Dim Sum - Baked Chicken Curry Hum Bao

More Christmas Dim Sum!  A soft, slightly sweet bun stuffed with chicken curry.  A delightful, delicious surprise inside an already tasty bun.

I love these.  Baked hum bao (baked buns) are the first Dim Sum that I tried.  I fell in love immediately.  Soft, sweet bun willed with delicious Chinese goodness.

This is the food that eventually led me to loving Dim Sum and Chinese food in general.  When finding good sources of these delicious culinary treasure boxes, I ran into many other Chinese delicacies.

This recipe is from a book that's currently in print, so exact ingredients and quantities are again left out.  This is from Dim Sum: The Art of Chinese Tea Lunch by Ellen Leong Blonder.  This is a great cookbook.  Definitely recommended


Procedure

I thoroughly diced some boneless, skinless chicken breast.

Then, I put the chicken into a frying pan for pre-cooking.  Baking these is like cooking pizza ... the meat needs to be cooked before going into the oven.  The bun don't spend enough time in the oven to cook the meat properly.

Like the spatula?  I love my silicon spatulas.  Solid, single-piece ... can take really high temperatures.  They don't get hot, either.  A very cheap luxury.  Highly recommended!

I sliced (and later diced) some carrots and onions.  The purple circles on the left are slices of a local onion.  They're quite small.  And, as you can see, the local carrots are quite large.

Diced onion, crushed garlic, and diced carrots go into the frying pan for some softening.  Oh, the smell was fantastic.

Here's the rest of the ingredients for the filling.  Some peas, curry powder (of course), salt, and a few other spices.

I tossed everything into the bowl and mixed thoroughly.

I didn't need this for a few days.  So, I put it into a zip-top bag for storage in the freezer.

I used to use tape on the bags to label them.  Now, I just use a permanent marker to write directly on the bag.  Works great.

It's now a couple days later and I'm ready to make the buns.  The dough starts out like any decent, soft, heavenly bread with some shortening and flour.  I used a pastry cutter to cut the shortening into the flour.

After cutting in the shortening, I added the rest of the ingredients to the dough ... a little sugar, salt, yeast, all the usual suspects.  I'm not a fan of kneading bread by hand, so into my mixer it went.  10 minutes of thrashing by my well-used bread hook.

Like all breads, this one needed to rise.  About an hour until the dough doubled.  Your results may vary as room temperature here is fairly warm (80F / 27C).

I rolled out the dough into a rectangle.  About twelve inches by nine inches.

I divided the dough into twenty four little pieces. I sliced it into approximately three inch square pieces.  That yielded a dozen pieces.  Then, I cut each piece in half.

I formed each piece into a small circle.  The edges of the circle I made thinner than the center.  The edges will form the bottom of the bun.  If the edges are the same thickness as the center, the filling in the finished bun will be sitting atop a large piece of dough.

For each little bun, I put a heaping spoonful of filling in the center.

I folded two edges over the filling and pinched.

I folded the other two edges over the center and pinched.

I brought the four corners into the center and pinched to seal everything.

Finally, I twisted the center to seal completely.  Sorry about the fuzzy photo.  I only noticed that it was fuzzy only long after I finished.

Twisting the bottom ensures that the contents are sealed.  It also creates some tension on the top of the bun.  This helps makes the top smoother.

I turned over each bun and placed it onto a piece of parchment on a baking sheet.

I brushed each bun with an egg wash.  Then, into the oven for about 20 minutes.

Just look at those beauties as they came out of the oven!

Here are the buns as they were packed.  Look at the golden tops, the shine.  The promise of good things to come upon biting into them.

I was so happy when these came out of the oven.  Look at the golden tops.  The bread was soft and sweet.  Just like I remembered.

Test Results

Primary Test Group:  Delicious kuya!  Marasa!

Test Group Rotary:  Eaten quickly and heartily.  Many questions about how it's made.  Requests to make again.

Potential Improvements

These turned out very well.  Unfortunately, they were a bit small.  Next time, I'll make a dozen buns from the recipe and not two dozen.

Potential Variations

The fillings for these are quite varied.  Most savory, some sweet.  One can also steam these.

Personally, I want to fill them with BBQ pork.  So very, very good.

