I must have been a good boy this year as Santa left me lots of toys, admittedly, he didn’t leave them under my tree but in the kitchen.  Not only did I get the Rolls Royce of pizza stones which I have to say is fantastic but I also got a proper bamboo steamer.  I can’t wait to steam fresh scallops in it but right now it’s calling to be used for dim sum.

Ramsons-bound to buy wonton wrappers (genius) it was clear I was going to be filling these with pork and prawn mixture as previously blogged in https://gastrorob.com/tag/dim-sum/   as it is quite an authentic tasting mixture.  However this time these were to be one of several dim sum dishes.
On this Asian inspired menu there was:

Prawn and pork dim sum

Prawn and pork potstickers (Japanese Gyoza)

Sushi

Cha siu bao

Cha siu bao

Cha siu bao are steamed barbeque pork-stuffed buns.  They are delicious and work on a counterpoint of sweet/savoury.  The buns are made with plain flour, yeast and sweetened milk.  As you create this dough it feels hard – almost as if it is never going to rise and steam into light, fluffy buns – however treat is as you would normal bread dough; knead it, let it prove and then knock it back before stuffing.

The filling was made by slow cooking a loin of pork that had been doused in asian flavours (soy sauce and ginger.) Once cooled it was then shredded with a couple of forks and mixed into BBQ sauce and vinegar.  The hardest part was refraining from picking at the pork whilst the dough proved!

As with all dim sum, there is an art to creating the perfect bun, the perfect parcel but this takes practise; unfortunately my hunger and impatience refused to let me create perfectly uniform shaped mouthfuls.  However, the fragrant taste immediately transported me back to that dim sum restaurant in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong in 2005 where I ate yum-cha (dim sum) for the first time.

YUM-CHA