Chris Amirault

The flow chart is great! Keep posting pix!

If you have a decided brand preference for (1) canned and (2) frozen coconut, can you post what it is? Photos would also be swell....

Great posts so far -- I'm dying to see photos, people! On the filling front: are people finding appropriate char siu marinade ingredients? I had to work hard to track down a jar of fermented bean curd, and I'm on the last bit of the bottle of shaoxing wine I'll be using. Also, are people using pork butt? Is that the same as pork shoulder (my CIA Professional Chef xmas present suggests so)? I might use up some loin I have in the freezer, too.... When I've figured out the full ingredient list -- this weekend? -- I'm gonna get cracking. How's about you?

Ditto that!! Tepee, can you oblige?

Wow.... Thanks for all the tips! If I don't remove the brown skin before grating, does that skin affect the cream and milk? I realize that it does affect the nut meat after grating, of course.

I just spent the better part of the afternoon making David Thompson's beef panang (sp?) curry, which is one of the two or three most amazing things I've ever made. That's three for three in that book.... Ohmigod... I spent the bulk of the time making the paste and dealing with fresh coconuts. While I was banging away with my mortal and pestle, some paste flew into the corner of my eye -- -- but I forged ahead. I still think that blending the paste ingredients in this way makes a huge difference, as does using fresh coconuts. Though it took nearly an hour for this one step, it was worth it to shell, grate (in the blender), and thus cream and milk the coconuts; I then braised the beef in the milk and later sauteed the curry paste in the cream, then added them together at the end. Magical.... But I'm stumped about preparing the coconut more efficiently -- so stumped that I created a thread about it. Surely someone has a better concept than I do!

Does anyone have any tips for shelling, creaming, and milking fresh coconut? I'm on a Thai curry kick, and I'm getting a bit tired from the hour-long process required to get fresh coconuts ready to go; my hands are also getting cut to ribbons on the shells. The process, in case you're wondering, is roughly as follows. You grate the white coconut meat into twice the volume of warm water, the mass of which you rub together with your hands or blend together in your blender for a couple of minutes. You then strain the mess, and then squeeze out the liquid from the solids with a kitchen towel or cheesecloth. You're left with three things: the snowy nut meat (which you can toast and use for baking, etc.), the thick white cream, which will rise to the top just like you've heard, and the watery milk which will settle at the bottom. The cream is a good substance in which to saute curry pastes, and the milk can be used to braise, as a thinning liquid, to cook rice, and so on. So my questions. Any tricks for loosening the meat from the shell? Or peeling the brown skin from the meat? Or, frankly, anything that would make this process move along more quickly and less painfully? I'll send you whatever I save in band-aids! edited for spelling -- ca

I guess I'll ask some basic questions: who's planning to steam, and who's planning to bake their bao? And does anyone have a never fail, perfection-itself dough recipe?

I think it's best to try a few different options, as the strength of the tea seems to vary a lot -- plus of course there's your taste. It's very inexpensive, though, so you can run a few experiments and let us know! Oooh! Give details.... [Homer]Laarrrb... (drool)[/Homer]

FYI, there's a char siu bao cooking event going on!

Is this a set up???? Yes, I just started mail order via Local Harvest, and soon (within 2 weeks) directly through my site. There's a link from my first page, about halfway down. Honestly folks, it's not a set up!!! ← It's true -- no set up! I'm just trying to feed the fam, man!! Seeing that my wife's family (the Castañedas from Bisbee AZ) is from the SW, I'm eager to try your stuff. Post here when you're up and running!

Here it is -- the char siu bao cook-off!

Every now and then since December 2004, a good number of us have been getting together at the eGullet Recipe Cook-Off. Click here for the Cook-Off index. For our second Cook-Off, we've chosen char siu bao, or steamed bbq/roast pork buns. You've probably had this dim sum staple many times, often a tough dough encasing a gummy, cloying clump of pork -- . But if you had a good one, you know how ethereal the dough and amazing the double-cooked pork can be. And that's what we're going to be making, pillows of porky perfection! In my two previous home attempts to make char siu bao, the three distinct steps (marinating and cooking the pork; making the dough; constructing and steaming the filled buns) were fun and compelling but rife with screw-up possibilities. Questions I know I'll have include: How does one make perfect dough? What ingredients are crucial? What sorts of tips are also crucial? (For example, I've been told by a dim sum chef that bamboo steam racks are crucial to bao, and that metal steam racks don't work well at all.) What cut of pork, marinated in what concotion (including, essentially, shaoxing wine, aka Chinese sherry), cooked in what manner and for whom long, should we use? Some links to get us started: Here is an eG thread on char siu, broadly defined. Here's a thread on evaluating roast pork buns, with a discussion of NYC restaurants. Here's one on Wow! Bao! that expands rapidly into the tao of bao. I'm not at home, so I don't have any reference recipes to use, but I know I'll be checking Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's Chinese Banquet Cookbook and The Chinese Kitchen (both of which were iffy, if I remember correctly), and Barbara Tropp's Modern Art of Chinese Cooking. Saveur also had a recipe in the back of the issue sometime in 2002 or 03 (anyone remember that?). What other recipes will people be using? So let's go bao!

