♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, Japanese milk bread is really the ultimate sandwich bread.

It's light with a pull-apart texture and great flavor.

And today on Milk Street we visit with cookbook author Sonoko Sakai and she helps us make this recipe at home.

Plus Sonoko demonstrates a Japanese style chicken and vegetable curry and a side dish of daikon carrot salad.

So please stay tuned as we explore Japanese favorites.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served, cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad-- for all your kitchen adventures.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - So we're gonna make Japanese curry today.

- Why do the Japanese make curry?

Let's start with that.

- The food curry actually came to Japan through the English traders at the turn of the century when Japan decided to open its ports.

- Right, the Meiji Restoration.

- The Meiji Restoration.

And said, "Okay, we're gonna welcome modernization.

We're gonna welcome Western culture."

And curry was one of the dishes that was introduced through the English.

When I was growing up in Japan, my school served curry every week, every week and at home curry is very popular.

They say the Japanese people eat curry on the average of one and a half times a week.

- Really?

- Yeah.

So curry became very popular in the '60s, but we never saw the spices.

So I never associated these spices with curry.

And when I started breaking it down and analyzing it, I realized that it was a lot of the spices that was in my grandma's medicine cabinet.

- It's different than a curry powder I might be familiar with or is it very similar to that?

- I try to come up with the best curry powder from scratch.

There's actually 17 ingredients in my curry powder.

And what makes it me... (laughs) is the umami flavor: shiitake and kombu.

- That's really interesting.

- Yeah.

And they can be mixed into the powder and pulverized to make a curry powder.

And I don't put any oil in this.

I'm just doing a quick toast.

Yeah, and when you hear that pop, it's ready.

I want to cool it.

So I've learned from an Indian cook that you could shake it.

(spice grinder whirring) - Right.

You talk about the curry spices, but then you make a roux with butter or oil, flour, and you add the spices.

So you essentially make a flavored roux... - Mm-hmm.

- For the basis of your curries.

And this is something that can sit in the refrigerator for a long time or the freezer indefinitely I guess.

And so you have all that flavor locked up in that roux, that paste.

It's just the basis of the curry, which is such a great idea, right, I mean... - Oh, it's a... it's a genius of an idea and you just drop it in, and it makes a perfect amount of curry for four people, and you just put it in water.

- It's clearly it's on the high rotation.

- Oh yeah.

Because it, it... also it was liberating for a lot of housewives.

They could do something else.

Rice in the-- - So this is a 30-minute thing.

- Yeah, so you cook the rice in a rice cooker.

That also happened.

The rice cooker came out in the '50s and the curry came out.

♪ ♪ I'm going to start serving it.

Yum!

Is it good?

- Mm!

This is a great example of how to get deep, rich flavor quickly.

- Mm-hmm.

- Umami, kombu, the mushroom, it's just a wonderful way of getting depth, you know?

- Oh, I'm so glad.

Well, we just made the roux together, too.

So that's why I feel like making things from scratch, individually grown by all these farmers, so... - This was a dish I did not know and thank you for being my tour guide.

- Oh, thank you so much.

- This is really good.

♪ ♪ - So today we are going to make Sonoko Sakai's amazing Japanese chicken and vegetable curry.

To get it started we need to get some onions cooking and then I'm gonna put my onions straight in.

We're gonna cook these for about nine minutes.

So they get a little bit of color and add a great base to our curry.

So while our onions are cooking, it's time to make some curry powder.

I've toasted these up already.

We have some black mustard seeds, some coriander, a little bit of shiitake mushrooms, some fennel, some cumin.

All really great whole spices that'll add a ton of flavor to your dish.

However, you want to make sure that these are fully cooled before you load them into your spice grinder over here.

I'm gonna give these a buzz.

(grinder whirring) I'm gonna pour this into my bowl.

So I'm gonna add some powdered spices to this.

And the reason I haven't added them in with the grinder is that I don't want these any more finely ground than they are.

I want a matching consistency.

So I have some ginger, some turmeric, a little bit of paprika, some black pepper, clove, and cinnamon and all of these are going to create an amazing flavor base.