Conclusions

I love these.  Most people love these.  I'll make them over and over.  I recommend that everyone try!

If you don't make them, at least go to your local decent Dim Sum restaurant or Chinese bakery and get some hum bao.  If you're new to eating these, start with char siu bao (Chinese BBQ pork-filled buns).  They're really the best!

Char Siu Pastries - First Draft

Besides Nor Mai Gai and Baked Hum Bow, Char Siu pastries are one of my favorite Dim Sum dishes.  Since I already know how to make decent Nor Mai Gai, I thought I'd try out making Char Siu (Chinese BBQ pork) pastries.

Since I decided to go on a Dim Sum kick, I purchased a half-dozen cookbooks on the topic.  One of those cookbooks was Dim Sum: The Art of Chinese Tea Lunch by Ellen Leong Blonder.

So many great look dishes in this cookbook.  Fortunately, the recipe for Char Siu pastries is one of them.  Woohoo!

Since this is a recipe from a cookbook that's still in print, I'm going to skip my usual ingredient list.  Instead, I'll recommend buying the book.  There are no pictures but it has some very nice illustrations showing technique.

I've purchased many cookbooks that I've regretted.  This is one I'm very glad to have.

Procedure

This is a long process, so I recommend getting something nice to drink and get comfortable.

First, I started out making the pastry dough.  Ice water and the usual ingredients for a flaky dough.

Using my pastry cutter, I cut in the lard until the dough resembled round pebbles.

I wrapped the dough in plastic wrap and formed it to the size of about half a piece of paper (8.5" x 11" or A4, take your pick).

The recipe calls for a second dough.  Slightly different ingredients (larger amount of shortening compared to the flour content).  Again, I cut in the lard until I got a crumbly, pebble-like consistency.

The second dough is wrapped in plastic and formed into a 3" x 4" piece.  Both doughs get put into the fridge for a few hours to ensure that the shortening doesn't melt.

After their time in the cooler, both doughs are pulled out.  Here they are ready-to-go.  Rolling pin, dough, flour to roll out, and a half-sized pastry piece of parchment folded in half length-wise to use as a ruler.

I placed the small piece of dough on top of the larger one.  Really, what's going on here is similar to making puff pastry.  The small dough has more fat in it and will be used to make layers.

Fold the larger dough's sides in and seal around the smaller dough.

Roll the whole thing out to approximately 6" x 18".  As you can see, my rolling pin skills need improvement.

Once rolled out, fold into thirds.

Then, wrapped in plastic again and back into the fridge.  Again, trying to make sure that the fat doesn't melt which makes the dough tough.

A second and third time I pulled the dough out of the fridge and rolled it out to 6" x 18" in size.  After each time, I folded it in thirds and put it back into the fridge.

Now that the dough is in the fridge and resting, I turned to the filling. I pulled out a piece of my char siu pork.

Gave the delicious pork a nice dicing.

Here are the ingredients for the sauce.  Nothing secret here.  Just the normal Chinese sauce ingredients (again, not going to be precise since this is from a book in print).

A little time over the stove and the filling is born!

I put the filling into a Pyrex measuring container and put it all into the fridge.  I wanted nice and cold filling.  Easier to work with and it won't melt the fat in the dough.

Now that I had the chilled filling, I pulled the dough back out.  I attempted to roll it out to about 12" x 12".  Unfortunately, the dough was showing signs of stress.  I just didn't want to behave.  I think I overworked it and I also think I blew the ingredients a little.

I cut the rolled out dough into little 3" x 4" pieces.  I had a bit of a problem as the dough was being uncooperative.  It just didn't want to heal, so my pieces weren't exactly works of art.

Down the center of the piece of dough, I put about a tablespoon of filling.

Folded the dough over like a piece of paper ... and sealed it up.

I turned the little packet over so that the seam-side was down.

I painted an egg wash onto each pastry and sprinkled them with sesame seeds.

Here are my little pastries all laid out and ready to go into the oven.

Now, the pastries came out of the oven not flaky ... a little bit tough.  Still quite tasty.

Test Results

Primary Test Group:  Delicious!

Test Group C:  Oi!  Bring more ... and don't talk while I'm eating!

