chinese

Keys to bunny bao success

maki — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:18:23 +0200

I’ve gotten a couple of emails from readers who had some trouble with the bunny bao. Just in case you plan to try these tomorrow or any time (why limit bunnies to just Easter?), here are a few key points to watch out for.

As stated in the recipe, use all-purpose or cake flour (in other words a relatively low-gluten flour), not bread flour. This ensures that the bao will be fluffy. If you make it with high gluten bread flour, they may come out rather doughy.
Make sure the filling is not too watery or too oily. The scrambled eggs should be moist but not runny, and the bacon should be well drained before adding to the egg mix. If any oil or moisture run over the edges, the dough won’t stick together.
Don’t overfill the bao. For the proportions given in the recipe (which makes 12) about 1 heaping teaspoonful of filling should be enough.
Make sure to give the dough a rest after cutting it into 12 pieces. This allows it to ‘heal’ a bit before proceeding.
Don’t overhandle the dough. Forming the ears is just two quick snips with your scissors. After that, you can squish the ears flat if you like but try not to fiddle too much with it, or the dough may not puff as much as it should. Don’t worry - the ears will come out fine, and even if the bunnies are a bit crooked everyone will love them anyway.

And…the scissors need to be sharp, pointy, and impeccably clean. (don’t use those rusty scissors sitting around in your kids’ crayon box….)

Happy Easter!

Easter brunch bunny bao (steamed buns)

maki — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 16:16:59 +0200

For a planned Easter lunch, I wanted to do something in the brunch realm, but with an Easter theme. Brunch purists may insist on eggs and pancakes and croissants and champagne for brunch, but for me ‘brunch’ means an early lunch feast after little or no breakfast, and so dim sum is my favorite kind of brunch.

Putting Easter and dim sum together, I devised these bunny shaped bao, or steamed buns. (The inspiration for the shape came from a pair of fluffy white bunny slippers I saw at a flea market last summer.) They are quite simple really: tender steamed bun dough is filled and formed into an oval, and the ears are cut with scissors. The faces are optional - for a minimalist bunny, you could just leave them blank and unadorned. Or, you could go all-out and add whiskers with slivered green onion, or whatever strikes your fancy.

The bunny bao could be stuffed with any kind of steamed bun filling (see my roast pork filled steamed buns), but keeping with the brunch theme, I’ve filled these with an egg, bacon and chive mixture. It all makes sense - eggs, and ham, and bunnies, plus spring chives. So very Easter.

You could of course omit the bunny-shaping part if you want to avoid the cuteness.

Bunny shaped bao (steamed buns) with egg and bacon filling

Makes about 12 bunnies

For the dough:

400g / 14 oz. all-purpose white flour
1 packet (7g) dry yeast
2 Tbs. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
220ml / a bit less than 1 U.S. cup warm water
2 Tbs. vegetable oil (such as canola, safflower)
extra flour for rolling out

For the filling:

150g / about 5 oz (a few slices) bacon, speck or pancetta, cut into small dice
3 large eggs
2 tsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. mirin
3 Tbs. chives, finely chopped

Equipment: a pair of sharp scissors, a multi-tiered bamboo steamer, kitchen parchment paper

Make the dough. In a large bowl mix the dry ingredients together well. Add the warm water a little at a time, mixing all the time, until it forms a shaggy ball. Add the oil and knead in the bowl until the dough cleans the sides. Place on a board (lightly floured if necessary) and knead until smooth. Form into a ball, place back in the bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Leave until risen to about 2 1/2 times its original size, about 1 hour.

In the meantime, make the filling. In a dry non-stick frying pan, fry the the bacon bits until crispy but not too black. Drain well on a paper towel.

Mix together the egg, soy sauce, sugar and mirin. In the same non-stick frying pan, mix the egg around to make scrambled eggs that are firm but not hard (take of the heat while still soft, and they’ll continue to cook to the ideal firmness). Add the chives and the bacon at the end and mix well. Let cool to room temperature.

Punch down the risen dough, roll into a snake and cut into 12 equal pieces. Make each piece into a small, smooth ball. Cover with a dampened kitchen towel and let rest for about 15 minutes.

Cut the parchment paper into 12 10cm / 4 inches or so sized squares.

Make ready the steaming equipment.

Flatten a dough ball to about 12 cm / 5 inches in diameter, making the edges thinner than the middle part.

Place about 1 teaspoon of the filling in the middle of the dough circle. Don’t try to overfill or you will have trouble closing up the dough.

Gather up the dough around the filling, pinching to seal well. The dough should be moist enough to form a good seal, but if not brush the edges with the tiny bit of water and pinch closed again.

Flip the bun over, and form into a longish oval shape, rounding out any bumps if needed. Look at the bun and decide which end looks best as the ‘face’ of the bunny.