Stir it up so it's well-combined.

So now we have our beautiful curry powder, which you made while the onions were cooking, saving some time, right?

♪ ♪ My onions have been cooking for about close to ten minutes now.

They have a little bit of color to them.

I'm going to make a little well and put my chicken right in the middle.

Now I'm not cooking my chicken all the way through right now, but I do want it to make sure that it loses just a little bit of that exterior color so that it can cook fully in the curry.

I had already seasoned it with a little bit of salt and pepper.

I have some garlic and ginger paste here.

And I'm just gonna stir that around.

And then I'm gonna add the rest of my butter.

And the reason that I'm adding my butter is because I want us to create a roux so we have a nice thick, beautiful curry.

We're gonna let it melt with the chicken and the onions, garlic and ginger.

It's gonna smell amazing.

Don't be afraid of a little color because color is flavor.

So I'm gonna add my flour now to thicken it up, stir it around.

Now this might stick to the bottom of the pan.

That's okay.

It will come up in the cooking process.

You might get a little color on your flour, don't worry about it.

Again, color is flavor.

So I'm gonna take a tablespoon of my curry powder and I realized I made more than a tablespoon of curry powder.

But you can use this on a lot of different things and you can just keep it in a little airtight jar, it'll keep for about a month or two and you can use it on vegetables, meats, whatever you like.

So now that I have my curry powder in the mix, I want to make sure that this cooks for a minute or two just so those spices can bloom and open up a little bit, give off a little bit more flavor.

It smells really great.

I'm gonna take my first cup of water.

I'm going to use my wooden spoon to kind of get some of the bits up from the bottom.

And you'll see pretty much instantly that this water is starting to thicken up from the roux that you've made.

First addition of water is nicely incorporated.

I'm gonna add the rest of it and then add my vegetables.

We've got some red bell pepper, some potatoes, some carrot and slide it right into my pot.

I'm gonna let it go for about 20 to 25 minutes uncovered until I can stick a skewer through the potato or carrot and it meets no resistance.

That means it's tender and it's ready to go.

♪ ♪ So we've been cooking this for about 25 minutes but we still need to add just a little bit more oomph to this dish.

So I'm gonna add another half teaspoon of black pepper, a bit of soy sauce, and a bit of mirin, which is a sweet rice wine.

Give it a good stir.

Color gets a bit darker.

You can see that your gravy is just a good bit thicker from the cooking process and the roux.

So it's time to eat.

I've got some steamed rice over here.

And then I have my beautiful Japanese chicken and vegetable curry.

♪ ♪ Typically with Japanese dishes, you serve it with a bit of a pickle just for brightness, acid, crunch.

And we have a bit of fukujinzuke, which is absolutely lovely.

Easy to find in your local Japanese market.

I'm going to add just a little squeeze of lemon to give it a bit of brightness.

Over here.

Time to eat.

♪ ♪ Mm-hmm.

This is really good.

(laughs) We have Sonoko Sakai's Japanese chicken and vegetable curry and I'm gonna go finish this bowl.

♪ ♪ - So, years ago when I visited Elizabeth Andoh in Tokyo, we made marinated vegetables.

That's very important to the cuisine.

And recently, more recently, I was out in L.A. visiting Sonoko Sakai, we made this recipe which is very simple to do.

It's a daikon radish carrot salad with sesame and lemon.

And we'll start by doing matchsticks.

So that's the daikon.

♪ ♪ So now we're going to salt them and massage it.

So we're gonna use a teaspoon of table salt.

Really want to cover everything with the salt and really get the salt into it.

Table salt is finer than kosher salt.

It's gonna really get some of the water out of these vegetables.

Just in a couple of minutes the vegetables really do start to get a little softer.

So we'll let that sit.

Now we'll make the dressing.

It's really simple, four things: salt, sugar, unseasoned rice vinegar.

You don't want other flavors in there and water, that's it.

So we'll just whisk that together.

This is really almost a pickling recipe, right?

