i’m stuck in a 3 hour meeting and bored out of my mind, so here’s a primer on Fruit-Sando and Gyukatsu-Sando. both are shokupan bread sandwiches commonly found in fruit parlours and katsu shops around Japan. to make them, you’ll need to bake shokupan bread in a pullman loaf pan into a perfect cube. after that its mostly assembly.
these are sort of novelty foods that you make for special occasions or for your kids…
for shokupan, prefer the tangzhong (roux method) in the recipe here:
for the fruit sandwich, it doesn’t keep too long so you’ll need pick the freshest fruit possible that produces a nice cross section when sliced. after baking, cut off the crust and assemble the fruit in a way that when the sandwich is cut diagonally, it shows a nice cross section of the fruit. best to use a pastry bag to apply the whipped cream (hard peak) evenly. the key to slicing this thing in one piece is to wrap the sandwich in plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for a few hours to firm up. then slice with a clean blade with the plastic on and it should come out beautifully.
for gyuto-sando, you need to panko fry high quality beef that is uniform in shape to the bread. you can also use pork loin if you want to make pork katsu sando. since you may run into shaping problems, you can assemble the meat using two pieces attached by toothpicks and trim to shape. just remove the toothpicks after frying. toast the bread and apply some brown katsu sauce, assemble the meat so that when cut in half vertically, it’s against the grain. i prefer eating this with spicy english mustard and raw cabbage salad.
these are sort of novelty foods that you make for special occasions or for your kids…
for shokupan, prefer the tangzhong (roux method) in the recipe here:
for the fruit sandwich, it doesn’t keep too long so you’ll need pick the freshest fruit possible that produces a nice cross section when sliced. after baking, cut off the crust and assemble the fruit in a way that when the sandwich is cut diagonally, it shows a nice cross section of the fruit. best to use a pastry bag to apply the whipped cream (hard peak) evenly. the key to slicing this thing in one piece is to wrap the sandwich in plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for a few hours to firm up. then slice with a clean blade with the plastic on and it should come out beautifully.
for gyuto-sando, you need to panko fry high quality beef that is uniform in shape to the bread. you can also use pork loin if you want to make pork katsu sando. since you may run into shaping problems, you can assemble the meat using two pieces attached by toothpicks and trim to shape. just remove the toothpicks after frying. toast the bread and apply some brown katsu sauce, assemble the meat so that when cut in half vertically, it’s against the grain. i prefer eating this with spicy english mustard and raw cabbage salad.
