Food Lab 41: Dim Sum

As you might have guessed from my previous Lab post, the Chinese Banquet lab was a bit of a blur. The Pathological Entertainer had the full picture of where we were, where we were going, and how we were going to get there in her head, but the rest of us were merely the sous, following her instructions as we moved from task to task. And we brought it off - 8 courses totaling 15 different dishes, all prepared in about 6 hours, and none of us too exhausted to enjoy eating the meal.

We figured we better hit some of these again pretty soon to solidify our techniques. And it turned out to be a good thing we did, because we still need some work on a few.

Our Dim Sum menu consisted of:

• Red stewed eggs
• Roast pork loin (which Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee prepared in advance)
• Sichuan eggplant
• Momofuku-style pork buns (with two different pork belly preparations to fill them)
• Salt and pepper squid (that ended up being salt and pepper octopus, because I bought the wrong cephalopods at the fish market)
• Potstickers (shrimp, veg, and pork)
• Shao mai (shrimp, veg, and pork)
• Rambutan for dessert 

I think the rambutan look kind of like sea urchins.

Following The Pathological Entertainer's lead, we did this in three major courses: eggs, pork loin, and eggplant; buns and octopus; dumplings.

As I mentioned, the pork loin arrived ready to eat, so our first course prep was fairly simple: red stewed eggs and the eggplant (provided by a volunteer plant in The Executive Committee's garden).

Red stewing is a simple technique. For eggs, you hard boil them, peel them, and them simmer them in enough liquid to cover in roughly the following proportions

1/3 c. soy sauce
1 1/2 c. water
1 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp. dry sherry (or, in our case, shaoxing wine)
Seasonings (in our case, a little sugar, star anise, pink and white pepper corns, quite a bit of sliced ginger)

How long? A while. Once the eggs color up, take one out to taste. If you like it, you're done. If not, let them simmer a while longer. (Oh - and save the liquid when you take the eggs out, because you can use it again.)

Red stewed eggs, stewing

For the Sichuan eggplant, Mad Kitchen Scientist sauted the chopped eggplant with appropriate seasonings (garlic, ginger, jalapeños), then sauted ground pork, them combined them with a "combo of Chinese flavors" sauce (I know soy and vinegar went into it, but I'm not sure what else he grabbed - hot bean paste is traditional, sherry or shaoxing wine can go in, chili sauce works, too, as does sesame oil - it's up to you how you like it flavored and how spicy you want it), then cooked it down and topped it with a blizzard of chopped scallions before serving.

Then it was on to the buns. Momofuku-style pork buns are like little steamed bun tacos, rather than being a solid bun with the pork completely encased inside, so the buns and the pork are cooked separately and then combined before eating.

The buns are a yeast dough that has multiple types of leavening (yeast, baking soda, and baking powder), and quite a bit of fat (milk powder or, as we did it, milk and rendered bacon fat), so it's lovely to work with.

We pretty much followed the bun recipe as written, other than when it came time to roll the buns out, rather than painting the middle with plain vegetable oil, I used sesame oil for more flavor. Warning: it makes A LOT. We had 50 total before one of our cats got bored waiting for her dinner and swatted a few off the tray where they were rising to play with/attract our attention (she is DEFINITELY the cat who is willing to be naughty to get attention).

Rising

Into the steamer

Out of the steamer

For the pork belly, we tried two options: the simpler Food 52 preparation and the more complex Woks of Life preparation. Chef Spouse was not fully pleased with either one. The Food 52 texture was better, although we quickly discovered that starting it at 450 degrees was much too hot. The Woks of Life flavor was better (not surprising, considering it calls for adding more flavors to the meat). But neither developed nice cracklings. On both, the skin ended up so hard as to be totally inedible and mostly even uncuttable. So that was disappointing, because pork cracklings are DELICIOUS.

Woks of Life pork belly (sorry about the steamy-ness)

Food 52 pork belly (as I said, starting it at 450 was too hot)

We then stuffed the buns and added hoisin sauce and homemade pickles. The buns were tasty, no doubt, but I think we could up our pork belly game with a little more experimentation.

Salt and pepper squid is a favorite dim sum dish of mine. Actually, I pretty much love anything with tentacles. Unfortunately, at the fish market, I wasn't paying close enough attention, and got small octopus rather than squid. They tasted just fine, and we were able to use the same prep method, but they were a little less tender than the squid would have been.

It's a pretty simple technique: rinse, drain, chop, and marinate your tentacles (we used a combo of sesame oil and more shaoxing wine). Dredge in a combo of regular wheat flour, semolina flour, corn meal, salt, and white pepper. Deep fry. Drain. Sprinkle while hot with more salt and pepper. Stir fry with garlic, ginger, and jalapeños. YUM.

TENTACLES!

Then it was on to the dumplings. We'd prepared three fillings: shrimp, ground pork, and veg (well, really mushroom) to use with two techniques (shao mai and potsticker). The fillings were pretty simple: the main ingredient chopped fine, plus ginger, garlic, napa cabbage, green onion and some soy and sesame oil.

For potstickers, you fill your wrappers (not too full), seal them, sear them in as little oil as possible, then finish them with a short steam. In the first round - the shrimp - we added a little too much water to pan for the final steam, and they sort of fell apart on us. The pork and mushroom were more successful. But we did notice that the wrappers we had purchased seemed to be on the thin side.

