A chewy take on a Taiwanese classic bread

Anyone who has ever had the good fortune to live in Taiwan for any length of time has probably been seduced by the bakeries there, and I proudly count myself among the many who can never say no to a fresh hot bun. 

These bakeries tend to offer Chinese takes on Western breads, pastries, and cakes, which can be odd and confusing at first. I remember biting into my first pork fluff bun and wondering what was going on in my mouth. (And if you’ve never tried pork fluff, or ròusōng 肉鬆, it’s a light and flossy creation that takes braised boneless pork and then tosses it with oil in a wok over heat until it falls apart into feathery bits. It’s totally strange and totally delicious.)

Anyway, back to that bun: the bread was on the sweet side, like a Parker House roll with a bit more sugar added, and mayonnaise had been used to glue the pork fluff onto the top of the bun. But after a few cautious nibbles, I realized what a great thing I had in my hand, and it disappeared in a flash.

Get lively, super fresh onions

Other local bakery delights – and many of these you can find in a Chinese bakery if you happen to live near a place with lots of Chinese folks – include pineapple buns (which don’t have any pineapple in them, as they are actually more like Mexican conchas and are topped with a crumbly layer that’s shaped like a pineapple skin), taro buns with the mashed purple paste inside, the usual suspects like red beans and custard, buttery fillings studded with raisins, and a million other concoctions.

One of my all-time favorites, though, are these Green Onion Baked Buns. They smell absolutely heavenly, and I adore the salty, oniony layer that cuts into the gentle sweetness of the bread, giving this particular pastry a lot of personality. The fact that it’s more savory than sweet also makes it especially attractive to me, since that means I can wolf down quite a few without feeling too ill.

This dough's ready to go

I’ve messed around with this classic, though, since I am of the opinion that bread should have more texture. (If you’re a purist, just pull out your favorite recipe for Parker House rolls like this one and use it instead of my bread recipe.) Whatever you do, don’t skimp on the green onions. You really want to pile them on, for the bread will rise in the oven and give those onions plenty of surface to grab on to.

In order to give the onions as skid-free a surface as possible, I’ve learned to cut a deep cross into the top of the buns after they’ve been shaped, since this opens up air holes that are rough enough to give the onions something to cling to and nestled down into as the breads bake away. And because they are cut this way, the circles turn into squares, like magic. 

Traditionally the bakeries brush these with a light sugar syrup to make them glossy and add another layer of sweetness. Again, I don’t do that since I just find it messy and I’m aiming to veer away from too much sweetness here, but if you prefer, you can boil up a light sugar syrup (1 part sugar boiled with 3 parts water until the sugar completely dissolves) and dab it on at the end.

Mound on the onions

I’d store any leftover buns in the fridge for a day or two. But I’m just guessing here. We plow through these the same day they’re made. These are great for rainy days when you want to stay at home, steam up the windows, and then revel in some good food while the storm rages outside.

Green onion baked buns

Táishì cōnghuā miànbāo  台式蔥花麵包

Taiwan

Makes 16

Yeast:

2 teaspoons active yeast

¾ cup | 175 ml warm water

6 tablespoons | 85 g sugar

Dough:

1 cup | 140 g Chinese flour, or ⅔ cup all-purpose and ⅓ cup pastry flour, plus extra as needed

¼ teaspoon sea salt

1 large egg, lightly beaten

3½ tablespoons | 50 ml water

¼ cup | 55 g salted butter, softened

1 teaspoon peanut or vegetable oil

Topping:

8 green onions, trimmed and finely chopped
1 to 2 teaspoons sea salt
Spray oil

1. Mix the yeast with the warm water and sugar, and let it proof for 20 to 30 minutes. You should have a nice froth going on in there, and if you don’t, toss it out and buy new yeast.

2. Mix the flour and salt together in a medium work bowl. Whisk the egg and water together, reserve 1 tablespoon for the topping, and add the rest of the egg mixture to the flour, along with the yeast mixture and butter. Combine to form a soft dough, and then knead it on a lightly floured board until the dough no longer is sticky, but rather is as supple and smooth as an earlobe. Rinse out the bowl, oil it lightly, return the dough to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise until double. Turn the dough over on itself (fold the edges into the center all the way around), flip the dough over, cover, and let it again rise until double. It is ready when you poke two fingers into the dough and the holes don’t collapse on themselves.

