Baozi - Chinese Steam Buns

My brother lives in Shanghai. Last May I went to visit him and ate for 3 weeks straight. Shanghai is an extraordinary city. You can wander the streets endlessly, never boring, and forever passing another street stall or small restaurant selling some incredible and slightly different version of Chinese breakfast fare: dumplings (jiaozi), shanghai soup dumplings (xia long bao) and steam buns (baozi). My Shanghai routine started each morning with a gentle nudge from jetlag at around 5:30, after which it was off to explore and eat. I mapped out my daily routes based on where I hadn’t managed to eat the day before, and systematically, and with probably the most self-control I’ve ever exercised in my life (but only so that I could maximize on variety), ate my way through the neighbourhoods until my brother finished work and we went for dinner. I’ve heard China horror stories of inedible meals, unidentifiable meats and unpalatable cuts, but this was not my experience at all. I could live in Shanghai for more than just the food but believe me you could make a case on the food alone. While it’s true my Mandarin was essentially non-existent AT THE TIME (now it’s just almost non-existent - there’s a difference), I quickly learned, during those days of wander, that waving an index finger at pictures of food or at other people’s plates is universal for “I want that” and was able to procure myself some delicious meals.

I’ve always been a big fan of baozi (which were created by Zhuge Liang, a 3rd century AD scholar and military strategist, says Wikipedia). As a youngun, my mum used to take me to the sadly defunct Baldwin Street bun shop where I developed my appreciation and, nowadays, stopping into the Ding Dong Pastry Shop or Chinese Traditional Bun (my favourite fancy restaurant) are regular parts of my not-so-routine-like routine. In high school, I was also obsessed with Wok with Yan and Yan can Cook – vestiges of a time when cooking shows were not quite as cool as they are today and had live studio audiences that got to eat the food. You heard me. Cooking shows are now cool. In truth, I never actually saw Yan make baozi, but his shows were on for years so I think it’s fair to assume he may have at some point.

I’d never made steam buns before today but I’d spent many hours thinking about them. And since I’ve always believed in really testing boundaries, despite their rightful place beside the cereal box and the orange juice, baozi were on the dinner menu tonight.

Making baozi was not complicated but because the dough needed to rise, the end result was not immediate. The starter of yeast, sugar, flour, and warm water sat for a half-hour and was then mixed with more flour and water, some salt, sugar and a little bit of veggie oil. I hardly kneaded the dough, although I was supposed to, and let it sit in a greased bowl for 3 hours. While the dough was rising, I cooked the ground meat (chicken or pork … I’m not telling you which to use or which one I did) and mixed it with green onions, ginger, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, veggie oil, sugar, water and pepper. When the dough was ready, I sprinkled with baking powder and kneaded for about 20 seconds (because I am impatient and not because that was what the recipe told me to do) and then divided it into 24 balls. I rolled the balls out and filled each one with the filling. I then place each bun on a square of wax paper (just like in Shanghai!) and proceeded to steam, ignoring entirely another “suggested” half hour of rising.

I steamed the buns using a pasta cauldron that came with its very own strainer. Because I didn’t feel like steaming the buns in endless batches, I also tried placing an oven rack over a pot, placing the buns on the rack, and placing the ill-fitting lid on top of the rack. The cauldron-strainer-get-up worked, the oven-rack didn’t. I also wound up boiling off all the water and charbroiling the bottom of my cauldron. I wish I could say I had never done that before.

The buns were unbelievably good. The dough was soft, light and fluffy and the filling was both tangy and sweet thanks to the complement of ginger, vinegar, soy and sugar. There they are in that picture over there. I read on someone’s blog on the internet (a refreshing change from the questionably credible Wikipedia) that Mao’s favourite food was chicken soup with garlic sprouts and pork. One of Deng Xiaoping’s favourites was Double Taste Fiery Pot. Now that does not mean that they did not like baozi, it just means they liked those other things more.

