Bao Redux

This deserved its own post. We re-made the Bao recipe but with some modifications, and it turned out just... great.

Ingredients

• Bread dough
  
  
  
  • 3 tsp yeast
    
  • 3 tsp sugar
    
  • 1tsp salt
    
  • 1 cup milk, scalded and cooled
    
  • about 2.5 cups regular flour
    
  
  
  
• Filling
  
  
  
  • .25lb ground pork
    
  • 1/2 small yellow onion chopped
    
  • 1 tbsp garlic, crushed
    
  • 1 large carrot, peeled and chopped fine
    
  • 2c kale, chopped fine
    
  • to taste (our amounts in parentheses): ginger (.5tsp), soy sauce (2tbsp), black vinegar (1tbsp), oyster sauce (1tbsp), thai chili sauce (.75tsp), chicken stock (1/2tsp), corn starch (.5tsp mixed with some cold water), black pepper (.25tsp)
    
  
  

To make the dough:
Throw the milk in the microwave on high for 1.5-2 minutes, until it's about to boil. Set it aside to cool. In the mean while, add the flour, sugar, and salt and whisk together. Add the yeast to the dry mixture and give another stir. When the milk is cool enough that you can just put your finger in for about 2-3 seconds comfortably (but not much more), mix the milk in with the dough. Stir together, and then turn dough out onto a well floured surface and knead until smooth. Put the dough back into the metal bowl and place in a humid place to rise. (Try microwaving a cup of water for 2.5 minutes until it boils and then move the cup aside and stick the bowl of dough in the microwave to create a humid warm chamber).

To make the filling:
While the dough is rising, prepare the filling.
Place all the vegetables in a heavy-bottomed saute pan. Add some neutral oil (peanut oil?) and set to medium-high heat. Add about 1/8-1/4c water and cover. Once the water is mostly evaporated, turn to medium-low heat. Add the ground pork and cook. Our ground pork was frozen, so I covered it and let it thaw at a low temperature, then broke it apart with my spoon and set over high heat until it was completely cooked through.

Now add all of the sauces / flavors you want. Finally add the cornstarch (mixed with a little water) and set to high heat again until the sauce (if there is any to speak of) thickens. In ours, even with all the sauces we added there wasn't much liquid in the final mixture, so the corn starch was probably overkill. Anyway, be sure to taste and make sure you like what you taste. We added a little bit extra vinegar because we wanted a little more acid, but I could see adding more thai chili sauce, which is a little sweet.

To put them together:
Once the dough has risen for 40 minutes or so, dimple it into a sheet with your fingers and fold in 3 first one way then the other. Put back in the bowl and cover to let rise another 20 minutes. Pinch off a piece of dough about half the size of your fist. Press into 4-5" rounds. Put an appropriate amount of filling in the center of the round of dough - about 2tsp. With your fingers, gather the edges of the dough and pinch them together in the middle as best you can. Pinch the dough so it will hold MORE OR LESS together - doesn't have to be perfect because this side is facing up. Place the filled bun pinched side up on a square piece of parchment paper. Put in a bamboo steamer. Place buns a few inches apart, because they will expand during the steaming. If they stick together, it's no big deal. When steamer basket is full, cover the steamer with a lid and cook. Steam the buns for about 6 minutes.

Thoughts: Second time's a charm. We followed all of the minor changes in the previous edition but used different filling - this time with pork instead of beef. The flavor was much stronger and had a fairly authentic taste even with the carrots and kale (which we were just trying to use up). Next time I can see using mushrooms, finely chopped, and more pork-to-vegetable ratio. But the flavor was just fantastic. Secondly, the dough was much softer and lighter. The high amount of leavening probably gave it substantial rise in the relatively short time. Using only milk instead of milk and water gave the dough a very velvety texture that made it easy to work with. We TRIED baking one bao instead of steaming. It ALMOST worked - if we were really motivated, we'd do all the bao but place them pinched side DOWN on the parchment and then brush the other side with an egg wash. But it was a little bit too much work. Steaming was actually much easier. Somehow this was just much less work than last time. And better tasting.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Corn Bread Stuffing

Ingredients

• ~3c cornbread, crumbled
  
• 2tbsp butter
  
• 3/4c chopped celery
  
• 1 small onion, chopped
  
• 1 tbsp garlic
  
• 2c chicken stock (or vegetable stock, buhhh)
  
• 2 eggs, beaten
  
• herbs and seasonings - we used rosemary, salt, and pepper, but we didn't have any sage.
  