"Tiger's mouth"

3. While the dough is rising, prepare the topping by tossing the green onions with 1 tablespoon salt. Scrunch the onions and salt together and then take a taste – if you prefer a slightly saltier taste, add more salt. (I do.) Prepare 2 baking sheets by spraying them with oil. Heat the oven to 350°F | 175°C and arrange the racks near the center of the oven.

4. To form the buns, cut the dough into 16 even pieces. (The easiest way to do this is to roll the dough out into an even rope 16 inches long, and then cutting it into 1-inch pieces – or you can figure out something equally easy using the metric system.) Toss the bits of dough lightly with some flour. Turn these knobs into evenly shaped balls using the “tiger’s mouth” technique: pop them through your fist as shown to the upper right.

Cut open each ball of dough

5. Use a sharp knife to cut a cross halfway through each ball (see photo to the lower right), and then set 8 balls on each baking sheet. Dab the insides of each cross with the leftover egg mixture and divide the green onions among the buns.

6. Let the dough rise another 20 minutes or so, and then bake until golden brown, or about 30 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and back to front so that they all cook evenly. Remove the buns from the oven, cool them on a cake rack, and enjoy them as soon as you can without burning your mouth.

Taiwanese peanut tamales

This Friday - June 7 - is Dragon Boat Festival, and there's still time to get ready with this really delicious version of rice tamales from Taiwan.

Taiwan has an absolutely fabulous range of foods, as you’ve probably already figured out from my endless ravings on the subject. Really, though, the culinary creativity of just about every corner of China found a home on this island and then blossomed.

Case in point: Chinese tamales.

Also known as zòngzĭ 粽子, you are able to enjoy an immense variety in Taiwan, including the enormous sweet bean paste or savory pork ones from Hunan, delicately hued amber tamales that probably hale from the Hakka regions, sticky rice paste ones that also lay claim to Hakka ancestry, and lovely Shanghainese tamales with sweet bean centers.

But the list goes on and on, and we’ll most likely be enjoying more recipes each summer as Dragon Boat Festival rolls around again.

Today’s recipe is simple, and so I won’t keep you in suspense for long, since I really want you to try it as soon as you can. The ingredients are absolutely minimal, but they combine to form one of my favorite types of tamale, since it can be eaten sweet or savory, hot or chilled, with toppings or as is, and are beloved by everyone who tastes them.

Honestly, these should be part of your regular repertoire all year around.

Taiwanese peanut tamales
Táiwānshì huāshēng zòng  台灣式花生粽
Taiwanese cuisine
Makes 16 tamales

Tamales:
2 cups | 400 g round sticky rice (try brown sticky rice, if you can find it)
16 large dried bamboo leaves (zòngyè 粽葉), plus a few extra just in case
1 cup | 150 g raw peeled peanuts
Lots of cotton kitchen string
Boiling water

Peanut sugar (optional):

½ cup | 75 g toasted shelled peanuts

Yup, that's it

3 tablespoons (or more) sugar of any type

½ teaspoon sea salt

or some plain old dark brown sugar

1. Start this recipe at least 8 hours before you want to serve the tamales. Pick over the rice for any foreign matter or stones, rinse it twice, and then soak the rice and peanuts together for at least an hour and up to overnight with enough cool water to cover it by at least 2 inches | 5 cm. Use your fingernail to test the rice and peanuts to ensure they’re ready: your fingernail should be able to split them easily.

2. An hour or so before you want to start wrapping the tamales, drain the rice and peanuts in a strainer over the sink and then clean and soak the bamboo leaves as directed in this recipe for Hakka tamales. Trim off the stem ends of the leaves and then cover the cleaned leaves with a moist towel.

3. If you have a slow stove, take a moment to set up about a gallon of water in a 2 gallon | 8 L pot on your stove over high heat so that it has comes to a boil while you are busy wrapping the tamales. 