Lay a pair of clean, sharp scissors almost flat against the top of the bun lenghwise. The points should aim for about 1/3 from the ‘face’ end of the bun. Snip two ‘ears’, taking care not to cut through the dough so the filling is exposes.

Here’s how the bunny should look after the ears are snipped. If the ears are too round, flatten them carefully with your fingers.

To make the eyes, poke small holes with a chopstick end and poke in a piece of chive in each hole. Don’t go too deep! (If you are in a hurry, just poke the holes and skip the chives.)

Place each bun on a piece of parchment paper, and place in a steamer well apart (they will puff up to about twice the size, and any touching parts will not be smooth). Steam for about 20 minutes. Eat while piping hot.

Notes

The dough here is a bit more delicate than the basic one I gave for steamed buns previously. The trick to making the bunnies smooth and cute is to not overhandle the dough, and to keep the surface moist when letting them rest. Don’t use bread flour - use all-purpose, or even cake flour. (The dough recipe comes from a fantastic book in Japanese called Peking (Beijing) Style Flour Cooking by Wu Wuen.)

To make ahead, steam them, let them cool a bit and put into plastic bags and freeze. You can steam them from frozen for about 20-25 minutes until hot.

You can also make plain unstuffed bunnies. Plain bao make a great accompaniment to Chinese meals, instead of the usual rice or noodles.

Final New York notes

maki — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 09:02:07 +0200

Dim Sum

I understand that there are supposedly better-quality places for dim sum in New York nowadays, but those gringo-run and/or uptown restaurants require bothersome things like reservations, and personally, making reservations for dim sum just seems wrong. Waiting for a table at a garishly lit noisy restaurant with cafeteria atmosphere is part of the fun. Besides, what non-Chinese-run dim sum palace would serve stewed tripe?

The picture is scaled small so as not to scare people too much.

Therefore I stick to my old standby, the Golden Unicorn on East Broadway. An added benefit of going there for dim sum is that there is a branch of Aji Ichiban on the other side of the street to peruse afterwards.

Supermarkets, no thanks

New York is a wonderful place. It offers people a myriad of choices for all kinds of activities, including eating and food shopping. There are terrific gourmet markets, great speciality stores for just about every kind of food you can imagine, and farmer's markets are sprouting like weeds after a rainstorm all over the city.

So then, why do the regular supermarkets suck so badly, and how can they hope to survive? How do they survive at all?

The produce is usually rock-hard or simply flavorless, and it's quite often as expensive as the much better quality stuff at Whole Foods or the mega-gourmet markets, not to mention the green markets. The meat is industrial. There are half-hearted attempts at gourmet-ism, like expensive selections of dried herbs and salt and oils. The staff is usually bored and could care less.

The only reason to go to a New York supermarket seems to me to be to get things that even they can't screw up, like detergent and bottled drinks. The only reason to buy food at a supermarket would be if you just can't be bothered - especially since ordering takeout isn't that much more expensive.

WTC

Finally...this is not food related, but we just happened to be staying in an apartment just a block from the World Trade Center site. Despite the fact that the construction people were on strike the first few days we were there, the progress on the site since I saw it last was quite cheering.

I had a hard time even thinking about going near the site for at least two years after 9/11. I used to commute through the World Trade Center concourse via PATH and the E train when I lived for a year in Jersey City, and seeing my former haunts simply gone, and thinking of the people who were killed, was too much to bear. But New York always manages to survive, rebound and thrive.

Steamed buns with roast pork filling (Steamed pork buns, or char siu bao, or chuuka manjuu)

maki — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 12:08:32 +0200

Being a world wanderer of sorts (I've lived in 4 countries and 20+ different homes since I was born), a lot of my eating and cooking is tinged with nostalgia and longing for things that I miss from places I've lived before. I've posted several such recipes here, such as for New York style bagels, homemade pizza, and chocolate peanut butter cups.

This is another such recipe, for Chinese-style steamed buns. I say Chinese-style, because the kind I yearn for is probably not very authentically Chinese like the ones Renee can enjoy in such variety in Singapore. It's the Japanese version of the Chinese steamed bun, called chuuka manjuu. In Japan the chuuka manjuu usually has a smooth top because the dough is gathered and pressed together around the filling on the bottom. The fillings are usually an, sweet azuki bean paste, or roast pork (char siu) mixed with vegetables. There are also bastardized versions such as curry and Italian style meat sauce. They are usually sold from special glass cases which keep the buns hot and steamy, at combini (convenience stores) and such.

The sweet bean paste filled ones usually have a little red dot on top. Now, red bean paste (an) is not one of my favorite things to eat, even though my sister Meg was a chef at the New York Toraya for many years. (Toraya is arguably the leading purveyor of traditional Japanese sweet pastries.) Therefore, my favorite, nostalgia-inducing bun is the one with a roast pork or char siu filling.

