Saviolo
Saviolo's JournalChinese Steamed Buns Recipe - Two ways
Happy US Thanksgiving to everyone in the US of A. We're up in Canada, so we had our Thanksgiving last month. And this week, we did a very non-Thanksgiving type of recipe, Chinese steamed buns! Although we did fill one of them with a squash filling, does that count? We did steamed buns with two different fillings for this recipe. One was the same pork filling we used in the potstickers last week (with a couple of additions), and the other was a warm-spiced squash and garlic filling. Of course you can fill your steamed buns with whatever sort of filling you want, and something like our char siu pork would be a great choice.
The real recipe is the dough. Don't be afraid of this dough, it is very easy to make, work, and use! It's nice and springy, comes together quickly, and if your yeast is good and vigorous, it will definitely puff up and get nice and fluffy when you steam the finished buns. You can see at the end of our video how nice and fluffy ours got in the steamer, and they had that perfect smooth slightly tacky texture to the outside that you'd expect from a nice dim sum restaurant.
Homemade Pork Potsticker Dumplings Recipe
Inspired by some really excellent Chinese restaurants near us, we wanted to do something fairly authentically Chinese, and we adapted this recipe from a couple we had found. These are super easy and extremely delicious, probably more delicious if you go ahead and make your own dumpling skins, but we did not have the patience for that (especially after making our own steam bun dough, which will be next week's video!) so we just bought them.
Really important that you don't overfill these. A scant tablespoon looks like not much on the skin itself, but once you've got everything sealed up and crimped (getting as much air out as you can), they will be quite plump. If you overfill them, they won't seal properly, or they'll break up when you cook them. Also, it takes very little water for the quick steam at the end of the cooking process. Just a few tablespoons onto the hot pan, and pop the lid on quickly, and the steam will quickly finish cooking the dumpling skins, giving them that classic translucent look.
Totally Non-Traditional Croque Monsieur/Madame Recipe
A croque monsieur is a toasty ham and gruyere sandwich usually with béchamel inside and more cheese melted on top. A croque madame usually involves a fried or sunny-side-up egg on top. A Monte Cristo involves soaking the bread in an egg mixture, so it's like eating a sandwich on french toast. We've sort of mixed and matched a bit, and made some ingredient substitutions, and this is our version!
You can switch up ingredients as much as you like. We used a really excellent Bauernspeck for the ham, but you can use whatever you want. Gruyere is the most traditional cheese for this, but you can change that out for anything that melts and toasts decently. We used a fantastic farmer's cheese with fresh dill in it. A little bit of mustard and mayo (instead of the béchamel) and make sure to get your bread toasty!
Scallops with Tomatoes and Sugar Snap Peas in Garlic Butter Recipe
This one was a bit hacked together, but it sure came out delicious. Also, comes together incredibly fast once the mise en place is done. A couple of important notes: make sure your scallops are well drained and dried before you pop them into the hot pan, other wise they will release a lot of water and won't get a nice sear on them before they're overdone. Get some good colour on the sugar snap peas, and set them aside before you cook the scallops and tomatoes. The scallops take almost no time to cook, so once they hit the pan, you've got to watch them and get everything in there quick.
We put this on top of the poblano quinoa that we made last week, and it was delicious. It would also go excellently well over rice or even pasta, I suspect. You could also replace the sugar snap peas with something like snowpeas or even green beans if you want to change things up a little.
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHometown: Ottawa, Ontario
Home country: Canada
Current location: Toronto, Ontario
Member since: Wed Oct 29, 2008, 04:34 PM
Number of posts: 3,280
