Shawn Raecke / Idaho Statesman

I bet we Boiseans will eventually start munching on banh mi, or Vietnamese sandwiches, with the casual regularity of the once exotic taco, pad Thai or pizza (yes, pizza was once exotic). In larger American cities, eaters are already arguing over the virtues of rice over wheat flour banh mi bread with the gusto with which the rest of us debate thick or thin pizza crust.

Banh mi, like the ones made at the new Baguette Deli next to Fred Meyer on Franklin Road, should slip easily into our common culinary lexicon. After all, they’re just sandwiches: A fusion of French colonial ambitions and Southeast Asian ingenuity, a banh mi is basically a French baguette stuffed with Vietnamese good taste. They’re cheap, too.

The House Special ($3.25) at Baguette Deli is a crisp but airy 12-inch baguette (made fresh at Orient Market around the corner) layered with several kinds of pork cold cuts, a little mayo and a smear of pate (very traditional), then topped with a fresh and pickled tangle of sliced carrot, cucumber, jalapeno, daikon and cilantro. It’s not exactly crazy-unusual, but it’s still a welcome departure from the processed-cheese-addled concoctions many of us mistake for sandwiches.

I don’t mean to undersell the banh mi, either. The flavors are subtle yet tongue-teasing in that unique, sweet-sour-hot-cold Southeast Asian way.

Baguette Deli offers 18 variations on their banh mi. That’s as many sandwiches as seats in this small but friendly shop. Order at the counter from the helpful staff and either eat in or take out. It’s fast food for sure, but burdened with less fat, calories and guilt than your average burger or burrito.

I also liked the pork meatball sandwich (made of finely minced pork and spices) and even more the BBQ pork sandwich (both $3.25). The Cajun shrimp sandwich ($4.95) I found less interesting due to the incongruous Cajun spices and the lack of textural contrast the shrimp offered.

I loved the teriyaki chicken banh mi ($5.45). Chicken thigh shredded into a tangled nest of fibers, I can only describe it as tasty packing material. Granted, that may not sound great, but it gives the chicken a uniquely chewy texture. When doused with a dark teriyaki sauce and piled with the condiments that come with every sandwich, it’s delicious.

The shop also serves scrambled egg or vegetarian ham banh mi as well as Western leaning fillings like pesto turkey or pastrami.

Sandwiches may be Baguette Deli’s signature, but other worthy items lurk on the menu.

Way down that menu you’ll find a vermicelli ($4.95) dish described only as “served dry with tasty fish sauce.” Don’t let that dissuade you. It’s actually cold noodles over salad crowned with your choice of two toppings: either sliced egg roll, BBQ pork, grilled pork loaf or grilled beef, then dressed with a sweet, savory, slightly spicy sauce. It’s light yet packed with flavor.

You can order the deep-fried egg roll on its own (85 cents each), too. It’s filled with a lush mince of pork and spices.

The Deli also makes translucent, rice-paper-wrapped spring rolls in several iterations. All are packed with vegies and your choice of meats. I found the shrimp and pork rolls ($3.25) a bit boring, if pretty to look at, but nearly inhaled the grilled beef version ($3.45).

Along with rolls, you’ll also find freshly made meat pies ($1.75) and powder-sugared beignets ($2.50 for four). For sweet drinks that double as dessert, I’d recommend the Vietnamese coffee ($2.50), Boba Thai tea ($2.50) and the truly delicious avocado smoothy ($2.75).

A part of town that once spoke mostly hamburger and hot dog, Boise’s Central Bench now supports a surprising diversity of ethnic foods from Argentina, Bosnia, India, Thailand and more. Baguette Deli adds one more welcome voice. Let the banh mi conversation begin.

For the full story go to the Idaho Statesman: http://www.idahostatesman.com/dining/story/1050419.html

Jami Adams at Bittercreek Ale House. She's an Idaho's Bounty wholesale customer and board member. Photo by Guy Hand

Last Monday, Edible Idaho aired an NPR story on Idaho’s Bounty Co-op, a group bringing sustainably raised, local food to individual consumers.

Today, producer Guy Hand reports on Idaho’s Bounty’s attempt to provide large institutions like hospitals, universities and restaurants with local food. By selling wholesale quantities, Idaho’s Bounty plans to take home-grown meats, produce and dairy to the next level.  Large institutions could not only introduce a new audience to the virtues of fresh, local food, but give big farm and ranch operations, who routinely ship their products out of state on the commodity market, a chance to sell closer to home at higher margins. (Since Idaho’s Bounty specializes in sustainably raised foods, some conventional food producers might also be encouraged to step away from the factory-farm model of production — with its relience on pesticides, hormones and antibiotics — to fill the growing wholesale demand for organic and sustainably raised foods.)

