Vietnamese-Style Tofu Hero with Asian Slaw

I pulled this recipe from Tal Ronnen's Compassionate Cook, a spectacular cookbook that I highly recommend. This particular sandwich is better than any other sandwich I've ever had in a Vietnamese restaurant and the best part is that it isn't that hard to make at all!

Ingredients for the Asian Slaw

• 2T agave nectar
• 1/4 cup rice vinegar
• 1/2 cup julienned carrot
• 1/2 cup julienned daikon radish
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

First, we started by making the Asian Slaw, which is just a bit of daikon radish and carrot julienned and soaked in agave nectar and rice vinegar for two days. This, obviously, needs to be prepared in advance or you'll just be eating raw carrot and radish -- yes, I've made this mistake before.

Ingredients for the Tofu

• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp white pepper
• 1/4 tsp ground cayenne
• 1/2 tsp sweet paprika
• 1 tsp dry mustard
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 2T minced chives
• 1 pound extra-firm tofu, cut into 8 (1/4 inch) slabs

For the tofu, I just whisked together the freshly ground black pepper, white pepper, cayenne, paprika, dry mustard, ground ginger, soy sauce, and freshly minced chives. Then, I placed the tofu, cut into slabs, into a single layer in a baking dish and coated the slabs with the sauce. Once coated, I baked them for 20 minutes.  They came out beautifully!

Ingredients for the assembly

• 4 French demi-baguettes
• 4T vegan mayonnaise
• 4T chile oil
• 4 fresh cilantro sprigs (or more)
• 1/2 English cucumber, cut lengthwise into 4 slices

The last step is the assembly. See, I told you this was easy. Just take a French demi-baguette or a full-size baguette cut into demi-baguette size and layer it with mayonnaise, then drizzle it with chile oil. The chile oil is a key ingredient in this sandwich. Then, layer it with sprigs of fresh cilantro and a cucumber sliced lengthwise. Finally, place a couple pieces of tofu and a spoonful of Asian slaw on top and voila! you have the perfect sandwich!

The peppery baked tofu topped with cucumber, cilantro, and slaw is perfect on the fresh baguette. And the chili oil really brings it all together. This sandwich is easy to make and has a lot of great flavor!