Bánh mì

The Baguette Box in Seattle has a really great sandwich with coconut braised tofu as the main ingredient for their take on bánh mì. Lately when we've gone the quality seems to be slipping, which means it's time to start making it for ourselves. One of the great ingredients to this dish is the pickled daikon radish and carrots. Crispy but pungent with the taste of vinegar, they add a really nice dimension to the sandwich. Add to this the coconut braised tofu and the avocado and coriander, and it's a great dish.

Last time I tried to make the pickled vegetables, they came out wrong. This time I learned a better trick. What I failed to do last time was get enough water out of the daikon and carrots to allow the vinegar and sugar to properly penetrate. Much like the eggplant dish, the solution is simply to douse them with salt. To make them, julienne your daikon and carrots and then liberally sprinkle them with salt and about two teaspoons of sugar. In a big bowl, mix the ingredients with your hands for a few minutes. After a short time you'll see water pooling in the bottom, and once that starts to happen you'll notice the daikon and carrots have relaxed their crispness a bit. At that point you can actually pick up and squeeze the sticks to help get even more moisture from them. You'll know you're done when the daikon can be easily bent without snapping; you can even make the ends touch.

Once that's done, place the vegetables in a one quart jar with the following brine mixture:

1 1/4 cups distilled white vinegar

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup water

In the picture you can see that the carrots (which were of a variety that's purple on the outside) have turned the brine a deep red.

As for the coconut braised tofu, I tried braising deep-fried tofu in coconut milk with some garlic and ginger. I ended up with tofu with a creamy coconut coating, but not at all what I was looking for, so there's plenty of work still to be done here. But you can feel free to use any sort of "main" ingredient in its place. Just make sure to add the pickled veggies, the avocado and of course the coriander for freshness.

If you have any ideas on the coconut braised tofu preparation, please let me know!

Bread at Home

I'm not a baker; that's my wife's job. I don't typically like dough, I avoid her stand mixer like it was plagued, and you'll never find me spending much time with flour or sugar. But tonight we put our levain to good use and created some great baguettes, as you can see in the picture.

When we were in France, the absolute best meal we had was a simple baguette with Brie. The problem with a baguette is that the crispy, crackled outside is brought on by a burst of steam introduced into the oven. The steam causes the skin to crisp up, while leaving the inside of the baguette nice and soft.

Luckily there are ways to achieve this at home. To accomplish this, my wife and I rolled out our baguettes, mercilessly slashed them with a razor, then prepped our oven.

At 460 degrees, our oven has never run so hot. At the bottom we placed a bread pan, into which we placed a couple of ice cubes. This causes the oven to be "moistened" but not steamed. Once the bread is on the stone, you then ladle boiling water into a red-hot cast-iron pan you've had at the bottom of the oven heating away. This causes a burst of steam as you slam the oven door shut.

Once the bread has risen and crisped up, you'll have some great baguettes at home.

I also finally got out my real camera...