Vietnamese Inspired Mexican Relish
Fully incorporated relish ready to be served!
You read that correctly… This side dish is inspired by the cilantro, onion, and lime relish that you will find at all Mexican taco tents/trucks in LA but with a Bahn Mi flavour profile. Put this on your sandwiches, rice, or anything you want a spicy fresh kick in the mouth! Truthfully speaking, this really goes with almost anything but I love putting this on sandwiches and tacos.
This side is delicious and will give any dish you want a good extra flavour and spice kick. It is fresh, crunchy, tangy, spicy, sweet, savoury… Everything you need to bring another layer of depth to your dish. The important part is to let it sit and have the flavours mingle with each other before serving. The longer they mingle, the more flavour you will have. And to top it off, this dish is easy to make! It’ll spend more time mingling than it took to chop it up and throw it in a bowl.
The Mexican cilantro onion relish is usually a small dice around 5-8mm, but I like to do a brunoise sized dice for this dish (about 3mm sized cubes). I find the smaller diced cubes give me a better result in evenly distributed bites when it is time to serve. It is also nice for layering onto foods without feeling like you’re taking full bites out of an onion.
Brunoise cut vegetables, ready to be mix and mingle.
The exception to the size of dice is in the cilantro cutting. I love to use the stems of the cilantro as they have a ton of flavour but they can be a bit… Stalky? If you’re one of the people out there that tastes soap when you eat cilantro, I would recommend skipping this dish or replacing it with some curly parsley. Back to the cilantro! Cut the stems as small as you can cut them, that way you get the flavour and even distribution and don’t feel like a rabbit chewing on stalks of cilantro. When you get to the leafy part of the cilantro, cut them larger and a bit unevenly. The uneven nature of the leaves give a organic look to your dish and the leaves themselves do not affect the mouth feel of this relish.
Onto the spicy notes of this prep. Adjust the spice level with the amount of seeds you leave, variety of chili, and amount of chili. My ideal pepper for this dish is the classic jalapeno. Beloved in the Mexican AND Vietnamese flavour profiles. That and I can buy a huge container of them from Costco for not too much money. Wear a glove on the hand that is going to touch the pepper (or forget like me and have spicy hands for the rest of the day) while you prep these. Don’t go touching your eyes after this! I used 2 jalapeno peppers in this recipe and took out the seeds out of 1 while leave the rest in the other.
When choosing an onion for this dish, I chose to go with the humble basic white onion. Sure, there are other onions with more flavour and interest; but I decided to go with the more neutral subtlety sweet flavours. I think about the onion like rice in many other dishes. It is probably the most important part of this collaboration but it doesn’t need to draw attention to itself. The perfect supporting role that allows the flamboyant spicy counterparts excel.
You’ll notice I added some red bell pepper to the mix as well. This is mostly for colour and a bit of flavour. The red pepper plays well with everything else in the dish but having the little bit of red gives it a colourful and appetizing look. The slight sweetness also helps cut through the spice and subtlety draws you in for more.
I use white pepper in this recipe instead of black pepper. White pepper is more commonly used with Asian cooking and is typically milder than the black pepper. It also has a earthier flavour profile and compliments the cilantro very nicely.
I chose to use sesame oil as my fat of choice for this relish. Including fat is important as it helps balance the dish. Samin Nosrat explains and writes about this concept beautifully in her book Salt Fat Acid Heat. Sesame oil is a beautifully fragrant oil that is perfect for this dish because it isn’t being cooked. It adds a lovely nutty depth of flavour that gently coats each little piece of vegetable and ties it all together.
You can use any vinegar you have for this, but I recommend using rice vinegar. It is milder and less aggressively tangy on your tongue (we’ll let the jalapenos attack your tongue!). The rice vinegar also pairs nicely with the honey which will all bring a light sweetness to the dish that takes the edge off of the spice, drawing you back in for more.
And that’s about it! Throw everything you’ve chopped up into a bowl, add the liquids, mix, mingle, and serve. Maybe make a double or triple batch? This stuff will go quick!
Vietnamese Inspired Relish
Author: Justin
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 5 minutes
Total Time: 50 minutes (including minimum of 30 minute mingling time)
Yield: serves 4
Ingredients
1 medium white onion
2 jalapenos
1/4 red bell pepper
1 bunch of fresh cilantro
1/8 teaspoon of salt (or to tastes)
1/4 teaspoon of ground white pepper
1 tablespoon of honey
1 tablespoon of rice vinegar
1 teaspoon of lime juice
2 teaspoon sesame oil
Instructions
1. Brunoise (3mm dice, approximately 1/8 inch dice) the onion, jalapenos, and red bell pepper. Set aside in medium sized mixing bowl.
2. Cut the cilantro: finely chop the stalk as small as possible, roughly chop the leafy section to pieces approximately 5mm (1/4 inch). Add to the vegetable mix.
3. Mix the honey, rice vinegar, lime juice, and sesame oil in a small bowl.
4. Apply liquid mixture to the vegetable mix.
5. Thoroughly mix until evenly incorporated.
6. Season with salt and ground white pepper (adjust amounts as needed).
7. Let the relish rest for at least 30 minutes (up to overnight).
8. Serve!