Preheat oven to 350. Toss the celery, onion, garlic, and butter into a pan and saute until softened, 8 minutes or so. In the mean time, crumble the cornbread into a bowl. To that, add the chicken stock, eggs, and herbs. When the vegetables are done, let them cool to the point where they won't cook the eggs, and then stir them into the cornbread/stock mixture. Spread this mixture out in a 9x13 baking dish. Bake for somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour, depending on how wet the stuffing is.

Thoughts: while the taste was great, there was WAY too much liquid. I would cut the liquid by 1/2, possibly more. It's better to be adding liquid if it's too dry than trying to cook off excess in the oven. Otherwise, the flavor was delicious. I would make this again if we had a ton of leftover cornbread.

Disaster Index: 3/10

Kale with bacon and honey mustard

Ingredients

• 10-15 large stalks of kale (maybe 1.5 lbs?)
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 1 tbsp honey mustard
• 6 slices of bacon, cut in half
• 3 cloves garlic
• salt and pepper, to taste

Add the bacon and garlic to a large (preferably thick-bottomed) pot and turn to high heat. Let cook until bacon is crispy.
In the meantime, de-vein the kale and chop it finely. Wash it thoroughly. Set aside to drain.
Once the bacon is crisp, remove it from the pot and set it on some paper towels to dry. Make sure you keep most of the bacon fat and garlic in the bottom of the pan.
Add the kale to the pot, turn to medium heat, and cover. Once kale has been reduced in volume by about half, add half of the chicken stock (1/2 cup). Cover again. Once kale has been reduced even further in volume, add the other 1/2 cup of stock. Make sure to stir well in order to get as much bacon grease as possible on the leaves.
When the kale is just about done, add the honey mustard and stir well.
When you are satisfied that the kale has been thoroughly coated, remove it and put it in a serving bowl. There should still be a reasonable amount of honey mustard/chicken stock mixture in the bottom of the pot. Thicken it in the way you see fit -- cook it down forever, or add some cornstarch mixed with water. When it's thick, drizzle it over the top of the kale. Eat.

Thoughts: The idea to add honey mustard was my father's, and I think it worked really well. The original idea was actually to add dijon mustard + a little bit of brown sugar, but we only had honey mustard, so we used that instead. My dad thought it came out a little too sweet; in the future we would try to actually have some dijon on hand. I thought it was pretty delicious. This recipe makes kale the best vegetable in the world. Dan also liked it a lot. I give it two thumbs up.

Disaster Index:1/10 awesome

Honey Wheat Bread

One of the best breads we've made.
Ingredients

• 3/4c skim milk
  
• 1/2c half-and-half (or, anyway, use something of equivalent milk-fat to these proportions)
  
• 1/4c honey
  
• 3tsp yeast (one packet plus a little)
  
• 1/2tsp salt
  
• 1tbsp butter, melted
  
• 1 egg, beaten
  
• 1c unbleached all-purpose white flour
  
• 2 or 2.5c wheat flour
  

In a bowl, combine the dry ingredients. In a saucepan, combine the milk and half and half and proceed to scald the milk (wait until it starts to really froth up as it boils). Let it cool until you can stick a finger in it for about 3 seconds without jerking your hand away in pain. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir together, then turn out onto a well-floured counter and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, adding wheat flour as necessary so that the dough is JUST sticky enough that it doesn't QUITE stick to your hands / the counter. Spray with PAM and let it rise in a warm place for an hour. It will about double (or else your yeast was dead). Again on a floured surface, press dough down, dimpling it with your fingers, into a thick sheet, then fold in thirds. Dimple again with your fingers, then fold in thirds the other way. Do this one more time. Now pull all the edges of the dough into the top center and pinch together. Turn dough ball upside-down, so you have a really smooth surface on top and so the bottom is all pinched. Put on a baking sheet, spray with some PAM, and cover, letting rise in a warm place for another hour. Preheat oven to 375 (we let our dough rise on top of the warm stove as it preheated). Bake until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped and the color is a deep chocolate brown, about 40-45 min.

Thoughts: First of all, the crust on this bread was fantastic. Not too thick, not too thin, and just the right amount of resistance. The flavor was rich without being too heavy. In fact, the dough had a lot of rise and had a really nice texture. In addition to being some of the best TASTING bread we've made, it was also among the best LOOKING loaves. We'll definitely make this one again.