On a side note, the best bao or pau I've ever had were from a tiny store on Pacific Avenue in San Francisco, on the edge of Chinatown. (I wish I could remember the name...). It has pictures of $4 and $5 platters of meat and veg on rice in the dingy window, and a big steamer up front containing the whitest, fluffiest bao I've ever had. My version is not nearly as perfect, but it is pretty damn good.

Bao or chuuka manjuu do freeze well if you make a large batch. You can steam or nuke them one at a time (steaming is much better, but nuking is more convenient.) This recipe makes 24 buns, and I freeze most of them when I make a batch. A bun makes a great little snack.

Making char siu from scratch is sort of a bother, but I have given a recipe for a simplified version. It does take time to cook, but a ready-made lump of char siu (or yakibuta in Japanese) is very useful, and can also be cooked in quantity and frozen for later use.

Chuuka Manjuu, Japanese-style Chinese steamed buns

The dough:

6 cups of all-purpose flour (if you can find bleached flour, which we can't here in Switzerland, the buns will be whiter than white like they are at that store on Pacific Avenue)
2 packages dry yeast
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1 cup boiling water
1 cup warm whole milk
2 Tbs vegetable shortening or lard
1 tsp. baking powder
Parchment paper

Cut up the parchment paper into 24 squares about 10 cm / 3 inches square.

Proof the yeast in a bowl or cup in the 1/4 cup of warm water with a pinch of sugar added, until foamy.

In a large bowl, put in 5 cups of the flour. Make a well in the center, and add the hot water and mix rapidly. (Hot water seems to bring out the sweetness in flour.) Add the sugar and yeast/water mixture, baking powder, warm milk, and the shortening or lard. Mix well. Add the rest of the flour little by little until you have a workable dough. Knead for a few minutes on a floured board until it's soft and pliable. (This dough is one of the easiest you'll ever encounter.)

Put into a large plastic zip bag and seal. Leave in a warm place until the dough has doubled in bulk, or has filled up the bag until it looks ready to burst. (About 45 minutes).

Take out the dough and roll into one long sausage. Cut the dough into 24 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, and let rest for a bit.

To fill the buns, flatten each ball so that the middle is slightly thicker than the edges. Put about a tablespoon or so of filling in the middle. Gather up the edges and pinch them firmly together to seal, then turn the bun over and place on a square of parchment paper. Let the buns rise for 15-20 minutes before steaming.

Steam in a steamer for 20 minutes. Eat while piping hot. I like to dip mine just slightly in soy sauce mixed with mustard sauce (the kind made straight from dry mustard powder, like the little packets you get at a Chinese take away).

The pork filling:

400g / a bit less than 1 lb of char siu (Chinese-style roast pork, recipe follows)
1 cup finely chopped green onions
6 dried shiitake mushrooms
1/4 cup of canned bamboo shoots (optional)
2 tsp. dark roasted sesame oil
1 piece of fresh ginger, chopped finely
3 Tbs soy sauce, or the defatted roasting liquid from the char siu
1 Tbs flour
2 Tbs cornstarch
1/2 cup water

Soak the shiitake mushrooms in warm water until soft. Cut off the hard stems and slice thinly.

Cube the pork, or chop it up finely.

Mix the flour and cornstarch with the water.

In a pan heat the sesame oil and toss in all the ingredients except the flour/cornstarch water. Sauté briefly, then add the flour/cornstarch water. Cook until it's a bit syrupy.

Let cool and use to fill the buns.

Yakibuta, or Japanese-style Chinese Roast Pork (char siu)

A pork roast that is at least 1 kg (about 2 lbs). It should not be too fatty, but should not be totally lean or it may be rather dry.
Soy sauce
1 fat piece of ginger
1 star anise
3-4 garlic cloves
Sugar
Water

If you have a big piece of pork, cut it into about 500g (1/2 pound) pieces. Roughly chop the ginger - you can leave the skin on - and bash the garlic to crush a bit.

Put the pork pieces in a sturdy plastic bag. You may want to double-bag it. Put in the pork, ginger, star anise and garlic, and fill with enough soy sauce to cover the pork. Seal the bag well and marinate in the refrigerator overnight. Turn the meat several times if you can so that the marinade penetrates evenly.

Preheat the oven to 140° C / 280° F. Empty out the contents of the bag into a baking dish. Add a bit of water so that the meat is sitting in about 1cm of liquid. Sprinkle the meat with sugar, and bake for about 2 1/2 - 3 hours, turning the meat every 20-30 minutes. If you want it even sweeter, sprinkle more sugar on the meat periodically. At the end, the liquid will be almost gone and syrupy, and you will have dark amber colored pieces of pork. Let cool and slice thin, cube, etc. You can use cubes in fried rice, or in the steamed buns of course, and any number of things. Sliced thin it makes a great salad. It's also a rather unusual tasting sandwich meat.

It is quite worthwhile to make this in some quantity, since the cooking takes so long, and to freeze in portions for later use.

(Check out my Easter brunch bunny bao too!)