Pan Bagnat - Tuna French Sandwich - Food Wishes

Hi, I'm Chef John from

food

wishes

.com with pon banya, that's right, I'm going to show you how to make the world's most famous

tuna

sandwich

, which is actually the world's most famous

tuna

salad, the nicoise stuffed and pressed inside a whole loaf of bread. and according to people who consider things, this is considered the best picnic

sandwich

, as it must be prepared in advance and the longer it remains soaked in its own juice, the better, in fact, the name actually means dipped bread, but Before we start soaking our bread, go ahead and start by checking out the rest of our ingredients and for me that starts with a bunch of tuna packed in olive oil.

Oh yeah, we have to use the good stuff here, sorry Charlie, and what makes this sandwich so amazing is the play between that. rich oily tuna and then our intense, salty salty bits like capers, anchovies and of course some olives, but before that happens we have to prepare what is probably the most important ingredient and that would be a beautiful extra virgin olive oil in which we will add a couple. minced garlic cloves and, by the way, extra credit for using something from the south of France. Okay, something almost nice would be nice and what we're going to do is add that garlic and then let it sit on the counter while we prepare. our bread and for this we're going to want to use a good loaf of hard, crusty bread and what we want to do is cut this lengthwise about 2 3 of the way down and by the way, a loaf like this is fine, but I really prefer use something a little bit flatter like a ciabatta bread, but they were gone so I ended up with this pretty standard loaf of French bread and then once we open it up, what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and take out a nice amount of bread. from the top, especially towards the center, as well as a little bit from the bottom and you may have heard me say before that this should be a loaf of stale bread which will work better because it's more absorbent, but unfortunately mine wasn't at all.

As stale as I thought it was, so that's my only regret, we really want this bread to be pretty dry, but regardless, once the bread is made, we're going to baste it very, very generously with our garlic oil, like which seems to be ridiculous. amount, but don't panic, this really is the key and then what we'll do once it's completely and carefully saturated is set that half aside to continue to absorb the oil as we move towards the top of our butt. I think we should start with a layer of our beautiful vine ripened tomatoes. Did I mention you should probably only make this in the summer when the tomatoes are perfect and since I want full coverage but just one layer, I think cutting those slices? half makes them easier to place and of course whenever we use fresh cut tomatoes we always want to season them which I'm doing with a little freshly ground black pepper which is optional as well as a little salt which not okay, definitely apply them. with a little salt and then on top of our tomatoes we will go ahead and place the rest of our vegetables, which for me will be some thinly sliced ​​red onions, some green and black olives, as well as some thinly sliced ​​fresh banana pepper, although any fresh roasted or pickled pepper will work and I should mention some other ingredients commonly included here would be things like artichoke hearts or sliced ​​fennel or maybe some blanched green beans.

Okay, pretty much any type of vegetation is allowed and then on top of our vegetables, we're going to go ahead and stack our tuna and I mean stack and really try to get to the edge, although it's okay if we have it stacked a little bit higher on the center and as I mentioned we really want to use a nice Tuna packed in olive oil or even better yet we would slowly poach some tuna in a little olive oil and use that and if I'm not mistaken we actually have a video for that, but no matter what we're using once we get the tune down, I'll go ahead and cover that with some anchovy fillets which I know not everyone loves or at least that's what they say, but here it's absolutely critical, so go ahead and add them and if you forget to mention that they are there for those people on your guest list who say they don't like them, that's okay, there's a good chance they have no idea and then after the anchovy we'll continue with your capers from good friends and we will apply a generous pinch of the following. with some sliced ​​hard-boiled egg, but I'm not trying to make an egg sandwich here.

I just want enough, so I get a little bit in each bite, so I'll space them out pretty well, which is going to work. It looks very good because in all those spaces I am going to place some freshly cut basil leaves that are going to work very well with all these ingredients, especially the ingredient that we are going to finish with, which would be a last layer of freshly cut tomatoes and of course , when we get to the last slice, we're going to flip it over so it fits perfectly to the shape of the crust and, just like the first layer of tomato, we're going to want to season it with salt and pepper, at which point we're going to go ahead and drizzle all this with a couple of tablespoons of white wine vinegar or the wine vinegar of your choice and then, if we have a tablespoon of garlic oil left, we will finish by drizzling it over the top and that's it.

We can go ahead and put the top half on top and give everything a good press and if something falls out you can go ahead and put that stuff back in or of course eat it and at this point we can go ahead and wrap this in two or three layers of plastic and if you're thinking, man, this looks good enough to eat, I think I'll skip the wrapping and pressing step and just enjoy my French tuna sandwich right now. Don't do it, are you okay? I'm not even going to come close to the same experience unless it's wrapped and pressed properly, especially if you use stale bread like you're supposed to, since we really need to give it time for all that olive oil to absorb, as well as everything. those amazing juices that the salt is bringing out of those vegetables, okay, it's our bread that's saturated with all of that that really makes the sandwich what it is, so we're going to go ahead and wrap it in plastic and then in a couple of layers of heavy duty aluminum foil and A little tip here for the aluminum foil.

I like to make sure the seams end at the top so that none of that olive oil and juices can seep from the bottom into the pan. Speaking of which, once everything is properly wrapped in foil, we'll do it. I transferred that to some kind of large roasting or baking dish and then somehow weighed it, which I like to do by placing a baking sheet on top and then I'll use something heavy like this cast iron griddle to weigh it down, but you can also use a few cans of

food

and that's it, we can transfer them to the refrigerator and let gravity do its magic for at least 8 to 12 hours.

It's okay, longer is better and it's not mandatory, but if you want. Turning it over once during the process wouldn't be a bad idea and that's it, the next day we'll go ahead and unwrap it, preferably at a picnic, and cut it up to see how we did it and you know what it looks pretty. nice or should I say quite nice and although as you're building this you might think you're putting in too much, as you can see if you weigh it properly the whole thing should compress beautifully but anyway I went ahead and cut another piece off to get the official flavor which I made too small.

Okay, you need a certain amount of bread around this to hold everything together, so don't make that mistake, but aside from the portion size, it really was an amazing bite. The food is okay, obviously all the ingredients we include work really well together, but what makes it so good is that it's all delivered in this beautifully compressed package tied together with what will hopefully be a very soggy loaf. In fact, I heard the late great girl Julia once say that If you don't have stuff running down your arm while you eat this, you did it wrong, and while it wasn't exactly dripping down my arm, my bread was actually very saturated, so for a small, thin piece was really amazing, but I did it.

Go ahead and cut a bigger one so you can place it on a plate and take some pictures. Oh, and if you're taking this to a picnic, you can cut these pieces ahead of time and then wrap them individually, but for longer life. impressive presentation, I'd probably bring it whole along with a chopping board and knife and then cut it to order when ready to serve, but both ways work well so it's up to you to decide, after all you're the Tanya Harding of your frying pan . Party banya, but no matter how you serve it, it will get rave reviews, but anyway that's my opinion on binya bread or as I like to call it in the office, ponbon, yeah sure, there are good tuna sandwiches and there are excellent tuna. sandwiches and then there's this one which is one of a kind so I really hope you try it soon so follow the links below for ingredient quantities, a printable written recipe and lots more information as always and as always. enjoy you