I made these during a thunderstorm, which no doubt created a
good scoffing atmosphere but flash flood or no, they were just what I was
hoping for. The recipe for the dough is an amalgamation of those found on the
internet which I scribbled down into my notebook but the pork is flexible; I’ve
made these buns with ginger-sesame chicken in the glory days of home-schooling
and they tasted pretty delicious too, so feel free to experiment!
For the pork:
500g pork belly
1 ½ tsp. Chinese five-spice powder
Ginger (fresh or ground)
Garlic (fresh or powdered)
1 tbsp. rice wine
1 dsp. soy sauce
1 tbsp. hoisin/oyster sauce
1 dsp. oil (preferably sesame)
2-3 tbsp. honey
4 spring onions, sliced finely.
Method:
To make the pork, as you can see, I used anything I had to hand
that felt suitable. At the end of the day, you’re making honeyed barbeque pork
so don’t be afraid to just chuck in what you have. As long as there’s honey
involved, it’s going to taste delicious. There are hundreds of different
recipes for char siu out there and about as many methods of making it. Mine is probably
as simple as it gets as I didn’t spend time marinating it- sometimes you just
don’t have the patience!
1)
If the pork belly is in one joint, make sure to
score the top and bottom to let in the flavours.
2)
Find an ovenproof dish that will hold the meat
snugly and double-line it with tin-foil. Burnt honey is a pain to scrub off
later.
3)
Preheat the oven to 170˚.
4)
Put the pork in the dish and sprinkle over the
Chinese five-spice powder. Add in 1 tsp. ground ginger (or a grated thumb of
fresh) and 1 tsp. garlic powder (or 2 crushed cloves).
5)
Pour over the rice wine, soy sauce,
hoisin/oyster sauce and oil, then drizzle over the honey. Add in half a teacup
of water, which should help the meat to steam a little and loosen the sauce.
6)
With a clean hand, massage these flavours into the
meat (or to avoid stickiness use a sandwich bag as a ‘massaging glove’).
7)
Tightly cover the baking dish with tin foil and
cook on the middle shelf for around two hours, or until the meat is soft enough
to pull apart and the fat has rendered down.
8)
When the meat is tender, take it out of the oven
and cut it up into little chunks. Scrape
out as much of the sauce as you can from the baking dish and pour this over the
meat. If the mix is looking dry, add in a little bit extra of the ‘marinade’
ingredients along with a tbsp. or so of water, just enough so that the meat is
glossily covered. Add in the sliced spring onions and set aside to cool.
For the dough:
10 tbsp. milk4 tbsp. butter
2 tsp yeast
2 ½ tbsp. warm water
1 large egg
1 tbsp. sugar
350g bread flour
1)
Make the dough after you’ve got the pork in the
oven. Firstly, put the milk and butter in a small saucepan and warm it enough
to melt the butter. Set aside to cool slightly.
2)
While this mixture is cooling, combine the yeast
with the warm water and leave for ten minutes to activate, until it begins to
froth.
3)
In a large bowl, mix the sugar and flour
together. Tip in the yeast and warm water, then whisk the egg into the cooled
milk/butter and pour slowly into the flour, working the mixture with your hands
until it comes together. Be careful not to add all of the liquid at once in
case the mixture becomes too wet. You want it to be a “shaggy mass” stage.
4)
Tip the dough out onto a clean surface and knead
for 5-10 minutes, until the mixture is soft and elastic.
5)
Once you’ve got to this stage, lightly oil the
bowl and put the dough back in to rise for an hour or so, until it’s nearly doubled.
To assemble:
1)
Portion the dough in half, placing one back in
the bowl and covering it to prevent it from drying out. Roll the other half into
a sausage shape before dividing into eight equal pieces.
2)
Roll one piece into a ball with your hands, then
use a rolling pin to flatten it into a circle about 2 ½ inches in diameter.
3)
Pick the dough disc up and place it in the palm
of your hand. Deposit one heaped teaspoon of the pork mixture into the centre
and bring the dough edges together to form a tight ball. This is best done by folding
and pinching the edges in on themselves as you rotate the dough in your hand,
almost as if they are petals. It doesn’t really matter if the balls aren’t airtight-
a few of mine didn’t make the grade and exploded slightly, but as long as you
try to get the ball as tight as you can, the majority of your buns won’t end up
with their filling stuck to the baking tray.
4)
When the bun is complete, place it on a lined
baking tray and cover with cling film to prevent it drying out.
5)
Repeat the process with the other 15 pieces of
dough, making sure to portion out the meat accordingly.
6)
When you’ve finished, leave the buns on their
baking trays under cling film to rise for half an hour, until they have puffed
up ever so slightly.
7)
Preheat the oven to 190˚.
8)
Brush the buns with beaten egg before baking one
tray at a time (this stops any slower-cooking buns underneath from exploding) on
the middle shelf, for 15-20 minutes, until golden and hollow-sounding
underneath when tapped.
9)
As a final touch, when the buns are hot, brush
with a mixture of 1 tbsp. honey mixed with equal amounts of warm water; this
will soften the buns and give them their characteristic gloss.
Eat the lot in under half an hour and lament the fact that
these took so long to make, and so little time to demolish.
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