Ok, how about this: we do char siu bao next, and then do a paella or jambalaya after that?

Steve, a (slightly off-topic) question about your great Rancho Gordo website. You don't do mail order, do you? In that event, how can those of us stranded on the east coast find decent pozole? Don't say "find a good Mexican market" because we have primarily Dominican and Puerto Rican markets here in Providence. Thanks!

I'm not sure what it is! It doesn't look like a kernal of corn? ← Hmmm.... How to be charitable to Goya..... It looks like a shard of pozole, as if they cracked the kernel into three or four pieces. It doesn't have the little germ at the base of the kernel; there isn't really a kernel to speak of, actually, at all. I'd snap a photo but I tossed the stuff....

On a related topic, I would just like to remind everyone that I'm having a baby shower this weekend, and if any of you want to get on my good side (and you DO want to be on my good side; the chumps who weren't are pushing up daisies, if you get my gist), you'll be making like D'Artagnan and doing some overnight FedExing tomorrow. You scratch my back, I can make a call or two, dig?

Ah... yes.... I was hoping to lure you into my thread, Steve! Aside from buying your outstanding product (order coming when the post-holiday bill assault ends), do you have any insight into how to use the very strange dried stuff sold by Goya et al? It doesn't even look like the same thing in the can, more like little shreds of pozole. I soaked them overnight and almost nothing happened. Thanks, in advance!

No I think that the taste and consistency stays high. I would just recommend that if you do this don't make more than you would use up in a few months. Also we sometimes use the kitchen-aid instead of the mortar (you have to love modern equipment) ← Thanks for the reply. Does it stay somewhat soft in the freezer or does it freeze hard? I'm wondering about portioning it out before hand or having it as a big lump. Also, when you say that you use the KA, do you mean a chopping food processor or the beater or something else? I'm intrigued.....

Just wanted to see if I could find out about how people use their pozole. I have been using Goya white hominy for our pozole soup for a while, but decided to try to use reconstituted dried pozole. It looked like an utterly different thing. Then I went to Racho Gordo and their pozole looks like yet another utterly different thing. So... anyone smarter than me care to share? Thanks! Edited to add: Specifically, if people can talk about how they reconstitute dried pozole, and how it compares to the canned stuff, I'd appreciate it.

Do you notice any degredation in the taste or consistency of the paste? The paste I've had from cans lacks that depth of flavor and velvety consistency that I got with the mortar and pestle, and I'd hate to lose it....

Nice thread -- thanks! Here's another recommendation for Hot, Sour... and Thompson's Thai Food, the latter of which is a great read, especially the first hundred pages or so on food, culture, and the meaning of rice. I think it's worth making batches of the stuff you use regularly, like the toasted rice powder (I use the aromatic powder in HSSS, which adds lemon grass and Kaffir lime leaves). As for pastes.... I made two pastes this weekend from TF -- the duck curry paste (used chicken thigh meat -- excellent!) and the lobster curry paste (used shrimp -- excellent again!). I wish that I could tell you that the new, big, granite mortar and pestle that I got didn't make a noticeable difference in the texture or flavor of the paste, but, as Thompson and many others said it would, it did. The pounding really produced a very different (better, that is) thing altogether. So it got me thinking about making lots of paste and freezing it. Does anyone do that? edited for formatting -- ca

My goodness.... If one can't flame -- with full disclaimers, warnings, and admissions of a full-on, subjective hissy-fit, no less! -- a judgmental vegan in a thread on eGullet, then what's next? Where can we go with our critiques of Martha Stewart, McDonalds, the anti-foie-gras gang, and -- shudder -- Bobby Flay?

um...yes, but his baby is an INFANT...giving up his perfectionist approach. for the next year or so, might be a sanity saving event...plenty of time for cooking lessons over the next years....My kids are 20, 17 and 14...and I vote for Rachel's cook and freeze approach... ← Yes, of course, I agree with all of the strategies -- as I said twice. I'm just saying that he ought not to give up his perfectionism entirely. But, as someone (Dorothy Parker?) smarter than I once said, the best thing to do with one's obsessions is to force them upon others, so I may just be following her advice!

Oh, I am ALWAYS up for gumbo or jambalaya! Paella might also be a good idea.... OH, and bleudauvergne, that really is awful!