Potential Improvements

Definitely need a better crust.  I'm pretty sure that I screwed up it by overworking the dough.  I also think I added slightly too much water to the large dough.  And, I think I messed up by using lard that was at room temperature rather than cold lard.

Potential Variations

All kinds of great fillings can go into a pastry-like dough.  Still, my favorite is char siu.

Conclusions

I'm pretty sure that I'm on the right track here.  I just need more practice working with this kind of dough. 

I'll try this one again soon!

Stuffed Pizza Stuffed Me!

Stuffed pizza ... if you love crust this is Pizza Nirvana.  It has an extra layer of crust on top.  Plus, this form of pizza, usually associated with Chicago, allows toppings to be crammed inside in quantities that a normal two-dimensional pizza won't allow.

Yes, this variant allows one to put even more meat, cheese, and tasty veggies onto and into Nature's Most Perfect Food ... pizza. While large factions argue about which kind of pizza is better ... New York or Chicago ... I simply enjoy both.  Good crust, good cheese, meat, sauce ... put together in ways that would make any nutritionist or dietitian cry?   That, my millions of loyal fans, is great food.

I am very proud of this particular post.  The pizza pictured is made nearly 100% from scratch.  The dough, the mozzarella, the sauce, and the Italian sausage were all made by me.  Only the Parmesan cheese was purchased.  And, I'm not sure I want to start making my own hard cheese ... 18 to 24 months is a long time to wait for results.

Procedure

I made the pizza dough. I covered it and let it rise while preparing the ingredients.

 

I preheated the oven to 400F (205C).  While the oven was heating and the dough was rising, I prepared the ingredients.

The sauce I pulled out of my freezer.  I make it in large batches and then freeze it in serving-sized portions to make my life easier when I want to make pizza.

I shredded the mozzarella.  Look at that beautiful mozzarella.  I'm so proud.  That's the first one that I made myself.

The Italian sausage I browned.  This is my own as well.

Lastly, the Parmesan ... I cut open the bag.  I sincerely doubt that I'll ever make my own Parmesan.  18 to 24 months of waiting for results would be quite difficult for me to take.  Waiting 18 to 24 minutes is bad enough! 

  

Once the dough was ready, I rolled out a large piece and draped it over my mini springform pan.

  

Next, a sprinkling of shredded mozzarella.

  

A layer of browned Italian sausage.

  

Then, a little more shredded mozzarella.

  

I rolled out another piece of dough and draped it over the top.  I pinched the edges much like a pie crust to seal the lower section.

 

I put some sauce on the top.  Spread it around nicely.  Don't put on too much!

 

Finally, a sprinkling of mozzarella and Parmesan.

  

Into the oven for 25 minutes at 400F.

Only two problems ... first, I didn't know that my oven was behaving properly when I made it.  So, what I thought was 400F was really 450F.  Oops.

Second, I forgot to put some kind of ventilation in the lower section.  So, it made this beautiful dome.

  

I didn't want my wonderful mozzarella and Italian sausage to go to waste.  So, I cut the Blackened Dome open. 

  

The meat and cheese was scooped out and rescued.  I don't mind the dough and sauce dying ... but, my precious homemade cheese and sausage deserved to be saved.

  

On the second time around, I didn't put the sauce and cheese on the top at first.  And, I punched vent holes in the top of the top dough.

I put the pizza into the oven at 400F (205C) for about 12 minutes.  Really, you just need to watch it until the middle of the top dough is turning golden brown.

Once the pizza reached that point, I put sauce on the top then sprinkled the cheeses over it.  I put the pizza back into the oven for another ten minutes.

Here it is ... the delicious successful stuffed pizza!

 

Test Results

Primary Test Group:  Rabid, ravenous wolves eat slower than these folks ate the pizzas.

Test Group C: It's so small.  I need more.

Test Group M: Very good!

Potential Improvements

None that I can think of at the moment. 

Potential Variations

Sourdough crust and different ingredients.  The usual infinite variety of pizzas.

Conclusions

The flavor was amazing.  Oh so good ... and popular.  I had one person ask if I sell these (tempting).

This is the first time that I've made everything from scratch (Parmesan aside).  It is such a great feeling to do that.  To build something like this completely from scratch ... fantastic.

It inspires me to keep pushing to do more.