03 January 2011

Chicken Bao

Image from Amazon.com (source)

In our recent travel to Hong Kong we had the rare opportunity to try halal Hong Kong Dim Sum in Masjid Ammar. I was smitten..... I suddenly had the urge to master all the popular Dim Sum selection I could lay my hands on, like Chicken Bun, Har Gao, Tofu sheet dim sum, glutinous rice in lotus leaves, different kinds of shiu mai.... Upon arriving back to CA, I razed our local library and found several books on dim sum, and after several tests, my favorite one is Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's. I had the mistake of doubting her bao recipe to my detriment.

My obsession with chicken bao led me to try several recipes for the bun, including one from Yin-Fei Lo's and another from Rasa Malaysia blog. I decided I prefer the Cantonese style by Yin-Fei Lo's that relies only on baking powder to rise the dough than the other style that requires some yeast. The Cantonese style resulted in very soft, cake-like bun, while the other turned more chewy. And they say one of the secret of soft bao is to use a mixture of all purpose and cake flour.

Here's my bao

Here's my bao, too

and here is my Har Gao

7 comments:

  1. wow! they look like the are from a restaurant! i want to go to hong kong! let's all rendezvous in hong kong! it is kinda halfway, right?

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  2. Hong Kong.... Yummmm....
    There's a vegan tea house in a park on Causeway Bay (?) that has both excellent selection of vegan dim sum and teas... Yummmmm

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  3. It's halfway if you live in Cali or Hawaii....
    Can we organize a virtual tea, please?

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  4. Georgia: Virtual tea... virtual tea.... :). I'll get my halal char siu bao ready :).

    Actually, Hong Kong is *not* halfway from California. It is a never-ending 14 hours flight one way, longer than going to Europe (11 hours). How about we meet in the mother-of-all-tea place: England? Heh heh hehhh..... I'll start my canoeing now to arrive there in late Spring... :)

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  5. Okay then, tea in London! :)

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  6. Will look for conferences in London!

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  7. Better yet: we should set a panel in a conference in London with a topic catered to our research. How about "My jasmine is better than your roses: Indigenous urban gardening in colonial space as embattled knowledge production." Tea, scones, devon cream with jasmine and roses served courtesy of presenters :D

    Ahem.

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