Because we're gonna let the vegetables sit in here for quite some time.

So that's it.

We'll let these sit for a few minutes.

So now we're going to press or squeeze the excess liquid out of the daikon and the carrot.

And you really do have to squeeze this to get it out.

You can see there's quite a lot of liquid in the bowl And now we'll simply add the pickling liquid to it.

Now that can sit for four hours up to a whole week.

So we'll put that away, and we come back after four hours, we'll finish up the salad.

So the sesame seeds we're using have been toasted lightly in a pan.

And this recipe calls them to be ground.

And, you know, mortar and pestle is something I hadn't used a lot until recently.

And now I use it all the time.

Really does a great job of getting just the right texture that brings out flavors as well.

So once you just use gravity do a lot of the work you can see the sesame seeds are starting to break down.

♪ ♪ Now we'll just add the other ingredients, starting with the pickled vegetables, of course.

We have the sesame seeds.

So red pepper flakes are next.

If you can get Aleppo pepper strongly recommend that if you can find it.

But red pepper flakes are fine.

Lemon zest.

Dried apricots.

♪ ♪ So that's the daikon radish salad with sesame seeds and lemon zest.

And it's a great small counterpoint to almost any dish.

Just adds that extra bite and that freshness that you can't get anywhere else.

Milk bread.

So this is another thing that is interesting because I don't... when you think of Japan, you don't think about bread first, right?

- Right.

- And then milk bread, dairy, you know, which is also odd.

- Right.

- Yet it's extraordinarily popular and is absolutely phenomenally good, and much better than our white bread.

- It was actually the Americans that really introduced us to the bread culture because they had after the war there was a surplus of wheat in America.

Shipped it to Japan to feed the hungry kids.

All of us at school, school children, we ate a lot of bread.

And my generation is, I think, the first generation that acquire a love for, for the taste of bread.

Actually the secret ingredient which makes this bread so moist is the roux.

- Mm-hmm.

- It adds to the hydration, it makes it... it keeps it very moist and a little bit like mochi, you know?

- Mm-hmm!

That's one of my favorite things in the world, yes.

- So when we look for good bread, we say, "Ooh, this bread has a mochi mochi flavor."

We say, "Mochi mochi," and go, "Ooh, mochi mochi."

So it's so funny because we're a rice culture.

We're looking for that texture (chuckling): in, in this wheat bread, right?

- Mochi is that glutinous rice flour... - Sticky.

- ...dough that's chewy... - And sticky and sweet.

- Yeah, it's just wonderful.

- Slightly sweet.

- And that helps the bread to hold onto moisture?

Or is that what it does?

- Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Some of the best breads actually I find in Japan.

We moved to Los Angeles for the final time with my family in the '70s when I think Julia Child said, "How could a nation be powerful if you produce bread that tastes like Kleenex?"

- Sounds like Julia, yeah.

- Yeah, sounds like Julia Child.

And I said, "That's what we thought!

It tastes like cardboard."

And my mother, she would take empty suitcases to Japan, and come back with like seven of them.

And one of them always had nothing but Japanese milk bread.

And we would just go wild, you know?

Nice and toasty.

- Mm!

- Yeah.

- It's cooked.

- It has that nice hollow... - Yeah.

- ...sound to it.

I think we should just break it and see how it looks?

- Mm... That's just lovely.

- It's very nice, isn't it?

Yeah.

I really enjoyed baking with you.

So good.

- Mochi mochi.

(both chuckling) ♪ ♪ You know, I first discovered milk bread in Tokyo at a 7-Eleven.

There were a lot of them.

(laughs) Well, sev-- don't laugh-- the 7-Elevens in Tokyo are just amazing.

I mean they have great stuff.

Alcohol, you can get hot food, you get sandwiches.

But a lot of these sandwiches, like their famous egg salad sandwich, comes on milk bread.

- Ah... - And I'm going like, you know, if Wonder Bread was really good?

- Right.

- This would be milk bread.

Because it has this wonderful texture, it's kind of pull-apart cottony, great flavor.

