My favorite dish: Bao Char Siu

For the past year, I have been trying a figure out how to imitate David Chang’s Bao Char Siu recipe with my own twist. Now that the holiday season is over, no more long stews and back to figuring out how to make good food in short time. After cleaning up from the rabbit stew, it was time to quickly get a couple things in the fridge working. First, the pork loin needs to get marinated overnight. Our marinade is:

• 1.5 lb pork loin
• good shake soy sauce
• couple good squeezes of hoisin sauce
• 2 cloves of smushed garlic
• couple good shakes of ground cumin
• couple good shakes of ground coriander
• about an inch of grated ginger
• good squeeze of honey
• glug of canola oil

Put it all in a gallon ziploc and put it in the fridge overnight.

Next, the milk bread dough. The one thing I have learned is two tricks for the milk bread. First, ferment it overnight in the fridge. Second, use yeast and baking powder in the dough. Our recipe is:

• 1 cup warm milk (just above room temperature
• 1 tbsp spoon active dry yeast
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 3 cups flour (I just use all purpose)
• bit of salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp canola oil

Mix the warm milk with sugar and yeast and let proof for about 15 minutes. Add salt and baking powder while mixing, slowly add the flour. After you have formed a soft dough, knead for about 5 minutes. Coat a bowl with canola oil and swish dough around to coat. Cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge overnight.

When you get home from work put pork loin in a roast pan at 350 degrees for about an hour or to internal temp of 140 and let rest on counter for about 30 minutes.

While pork is in the oven, divide dough into about 30 or so golf ball size pieces. Cut out enough parchment squares of 4in x 4in for all the dough. Roll out a ball to about 3-4 inches and place on parchment paper sticking parchment paper in between halves so that you have a taco shaped bun. After all the buns are rolled out. Let rise for about 15-20 minutes. Steam buns in a bamboo steamer for about 8-10 minutes per batch. It will take a will to steam all the batches unless you have many layers to your steamer (I don’t).

To construct to buns, we like to have:

• thinly sliced cucumbers
• thinly sliced green onion
• quick pickled carrots
• cilantro leaves
• Jalapeno or thai chilies
• hoisin sauce
• Sriracha sauce

Serve family style.