Pan de Yuca

When I was 21, I spent a year in Quito, Ecuador. It was an amazing and formative and life-changing year that left me with a lot of great food memories. Nothing takes me back to those incredible days more than Just Like Heaven by The Cure, Zhumir Limon (an economical 60 proof aguardiente - sugarcane alcohol - that, I respectfully submit, is not destined for the export market) and pan de yuca.

Pan de yuca (yuca bread) is a snack food/breakfast food/light-meal food popularly eaten in Ecuador and, I recently discovered, Brazil (and I use “discovered” in the same way that Columbus and the Conquistadors used it how apropos). I’d say that pan de yuca is eaten in Ecuador the same way that Torontonians would eat doughnuts or muffins or biscuits, except for the inherent flaw in my analogy being that Torontonians don't typically eat biscuits, in truth I have no idea how anyone eats biscuits but am willing to google it, and also that there's actually nothing comparable about any place that would sell pan de yuca in Ecuador and any place that would sell a doughnut in Toronto. Beyond that we’re talking perfect symmetry.

Yuca is a rainforest tuber. It is also known as cassava and manioc and according to Wikipedia has dozens of local names in Africa, Asia and Central and South America. Apparently there is also a band in Vancouver called Yuca. An excellent choice, I say! Back to the tuber, yuca is used in food-making almost like a potato. After being cooked (it is toxic when raw), yuca can be mashed, turned into meal and baked or fried, deep fried as a chip, roasted or turned into chewy tapioca and puddings. I found this photo of raw yuca on the internet I hope that’s cool with whoever introduced this picture to the world.

Pan de yuca is made from yuca flour. In Spanish, the word for flour is harina, and yuca flour is sold as Yucarina. I mean brilliant. Who could help but fall in love with yuca now? The other ingredients are minimal - queso fresco, egg and baking powder. Queso fresco (fresh cheese – haha - confused you!) is a soft, mild and rubbery unripened Spanish cheese that is found everywhere in Ecuador and other parts of Latin America. It is so damn good it is almost irrational to blend it into a dough and here I go doing just that. I had actually really wanted to wait until my Dutch cheese press arrived and I had made my very own queso fresco to blog about pan de yuca but I just couldn't wait.

The pan de yuca-making process involved putting the ingredients in the food processor with a bit of water and baking little balls of the dough at 400 for 15 minutes. When these savoury biscuits are fresh and hot, they are chewy on the inside with a thin crispy crust. Very very good. The chewiness is actually not from the cheese but from the yuca itself which can make, like tapioca, naturally gummy foods. In our home in Ecuador (I lived with a family), we usually ate pan de yuca at around 8pm coupled with hot chocolate. I couldn't do that today because my milk had curdled (that's the picture of my sad milk) but that’s okay because pan de yuca need no bells or whistles.

This certainly won't be my last post on Ecuador: I'm an efficient eater at the best of times so you can only imagine what I was able to accomplish in a year. Let’s just say that pan de yuca is the inaugural kick-off to what will become relapsing nostalgia on this blog. The Cure is blasting, the Zhumir is flowing (a mildly unfortunate yet, fortunately, proverbial consequence of this reminisce) and I’m home.

The Cobb-Nicoise

So summer is starting and I haven’t eaten much fresh salad in months. The winter was you know the gamut of all leafy greens, root veggies in various forms, Bologneses, Octoberfests, soups, gnocchi, dumplings and you know the winter foods. But until tonight I hadn’t had a hankering for a lettuce salad in months. Wait – that’s not entirely true. I have requited a couple of salad cravings in the last while, all of which fell into the same bizarre taxonomical classification: the Cobb. I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, especially on my first blog. I mean the Cobb is some weird American invention and it involves no cooking whatsoever. I’m going to google the history of the Cobb right now … The Cobb was invented in the 1930s (as per Wikipedia) at the Hollywood Brown Derby, an LA-based restaurant, and is named after the restaurant’s owner, Robert Howard Cobb. It is described on Wikipedia as a main-dish garden salad. Apparently it is made from iceberg lettuce, water cress, endives and Romaine, tomato, bacon, roasted chicken, hard-boiled egg, avocado, chives and Roquefort cheese with a red-wine vinegrette. So I guess since America is not a massive mono-culture I’d say that the Cobb is Californian? That just sounds ridiculous, though.