5. Fold a leaf as directed in the Hakka tamale recipe with the shiny side on the inside and a slight fold at the bottom to keep the rice from squirreling out. Use a Chinese soupspoon to place 2 scoops of the rice-peanut mixture into the cone. Fold the leaf ends over the cone, allow about a half inch of slack in the fold (see the illustration and description in the previous post). Gently tie it up with 2 or 3 simple loops around the center and tie it off, keeping one end long so that you can tie 4 to 6 of the tamales together.

A personal source of happiness

6. When all of the tamales have been filled and tied, lower them gently into the boiling water, cover the pot, and boil them for about 5 minutes to set their shape. Then, remove the cover, lower the heat to a simmer, and cook the tamales for about 90 minutes; add more boiling water if needed to completely submerge the tamales, and check them at 15 minute intervals just to make sure they don't need a bit more water.

7. Remove the tamales from the boiling water and drain. Eat them right away or cool down and store. They can be sprinkled with brown sugar, which is how many people like them. To make the optional peanut sugar, finely crush the peanuts and mix with the sugar and salt; adjust the seasoning as you like. You can then sprinkle them with this for a double peanut whammy, if you are so inclined. Children and children-at-heart will love you for it.

Tomatoes, sour plum powder, & wonderful advance reviews for All Under Heaven

A quick bit of self-promotion before we get to this week’s recipe:

All Under Heaven is receiving terrific advance reviews! Here are some of the things people are saying:

"This unprecedented reference will thrill cooks who want to expand their knowledge and move beyond the mainstays of American Chinese restaurant menus. Those who enjoy the thoroughly researched cookbooks of experts such as Claudia Roden (The New Book of Middle Eastern Food) will appreciate Phillips’s comprehensive treatment, which includes historical information, an extensive ingredient glossary, suggested menus, and useful advice." — Library Journal, Starred Review

"Phillips (The Dim Sum Field Guide) offers a comprehensive and thoughtful examination of Chinese cuisine, providing a wealth of appealing recipes for beginner and advanced cooks... This is a broad and discerning approach to regional Chinese cooking... Buy This Book" – Publishers Weekly

"This has the makings of an all-time classic." – Epicurious

"This is sure to be this year's best cookbook, I have no doubt." – Cookbook Junkies

"Carolyn Phillips has written one of the best books on Chinese cooking that I’ve ever encountered. This is one of those books that will inspire all of us to get into our kitchens and cook. It is also one of those books that is almost as enthralling as a bestselling thriller. Phillips is a first-rate writer, and has made this a 'must-have' cookbook for inclusion in any respectable recipe collection." – NetGalley, Five Star Review

"What a work of art... I have always welcomed any book that expands the horizons of our knowledge of Chinese food; now comes one of the best I have seen in ages. All Under Heaven is not just a mere cookbook – in fact, it may be the most comprehensive work to date on an incredibly complex subject... I cannot praise Carolyn’s work enough; I am sure that in the coming years, All Under Heaven will come to be considered a classic, as well as an invaluable reference for any serious cook’s kitchen." – Ken Hom, OBE, celebrity chef and author

Thank you all for these amazing words. I’m humbled and delighted and thrilled! These two books hit the shelves on August 30, but can be preordered just about everywhere.

Also, this just got published on Food52: "How to Dim Sum Like a Pro." Happy eating!

*   *   *

It’s the end of summer, a time when tomatoes and melons are at their absolute best. True, tomatoes are not constant members of a Chinese cook’s produce bin, but they do show up, especially in Muslim areas, as well as in Cantonese cooking, probably because these love apples go especially well with beef.

I practically lived on tomato beef over crispy noodles during my first year in Taipei, since there was one little Guangdong-style stand on Songjiang Road halfway between my classrooms and the Chinese home where I boarded. The lady there knew exactly what I wanted: a slightly sweet-and-sour sauce, barely cooked wedges of bright red tomatoes, thin and tender slices of seared beef, a scattering of green onions, and a crunchy pillow of thin egg noodles. It was intensely good.

Now's the time for tomatoes

As I started to become more accustomed to the local cuisines, the Taiwanese affection for matching salty with sweet drew my attention. First to hook me was the penchant for sprinkling salt on cold wedges of watermelon. At first this seemed totally unnecessary – after all, you really can’t find a better dessert than ripe fruit served up all on its own – but a few exploratory nibbles showed that a tiny bit of salt emphasized the sweetness and made each mouthful just that more delicious.

