cook: bao buns

Last night I kicked off cooking practice for the lunar new year with Chinese-style bao buns because the readymade buns from the Asian supermarket are Chinese, but the pickle is Danmuji or Korean Pickled Daikon Radish and the salad more American slaw than Asian while the Charsiu pork seems a mashup of whatever flavors I think go into Chinese barbecued meat minus the red food coloring. It started over the weekend by making a pickling brine of water, unseasoned rice vinegar, sugar, kosher salt (next time just use seasoned vinegar), cloves of garlic sliced lengthwise, turmeric, peppercorns, bay leaves and sliced daikon radish.                  

I sliced the pork shoulder off rib bone and cut into chunks and concocted a marinade. I did not have Chinese 5-spice powder, and so I ground in a mortar and pestle: star anise, clove, Sichuan peppercorns, fennel and sprinkled cinnamon into the mixture. 

I had simmered the pickling liquid to dissolve the sugar and salt and then let it cool a bit before adding the sliced daikon. I put into a bowl: sugar, salt, my 5-spice powder, and I forgot to add white pepper, sesame oil, Shaoxing rice wine (which was fermenting in the bottle, and so I used a teaspoon and tossed the rest out), hoisin sauce, soy sauce, hot honey, and finely minced garlic. I just read that I can substitute for the Chinese cooking wine, dry sherry and mirin. Good to know. But the marinade looked and smelled like Chinese bbq sauce, and so I put the pork shoulder into the bowl to tenderize and absorb the flavors.

Into the refrigerator the ingredients went until weeknight cooking.

On Monday evening I looked at the instructions for the Mantou or Chinese burger buns. Oh hey. I could just microwave them.

But I jimmied my colander into a stockpot and cut parchment paper for the bottoms of the bun, so they wouldn't get soggy as I steamed them. While the pork was roasting in the oven (I put the excess marinade into a simmer pot and laid the pork atop a baking rack atop the baking sheet filled halfway to the rim with water so the drippings wouldn't burn in a 475 degree oven, later turned down to 375 after 10 minutes), I made a Savoy cabbage salad from a Martha Stewart recipe. I riffed of course. I sliced the cabbage thinly, chopped cilantro and green onion, and then put into a bowl: seasoned rice vinegar, sugar, lime juice and a bit of Kewpie mayonnaise. The mayo was my addition, and I omitted matchstick chopped carrots.

And then I set up dinner as a bao bar, and it's giving me ideas of bao bar dinners for a small group in the future.

OH yeah. I don't have to just resort to the Chairman Bao food truck for this fix because really you can put anything you can imagine into a Chinese slider.