It's just... it's just quite different.

- Well, the primary way that it's different is it contains what's called a roux, like a water-based roux.

It's also known as the tangzhong method.

We're going to combine some liquids in the recipe with some flour-- we're gonna heat it.

It gelatinizes is the starches in the flour and it enables them to trap all of the water.

It creates this bread that is just... is, is moist but also still really easy to work with and handle.

So we have a half a cup of water.

And this is six tablespoons whole milk.

And then this is just a quarter-cup of bread flour.

The reason you want to mix it before we start heating it is it will immediately start to clump up.

So we want to make sure it's all smooth before we turn on the heat.

All right, Chris, if you wouldn't mind going ahead and setting that heat to medium.

And you want to make sure that you whisk constantly.

Because, again, as it heats up, it will start to thicken and clump.

And as you can see, it's really a simple step, but it adds so much to this bread.

And I love that you compare it to Wonder Bread.

- You can take a whole loaf and turn into a little tiny ball too.

- That's what I used to do.

(laughs) - Yeah, of course.

- That's my little secret.

All right, you can see it's starting to thicken.

it's leaving a trail.

So now I'm just gonna transfer this to a bowl because we want it to cool down to room temperature.

And you do want to cover it with some plastic wrap so it doesn't form a skin.

You want to put that directly on the surface.

So we're gonna allow this to cool down to room temperature and then we're gonna continue on with our recipe.

Our water-based roux here is totally cooled to room temperature.

And if you wouldn't mind, you can go and add the eggs to that and whisk those in.

And then when you're done with that you're gonna add the milk and I'm gonna go ahead incorporate the dry ingredients.

We have bread flour here.

I'm going to actually add some rye flour to that.

Just added a little bit of extra flavor, a little bit of extra heft to the bread, and we really liked it.

- Yeah, Sonoko did that when I made it with her.

She also added a little bit.

- I'm adding sugar.

This is non-fat milk powder.

- All the milk?

- Yep.

And I'm adding instant yeast.

And then lastly salt.

I'm just gonna whisk this together before we put it on the mixer to make sure everything's incorporated.

- This is very exciting.

We're both doing the same thing together, isn't it?

- This is teamwork.

Thank you very much.

Now I'm gonna put this on low speed and then I'm just gonna slowly add this right in.

Now, as soon as that forms a ball, and has all come together, we're gonna go ahead and add eight tablespoons of softened salted butter one piece at a time.

But you can see already how sticky it is though, right?

Okay, Chris, now that all the butter's added, I'm gonna increase the speed to medium-low, and we're just gonna leave it to mix for like ten to 12 minutes to really develop the gluten.

It's still gonna be sticking slightly to the sides of the bowl, but the dough will start to firm up.

We are ready to transfer it to our bowl.

I've buttered this bowl.

Really elastic.

- This almost looks like focaccia dough or something, it's got so much liquid in it.

- You know, but if you touch it, it's really actually not that sticky.

All right, now I'm just gonna brush the top with some melted butter.

And then we're gonna just wrap this with plastic wrap and leave it in a nice warm spot until it's doubled in size, which should take about an hour and a half.

♪ ♪ Okay, Chris, here we are.

- Think that's risen enough?

- (chuckling): I think it's ready to go.

Just gonna take off the plastic.

And I'm going to lightly dust the counter here with some flour.

Oh, look at that, popped right out.

That's great.

- Can I just get my hands on this?

- (laughing): It's nice now, see?

All right, I'm just gonna put a little flour on top.

Now, I'm gonna divide this into four equal pieces.

Take each piece and form it into a ball.

Just sort of roll it over itself.

Shape it into a nice even shape.

I like to flip it over because there's like a smooth side and then this side-- you know, sort of I consider the rough side-- and I'm gonna have that on top.

So just flip it over so the smooth-- yep, perfect.

And then we're gonna press it out into a rectangle that's about seven inches long by four inches wide.

And then we're just gonna give it like a business letter three-fold.

So fold the bottom part up halfway, exactly, and then the top part down, and then we're just gonna pinch it to seal.

