January 20th, 2008 |
Happy Obama Inauguration Day, folks. I'll ring it in with a fun little post. Because of a triple-dog-dare from one of my favorite food blogs, The Girl Who Ate Everything, I had to - had to - make Chinese buns. Well alright then!
Technically the specific reference was to fried mantou. Mantou is quite simply a four-based bun. But seeing as how I'm trying not to die from eating everything fried, we decided to steam instead of fry. However, evening that out, we put PJORK inside. So it's all good, you know.
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Start of with sifting flour. Apparently even sifting flour looks badass when photographed at high speed. It's an ancient and little sifter we got from my folks, but it does the job!
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A little bubbly?
Really just proofing some yeast. Also looks pretty neat. Warm water, sugar, yeast...science!
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After the yeast proofed and while Aubrey mixed up the dough, I was in charge of the filling. I used some leftover pulled pork I made last weekend and let me tell you, it make-a my belly happy.
It gets some soy sauce, some sesame oil, some diced onion - all great stuff!
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The dough had to rise and be kneaded twice so really the only complicated part of this recipe is just waiting. Waiting for the delicious. It's rough.
It's quite simple to cut them up and roll them out, thumb a wad of pork into it and pinch it up. I sacrificed the cute little "cinnamon roll" look of the no-filling mantou for the pinched-purse (or "angry clam") look of porky greatness. I'm a man of logical comprimise.
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After yet more time letting them rest, it came time to steam them. Now, our recipe said to use cheesecloth, or "some white cloth" or cabbage rolls. After staring at the shelves of Wegmans for about half an hour, I came to the conclusion that they actually did not have cheesecloth. Astounding. I finally remembered - after far too long - that I could simply buy a head of cabbage.
I'll make soup or coleslaw or something later. But for now it's bun time!
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Oh so tasty!
I'll brag. They're awesome. Like biting into a cloud. A chewy pork cloud.
Oh, and in true TGWAE form:
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INNARDS!
Seeing how simple this was to many, it's almost a sure bet that we'll make them again soon. Despite me being more of a savory fan than sweet, I do want to try them fried with a sweet condensed milk dip. I bet that's great too. So the next time someone challenges you to do something, just do it! Don't be such a baby. Do it. And go nom nom nom nom the whole time.
The End
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