A few months ago in late 2019, I bought the eponymous cookbook of Num Pang (which means ‘sandwich’ in Cambodian). It’s a New York restaurant that sells Cambodian-inspired sandwiches (one of the two owners is Cambodian). I haven’t tried their sandwiches in person, yet, but I definitely want to.

I finally got around to making one of the recipes:

Each bite is a flavor and texture bomb, which is pretty awesome.

Every num pang is composed of the same base ingredients, with minor variation.

There’s always:

  • a protein / base ingredient (here, I used a basic roasted sweet potato. The cookbook includes numerous protein recipes for meatballs, chicken, etc.)
  • chili garlic mayo (basically, Sambal Oelek garlic chili paste mixed with mayonnaise)
  • Fresh cucumber slices
  • A pickled vegetable (they recommend carrots as the most basic option, but note that you can pickle anything, like daikon, asian pears, etc.)
  • Fresh cilantro
  • Optionally, bread (Ideally you want a light, fluffy, banh mi baguette — less dense than the ‘french bread’ you’d buy at a bakery or supermarket in the States).

The goal is to get all of these ingredients in every bite of your sandwich. The flavors and textures work REALLY well together.

I’m looking forward to trying more proteins, mainly chicken, with complementary flavors.