Winter produce from Idaho's Bounty. Photo by Guy Hand

Still, there are plenty of hurdles to jump.  Food shipped from far away is inevitably cheaper (thanks, in large part, to agricultural subsidizes) and often more convenient for large institutions, as well as consumers, to purchase.  Yet, by catering to companies that traditionally considered themselves too big or too busy to bother with local food, Idaho’s Bounty hopes to incrementally push the local food movement from the farmers’-market-margins of the U.S. food system to something closer to the mainstream.

Download the script for this Idaho’s Bounty radio show.

And for further information on Idaho’s Bounty go to: Idaho’s Bounty Website

Laura McCandlish for NPR

Forests filled with chestnuts once covered some 200 million acres of America.  Thoreau called them the “boundless chestnut woods” and they stretched from Maine to Florida.  As Oregon freelance writer Laura McCandlish says in an article published yesterday on the NPR website:

“Durable “cradle to coffin” chestnut timber built our communities, and our cuisine (particularly that of the Cherokee Indians, who revered this “bread tree”) relied on the starchy nutmeat. But by the mid-20th century, a fungal blight from Asia obliterated 4 billion of the indigenous East Coast trees. The American chestnut practically disappeared overnight.”

Due to that blight, McCandlish says most of the fresh chestnuts we roast during the holidays now come from Italy, China or Korea.  But that’s changing — at least on a small scale.

American breeders have been working for decades to create blight resistant varieties of chestnuts and although there are obstacles to making American chestnuts as common as they once were, small orchardists are having success — even in the Northwest.

McCandlish says “here in the Northwest, organic, local chestnuts are for sale at farmers markets and food co-ops through December.”

Peggy Paul, Photo by Katherine Jones / Idaho Statesman

In Idaho, local chestnuts are available thanks, in part, to the “Chestnut Lady.”  A profile in today’s Idaho Statesman attributes Peggy Paul (and her husband Jim) for planting a 500-tree chestnut orchard near Nampa about 15 years ago, creating the biggest chestnut farm in the Treasure Valley.

“We’re bringing them back,” says Peggy Paul, ” … so our children and our children’s children can talk about them.”

But how to prepare chestnuts?  Both the NPR and Statesman articles offer recipes.

P.S. Rachael Daigle at the Boise Weekly tells me “the new City Peanut Shop on Bannock [in Boise] has been roasting chestnuts from Horseshoe Bend. They also plan to start roasting from a street cart in the near future.”

Two of the sites are big enough to be considered farms.  One is in Eagle and one is in Boise.  Groups of refugees work together at these sites to grow vegetables for their families and for sale.

During the growing season, Global Gardens offers produce at the Tuesday evening Farmer’s Market at Edward’s Greenhouse (now closed for the season) and the Capital City Public Market in downtown Boise on Saturday mornings — Global Gardens is the first vendor at the Market to accept food stamps.  They also sell to restaurants including Bittercreek Alehouse, The Red Feather, and Mesa Taqueria.

I visited Saturday with Katie Painter, the Refugee Agriculture Coordinator for the program.

Dr. Esmaeil Fallahi with flat peaches

Who would think that Idaho and Iran have anything in common?  Dr. Esmaeil Fallahi does.  This Iranian immigrant and Idaho fruit researcher says you only have to visit his fruit orchard in Parma to see that southern Idaho and his Middle Eastern homeland have important similarities.

In this installment of Edible Idaho, correspondent Guy Hand learns why Iran’s fruitfulness is good for Idaho agriculture.

Transcript of the Show (click to download)

Almonds

Pluots

A juicy flat peach

Dr. Esmaeil Fallahi’s website

The University of Idaho Research and Extension Center, Parma, Idaho

Idaho Statesman story on the possible closing of the Research Center

A Handful of Water Potatoes © 2009 Guy Hand

For the Coeur d’Alene tribe of North Idaho getting-back-to-their-roots isn’t just a figure of speech. For the tribe, it literally means getting back to the foods that once sustained them. Correspondent Guy Hand finds out how a small tuber, the water potato, helps the Coeur d’Alene tribe reconnect to its past.

Kids digging water potatoes © 2009 Guy Hand

Kids Digging Water Potatoes © 2009 Guy Hand