When we were growing up, our parents would make siopao for New Years. It's a essentially a steamed bun with a meat filling. The process is quite labor intensive as our Mom would make the entire thing including the dough from scratch. Time constraints didn't always allow for this tradition so we didn't always greet baby new year with a siopao in hand. And through the years, Mom lost the original recipe. Now, we just order siopao from a Flip bakery in St. Pete. And thankfully, it's available year round.
Eliz found this awesome blog and forwarded this link which includes a number of shortcuts that abbreviates an all day affair into an hour. The genius of this recipe is using canned biscuits as the dough.
But first I had to get a steamer for my pot.
I followed the recipe, but made my own filling. The can contained ten biscuits - how appropo for the new year 2010. Things were looking good! I propped those ten babies on the parchment covered metal:
But ended up with ten mottled buns that looked like they were covered in fungus. That gauzy appearance of the buns isn't just steam. It's the haze of disappointment .
Aside from rolling out the biscuits too thinly, the canned dough lacked the sweet, puffy taste of Mom's homemade version.
Ah well. On to the next project!
Still, it was a good attempt and BRAVO for being the first to post! How did they taste?
ReplyDeleteIt tasted like a mottled bun covered in fungus.
ReplyDeletei'm pretty sure i would still eat them. did't know you can put parchment in a steam environment.
ReplyDeletemmmm. mom's siapao.