As a note of some interest: why do we scald the milk? I read in the Tasajara Bread Book (the bible of bread making) that milk contains enzymes that impede the action of yeast, and that you should scald milk before using it in bread to denature the enzymes. I had never done this before, and I don't exactly have a comparison of this bread WITH and WITHOUT scalded milk to see whether this is true. But this bread was so good, why risk it? The recipe on which this is based has powdered milk (in fact, a lot of bread recipes do) which would already have denatured the enzymes. So maybe there's something to this. Unfortunately, I don't actually OWN the Tasajara Bread Book, so I can't check my facts. I was just reading a copy in the bookstore. Hm.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Pumpkin Bread

I made this up based on a few recipes, but it is fantastic. Special thanks go to Cooks Illustrated for the method and general ratios.

Ingredients

• 2c unbleached all purpose white flour
  
• 1.5tsp baking powder
  
• 1tsp baking soda
  
• .5tsp salt (possibly +.25tsp more)
  
• 3/4c white (granulated) sugar
  
• 1/4c dark brown sugar
  
• 1 small pumpkin - peeled, seeded, and baked until soft. About 1.5c total.
  
• 1/4c buttermilk
  
• 1tsp vanilla
  
• 3tbsp butter, softened
  
• 2 large eggs
  
• spices - cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, and allspice will get you on the right path. We did it "until it looked right" and tasted the batter after mixing, then adjusted.
  

Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, spice, brown sugar, and 1/4c of white sugar in a bowl. Set aside. Put the rest of the sugar in a stand mixer with the rest of the butter and cream together, about 5 minutes. While that's going, take the roasted pumpkin and mash together with the vanilla and buttermilk. We used a fork.

When the butter and sugar is creamy (about five minutes?) or until you're sick of waiting because your stand mixer was built in the early 70's, set the mixer to low speed and add one egg at a time to the butter / sugar mixture, giving plenty of time to beat afterward. Now make sure the blender is very low and add 1/2 of the flour mixture, followed by 1/3 of the pumpkin, then 1/2 of what's left of the flour, the second third of the pumpkin (half of what's left), and then the rest of the flour followed by the rest of the pumpkin. Taste and see if it needs anything. We added .25tsp salt and some spice.

Pour into a 9x5 bread pan (WELL greased - maybe floured, as well) and bake at 350 for 55 minutes. Actually ours took more like an hour and a half. Anyway definitely don't peak at it until about 50 minutes. Take it out when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Thoughts: fantastic! It was actually pretty easy to make. The mixing method (creaming together the ingredients) apparently prevents overmixing, so you don't have to do the standard quickbread mixing method. It does this by coating the flour in fat, so that not all the gluten can develop when you mix it. Anyway, with the extra .25tsp salt this was just right - not too sweet, not too salty, just really flavorful. It could stand up to chocolate chips or raisins, but we wanted to just get the standard recipe first. This would probably make pretty good muffins, too. The bread is very moist. Also, don't worry if the batter seems kind of... fiber-y. The fiber breaks down during baking, and you're left with a really smooth, delicious bread. If you decide to make this but use canned pumpkin, you may need to adjust the liquids somewhat. Just off the top of my head (though you'd kind of have to see what it looks like) I would guess that with canned pumpkin you'd use 2tsp baking powder, .5tsp soda, and no buttermilk.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Wine-braised Red Cabbage

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp butter
• 2.5 cups thinly-sliced red cabbage
• 1/2 cup chopped and peeled Granny Smith apple
• 1/4 cup chopped red onion
• 2 bacon slices (uncooked), chopped
• 1/4 cup dry red wine (we used a Cabernet Sauvignon)
  
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup diced yukon gold potato
  
• 1 tbsp honey
• gorgonzola, to your liking.
  
• salt, pepper
  

Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat. Add cabbage, apple, onion, and bacon. Saute until cabbage is sort of tender (around 6 minutes?). Add wine and vinegar. Cover and cook until liquid evaporates and cabbage is completely tender (around 10 minutes?). Add the potato and the honey. Cover and cook until potato is tender, about 3 minutes.
Season with salt and pepper and garnish with blue cheese, if desired.

Thoughts: Pretty delicious. In the future, I would crisp the bacon, crumble it, and then add it to the cabbage at the very end. There's no point in using bacon unless it's crispy. It's also more flavorful this way. The original recipe did not call for blue cheese, but after I tried the cabbage, I thought something should be added to cut the acidity a little bit, and the only thing we had was gorgonzola. But it's delicious. And highly recommended.

Disaster Index: 2/10