And then this guy is going to go into the loaf pan on one side and you just wanna make sure that that seal goes perpendicular to the pan.

- Mm-hmm.

Okay.

- It is actually very easy to work with, right?

- It's very easy to work with.

- Yeah, I mean it's not as sticky as the dough was before.

- That's the only reason you're letting me work with it evidently.

- (laughing): Right.

And it's okay if the dough balls aren't touching because you wanna actually leave a little space between them so they have room to rise and expand.

And I really love this technique.

It's kind of interesting.

Not only do you get these two great pull-apart, almost large buns when you get the loaf out, but also the way that we've shaped each ball and put them in perpendicularly, it aligns all the gluten strands and it actually helps to give you that really fine feathery crumb.

- (laughing): I love aligning those gluten strands.

That really... - I know, I just...

I just geeked out a little bit, but there's a reason.

So we're just gonna go ahead and cover these with a kitchen towel.

We want them to rise about an inch above the pan.

It's gonna take about an hour.

♪ ♪ Look at that.

- Mm... - They look great.

All we have to do now is we're going to gently brush the tops.

This is just an egg that's been beaten.

And that's it.

And then these are gonna go right into a 350-degree oven on the middle rack.

And they're gonna bake until they're nice and deeply golden brown on top.

And it's gonna take about 30 to 35 minutes.

♪ ♪ Okay, Chris, I think we're about ready to slice into these.

I took them out of the oven.

I let them cool for 15 minutes in the pans.

And then I very gently took them out of the pans and re-inverted them.

So they've been cooling about an hour and I'm ready to slice into them.

- I've been cooling about an hour too waiting for these to come out.

- I know, right?

Okay.

Let's not waste another second.

Now this is my favorite part.

I love to just... pull them apart.

Look at that.

- This goes back to your Wonder Bread years, right?

- Seriously.

- You like playing with it.

Pull-apart texture!

That's the only way I can describe it.

- I always think about it as feathery... like a feathery texture.

- Yeah.

- So... - Mm... - Just gonna sl-- I like nice big slices because it's so... (laughing) because it's so light.

- You get about four slices per loaf but, you know, that's okay.

- It looks beautiful.

The crumb looks amazing.

- So when I say pull-apart when you just pull it, you know, it has that wonderful feathery texture.

- It does, it's light like cake almost.

- Mm-hmm.

I'm gonna taste it just as is first of course.

- Okay.

- Mm...

There's nothing like this bread!

I mean, everyone loves sourdough bread, which is nice.

- Right.

- This has texture, it has great flavor, and for a sandwich or just like this there's just nothing like it.

So you can get this recipe, and all the recipes, by the way, of this season of Milk Street Television at MilkStreetTV.com.

All episodes and recipes from this season of Milk Street Television are available for free at our website, MilkStreetTV.com.

Please access our content, including our step-by-step recipe videos, from your smartphone, your tablet, or your computer.

- The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show.

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Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for just $27, 40% less than the cover price, and receive a Milk Street tote with your order at no additional charge.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served, cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad-- for all your kitchen adventures.

♪ ♪ (man speaking Hebrew) - (speaking world language) - Bonjour, je m'appelle Chris.

- We call it supa kanja.

It's the word for gumbo.

♪ ♪ - Christopher, you have to make the authentic, original cotoletta alla Bolognese for me.

♪ ♪ - So this is the Eduardo García blender.

- This is the no electricity.

♪ ♪ - Next is dessert.

- That is really good.

♪ ♪ I notice when you cook sometimes, you add a little bit of something, and then you just put the whole bowl in.

- I like to be generous with my food.

Generosity is important in cooking.

- That's true.

♪ ♪ - Can start building bridges, and food is definitely a perfect common ground.

♪ ♪ - This is a generational thing.

It's, it's something that you inherit.

♪ ♪ - Yeah, that was great.

(woman speaking Mandarin) - What was this for?

What did she say?

- You get one more chance.

- Salute.

- How is it?

He's speechless.

- I'm speechless.

That's so good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