Monday, May 09, 2005
Testing testing one two three: Shanghai surprise!
The western world has a bad habit of naming almost everything they can't understand in oriental cuisine a "dumpling". Siu mais are dumplings, Bak zang or rice dumplings are dumplings, har gow are dumplings, sooi jing bao are dumplings and even tang1 yuan2 are dumplings. And let's not forget English dumplings too. (which I can't understand)
Given xiao long bao's resemblance to sooi jing bao (shui jing bao) it is unsurprising then that it too has fallen into the GENERAL category of dumplings. But I personally think xiao long bao belongs to a league of its own. (the name incidentally, literally translated, just means small bamboo steamer bun - which I admit isn't very poetic... )
What makes this dish special is what happens when you bite into one of these cuties - a sweet consomme immediately oozes out, filling you with a warm fuzzy feeling. In the words of my flatmate, what they really are are exploding soup parcels!
I think I first had the idea of trying to make some when speaking to Joooone! about new cooking projects we had in mind and somehow I mentioned xiao long bao (I always mention it as one of my favourite foods - my mom who has no interest in shanghainese food thinks I'm mad) - it always seemed a bit too ambitious but I thought "what the heck" - the worst thing that could happen would be that my flatmates and other guinea pigs would throw me looks of disgust (and it's not like that I haven't had those before).
In the end what I found was that it wasn't that hard to make xiao long bao - and I'd like to think mine turned out fairly decent (see picture above). What was difficult though was getting the pastry consistency right and I think I'm going to practise a few more times and when I get it right I'll be sure to post the recipe here. ¶ 12:43 PM
The western world has a bad habit of naming almost everything they can't understand in oriental cuisine a "dumpling". Siu mais are dumplings, Bak zang or rice dumplings are dumplings, har gow are dumplings, sooi jing bao are dumplings and even tang1 yuan2 are dumplings. And let's not forget English dumplings too. (which I can't understand)
Given xiao long bao's resemblance to sooi jing bao (shui jing bao) it is unsurprising then that it too has fallen into the GENERAL category of dumplings. But I personally think xiao long bao belongs to a league of its own. (the name incidentally, literally translated, just means small bamboo steamer bun - which I admit isn't very poetic... )
What makes this dish special is what happens when you bite into one of these cuties - a sweet consomme immediately oozes out, filling you with a warm fuzzy feeling. In the words of my flatmate, what they really are are exploding soup parcels!
I think I first had the idea of trying to make some when speaking to Joooone! about new cooking projects we had in mind and somehow I mentioned xiao long bao (I always mention it as one of my favourite foods - my mom who has no interest in shanghainese food thinks I'm mad) - it always seemed a bit too ambitious but I thought "what the heck" - the worst thing that could happen would be that my flatmates and other guinea pigs would throw me looks of disgust (and it's not like that I haven't had those before).
In the end what I found was that it wasn't that hard to make xiao long bao - and I'd like to think mine turned out fairly decent (see picture above). What was difficult though was getting the pastry consistency right and I think I'm going to practise a few more times and when I get it right I'll be sure to post the recipe here. ¶ 12:43 PM
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