Shrimp - see how the ones at the bottom are kind of falling apart?

Mushroom - more successful

Pork - also more successful

Yeah, that thing with the thin wrappers totally bit us in the ass for the shao mai. For shao mai, you fill your wrappers more full and gather up the sides into a little bag, leaving the top open, pack them into a single layer, and steam.

Looks good, but don't be deceived

Simple, right? Looks pretty, right?

Yeah, those thin wrappers completely stuck to each other. We ended up with a solid mass shao mai cake. A shao make, if you will.

Oops. 

Clearly, dumplings are going to require further investigation. And probably using a different brand of won ton wrappers.

To drink, Chef Spouse made us Mai Tais with his latest bar ingredient addition: velvet falernum. We also made a round of ponzu-based drinks: gimlets and last words, where we replaced half the fresh lime juice with ponzu. The last words were good, but the gimlets were outstanding. I think the green chartreuse kind of muted the ponzu, where it really shone in the simpler drink.

As Mad Kitchen Scientist pointed out, this is the second time we've been defeated by Asian cuisine (remember our disastrous attempt to make our own rice paper?), which clearly means another lab is in order.

Food Lab 25: Smoked Mollusks

We knew it had to happen sooner or later. And it's not like we haven't had previews: the bourbon eggs, attempts to make cheese, homemade rice paper, lobster thermidor, gluten-free pizza crust...I could go on. But this is the first time that the main lab idea was a total #FAIL.

The day started so well. Mad Kitchen Scientist, Chef Spouse and I gathered at the Maine Avenue Fish Market to stock up. We bought big and little clams, mussels, oysters, head-on shrimp, crawfish, some octopus and a piece of salmon for The Empress and Chef Spouse, who's not huge on bivalves.

Upon arriving back, the first thing we did was put the mussels in a brine, consisting of:

4 qt water
1/2 c kosher salt
1/4 c brown sugar
Bay leaves
Dried hot peppers
1 dozen allspice berries
Fennel seed
Mix of peppercorns

Looks promising (and pretty), doesn't it?  Just you wait....

Chef Spouse then valiantly started opening the oysters, even though he'd never done it before and we had no oyster knife. It did not go well, to the point that, after destroying the shell on one, semi-successfully opening two more, and determining that there was no way to open the rest without the right tools, he left to purchase an oyster knife. While he was gone, the IAs arrived. Turns out, Papa IA is a man of hidden talents, including the fact that he worked as an oyster shucker at one point. Once Chef Spouse had the right tool and a good coach, he dispatched the rest of the oysters in quick order, and we proceeded to slurp them all down poste haste.

In the meantime, the octopus went into a marinade of:

Shallots
Garlic
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Hot peppers
Chopped fresh rosemary
Chopped fresh sage

And Mad Kitchen Scientist fired up the Big Green Egg.

Next we par-boiled the crawfish in a simple Old Bay and salt mix, since we were planning to smoke them. Why did we par-boil them first? Visions of still-live crawfish scattering the second they hit the grate in the smoker.

Then it was out of the brine for the mussels, out of the pot for some of the crawfish, and onto a slow smoke heat (around 225) until the mussels opened up, signaling that they were - or should have been - ready to eat.

Here's the thing. I've had smoked mussels before. I know it's possible. But it wasn't this weekend. Instead of forming into tasty, juicy little pockets of chewy deliciousness, the mussels were rigid and nearly impossible to pry fully open and, when we did, there were two flat bits of flesh against the inside of each shell that were kind of the consistency of pate. They didn't taste bad, exactly, and you could taste the smoke, but they were profoundly disappointing. The crawfish fared a little better, although you couldn't really taste any smokiness.

After that, we cranked up the heat in the Egg (I still think it needs a name), and put together a sort of clam bake in Mad Kitchen Scientist's new 9 qt cast iron dutch oven. It included:

3/4 L white wine
2 fennel bulbs, quartered
1 onion, chopped in eighths
Head on shrimp
2 red and 2 yellow tomatoes, also in eighths
6 ears corn halved
all 3 dozen clams

Once again, looks pretty good, right? Oh my, were we wrong.

So we kept the Egg closer to 400, smoked until the clams started to open, then popped the lid on to steam briefly.

The clams were not terrible. They were a little tough, but not inedible, and again, you could taste the smoke. The shrimp overcooked to the point that they fell apart. I couldn't eat the corn - banged one of my teeth slightly loose in an accident earlier this summer, and it's still not 100% - but the tomatoes, onions, and fennel were not great, either.

Thank goodness we had those oysters, that octopus, which we grilled, and salmon, which we also grilled, or we would've had nothing to eat but the cheese and olives The Executive Committee had put out for us.

So our first disaster. Doing a little additional research now, I realize we left out the key step with the mussels: that they needed to be briefly boiled and de-shelled THEN smoked. Same thing with the clams. The shrimp should have also been removed from their shells and dry-smoked, preferably after being treated to a rub or marinade of some sort. To paraphrase The Wedding Singer, this is information I would have found useful YESTERDAY. Fortunately, we had plenty of champagne, sparkling wine, and white wine to console ourselves with.