Pretty soon I was enjoying things like inspired mixtures of peanuts and cilantro and sugar, which hit all sorts of nerve endings in my mouth, puzzling and intriguing and pleasing and confusing my palate at the same time. And then I discovered sour plum powder, which my Chinese girlfriends liberally dusted on top of crisp guavas and ripe tomatoes.

To be honest, my girls all loved tart flavors much more than sweet – and that’s true even to this day when they can no longer be officially categorized as girls – and so anything that would lend a sour note to a dish was welcomed with open chopsticks. And when a dish or drink was especially puckery and delicious, the usual reaction was a delighted smile with a slightly agonized expression, a happy moan, and the rubbing of one side of the face while they exclaimed, “Ay-ya, that’s good!”

This one is just the flesh

Summer was celebrated in particularly lavish style: luscious tomatoes were seasoned with the sweet-sour-salty plums called huàméi 話梅. Dried little taupe nuggets, these are usually used to accompany tea, but also find their way into certain dishes, like these eggs or pork ribs. It’s an almost indescribable flavor, since you also have a fruity layer that somehow glues all of those disparate elements together.

You can cut off the flesh from the pits and then stick little slivers inside of cherry tomatoes before chilling them, or you can even peel the tomatoes, toss them with the sour plum powder, and let them marinate in the fridge overnight. Both are good.

But when you have some amazing tomatoes to work with, sometimes simplest is best. This requires that you first get your hands on Taiwanese style sour plums. Be sure that they are called huamei, as any other kind will taste very different and quite possibly be too sour to eat. (See Sour Plum Infusion for more on that.) If you can find the ones that are already pitted like this photo on the right, even better. If not, just use kitchen shears or a sharp paring knife to trim off the flesh – the pits can be reserved for tea, which is great hot or chilled.

Pitted sour plums

Do note that the flavor of each brand of plums varies wildly. Some are coated with lots of ground herbs, like licorice, while others are incredibly salty or a bit sweet or just mildly sour. So, taste the dried plums and add as much sugar or salt as you think it needs. Use a spice grinder here, rather than a mini food processor, as it gets the job done easily. Pulse the plums up in short bursts, not at full blast, and let the grinder cool down as needed. This will help prevent the sugar in the plums from heating up and gumming up the works.

Make extra sour plum powder, as it keeps well. Then get in touch with your inner Chinese woman and sprinkle it on pineapple, melons, cucumbers... whatever needs a flavor boost.

Note: you can occasionally find this powder ready-made in some Chinese markets, but it tends to be padded out with citric acid and other stuff, as well as red food coloring. So, try it if you like, but compare it with this homemade pinch of heaven. There's no contest.

Tomatoes with sour plum powder

Méizifěn fānqié 梅子粉蕃茄

Taiwan

Serves 4

Around 1/2 cup / 60 g pitted dried sour plums (huamei)

2 tablespoons sugar, or to taste

1 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste

1 pound / 450 g ripe and fully flavored tomatoes of any kind, preferably a mixture of two or more varieties

1. If your dried plums are not pitted, then use kitchen shears or a sharp paring knife to remove the flesh. Place the dried plums in a clean, dry spice grinder and pulse until they are reduced to a fine powder (see headnotes). Add as much sugar and salt as is needed, pulse again, and taste – there should be a nice balance of sweet, salty, and sour, so adjust things as needed. Store the sour plum powder in a dry jar in the pantry.

Ready to go

2. Rinse the tomatoes, pat dry, and trim as needed. If they are cherry or plum tomatoes, no further work is needed. Slice larger fruits up into wedges. Arrange these on a plate or bowl. They can be chilled if you like, but I personally prefer room temperature, which allows their flavors to really bloom. Offer little saucers of the sour plum powder around the tomatoes and sprinkle a tiny bit on top of the fruit. Serve with forks, chopsticks, or long skewers.

Tip

Your spice grinder will probably have bits of sour plum gunk stuck on the blades and so forth. Don't soak the machine or wash it, but rather wipe it out with a damp cloth immediately after you've emptied it, then thoroughly air dry the grinder before closing it up.