At around 4:00pm today as I was eating my co-worker’s Korean rice balls as I do everyday around that time, I realized I wasn’t going to be going to yoga this evening but was going to be making a Cobb salad instead. Or a Cobb-Nicoise let’s say since I knew that I wasn’t adding chicken and also because I was having another embarrassing craving (I can’t believe this is my first post who will ever follow me) for my childhood comfort food…canned Albacore tuna. (Does it make this any better that I specified Albacore?) By the way, Salad Nicoise (yes, I deliberately placed “salad” before “Nicoise” in a very non-English-grammar sort of way to subtly guide the reader to the assumption that I am worldly) originated on the French Riviera and is named after the city of Nice.

In truth, I really can’t tell if my Cobb-Nicoise looks good at all in these photos but trust me it was. I wish I were a better photographer or had a cool camera or at least knew how to use all the neat features on this point-and-shoot that I’ve got. I’ve been thinking my photos may not do this blog justice but I don’t want to put the cart ahead of the horse on day 1 and commit to improving my photography skills. If no one follows me I’ll obviously know why and invest in my photography.

Enough of my rambling. The salad: it was a bit of the kitchen sink – hence the Cobb-Nicoise-everythingness of it. Romaine, fresh tomatoes, chives, avocado, celery, sunflower seeds, dark raisins, fresh blueberries, canned tuna (teehee), hard-boiled egg, Bleu de Bresse and this perfect fresh strawberry vinegrette I whipped up.

I should talk about the cheese and the vinegrette: I’ve just finished taking this incredible cheese course that has been so informative and has inspired me to pay so much more attention to the cheeses I purchase and also to make my own cheese. Bleu de Bresse is a French blue-veined pasteurized cow milk cheese from the Servoz region of France. It is creamy and smooth and probably cream enriched and has the same texture and integrity as a brie or camembert. It’s gorgeous. Not too piquante for those who hate blues and not too salty for those who like to taste their food. I won’t say much more about the cheese (even though you knooowww I could) because this is getting long and I want you to come back.

The dressing: I blended strawberries, olive oil (a really good one which perhaps I’ll feature on another post), balsamic, honey, Dijon, salt and pepper in the food processor. The sweet dressing complemented the bleu soooo well.

I tossed a piece of some home-baked bread (to be discussed at a future date) into the bowl and dinner was great.

So let’s see: if I really wanted to bring it home (since I have managed on my first post to abandon almost in its entirety my mission statement) I’d say that today’s salad took us to California, the home of the Cobb, and to France, both to Servoz in the Rhone-Alpes and to Nice. I’d say we went back to California for the fresh strawberries and blueberries (since I admit we’re still a few weeks away from Ontario’s strawberry season but man is game on in California right now). And while I’ve never been to Los Angeles or to Servoz (I was in Nice when I was 9 for a few days) I miss all three places dearly.

My Mission Statement

My inspiration for this blog came from my dual passion for food and for the world and its cultures. I experience countries and their essence through their food and drink, plan my days around my meals abroad and in Toronto, and am always inspired to recreate the dishes I’ve eaten abroad when I return home. From the ceviche of the Ecuadorian coast to the mole of Mexico to the soup dumplings of the streets of Shanghai, the concept for this blog is to post on foods that I’ve cooked in Toronto after eating them abroad. It’ll keep me inspired and passionate and help me continue to remember and enjoy those travels. It’s also way cheaper than eating out (and travelling for that matter) and almost always a better meal. And on that note…