this sort of thing, I think.

Grilled Tamarind Pork

adapted from Bruce Aidells’s Complete Book of Pork: A Guide to Buying, Storing, and Cooking the World’s Favorite Meat

Note: I’ve put down the amounts as written, but when Jon made this he doubled the amount of marinade and reserved some before adding the pork, so we would have uncontaminated sauce to add to noodles and sandwiches.

• 1 Tbsp tamarind paste
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp fish sauce
• 2 tsp fresh ginger, minced
• 1 Tbsp shallot, minced
• ½ tsp Chinese 5-spice powder (we didn’t have this, but Jon made a quick version from equal parts ground clove, cinnamon, fennel, and Sichuan pepper)
• 3/4 pound pork, thinly sliced (the recipe calls for pork belly, but we used a leg roast with good results)

Combine the marinade ingredients with the pork. Marinate at least half an hour or up to 2 hours at room temperature.

Thread the pork onto skewers and grill over a medium hot fire, about 2 minutes per side.

Pickled Zucchini

• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 Tbsp kosher salt
• 1 Tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 Tbsp Sriracha hot sauce
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp sesame oil
• pinch of sugar

Toss the zucchini and salt together and let sit for half an hour. Rinse and squeeze out the water. Toss the zucchini with the other seasonings and serve.

While doing some serious browsing through our cookbook collection one day, we found a recipe in the latest Alford/Duguid book, Beyond the Great Wall, that sounded both easy and exciting. It was a simple pork stirfry, seasoned with shallot and ginger, but with the addition of a good handful of pickled mustard greens. It just so happens that I recently bought a jar of these on spec, so I was very excited to try this.

As it turned out, the mustard greens I had were not quite what was called for – I had bought pickles with hot pepper and peanuts, but the recipe wanted plain sour greens. Oh well - I rinsed them off, picked out the peanuts (which were kind of weird and squishy) and used them anyway. Everything else we did by the book. It was very straightforward and fast, and made the house smell great. We cooked up some white rice, made some oolong tea and sat down with anticipation.

The finished stirfry was very tasty. However…it wasn’t at all the pungent, highly flavored dish we had worked ourselves up for. Instead, it was a soothing bowl of savory pork, lightly flavored with ginger and with the slightest hint of spice. The mustard greens only added the tiniest bit of sour, and a subtle texture somewhat like overcooked celery. The overall effect was of something that I might like to eat when I was feeling a bit under the weather. Good – but not what I was going for.

What do you think, wrong type of pickled mustard greens? Or was it supposed to be like that? I would definitely make this again, especially if I was running low on veg in the house – the pickled greens make a really handy staple – but I might perk it up a bit more with added seasonings.

Pork with Pickled Mustard Greens

adapted from Beyond the Great Wall by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

• 1/2 pound boneless pork loin, thinly sliced
• 1 Tbsp oil or lard
• 2 Tbsp minced shallot
• 1 Tbsp minced ginger
• 3 dried red chiles
• 1/4 pound pickled mustard greens, rinsed and chopped (and the peanuts picked out)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 scallions, smashed and cut into 2 inch lengths
• 1 tsp soy sauce

Heat oil in a wok over medium heat (not high heat). Add the shallot, chiles and ginger and saute for a minute. Add the pork and salt, turn up the heat to high and stirfry until the pork is mostly cooked. Add the mustard greens and stirfry two minutes. Add the scallion and stirfry 30 more seconds. Add the soy sauce, stir in and remove from the heat.

Serve with white rice and tea. Serves two.