Shrimp Etouffee With Tasso Ham (Two Ways)

When I learned that April’s CharcutePalooza challenge would be tasso ham, I was both frightened and excited because I had no idea what tasso ham was.  However, once I read that tasso ham is a typical Cajun ingredient, I felt a little more comfortable as I’m somewhat familiar with the cuisine.  At that point, I decided to make an untraditional version one of my favorite Cajun dishes: etouffee.

Since etouffee is traditionally served over rice, serving it inside a baked bao would qualify as untraditional.  The idea of stuffing a bao with etouffee came to me in a somewhat convoluted fashion.  When I started thinking about the ingredients for etouffee, the taste of celery from the holy trinity kept persisting in my mind.  I think this happened because I’m not a fan of raw celery, and that prejudice may have unconsciously carried over to cooked celery.

Regardless, the combination of celery and pork took me back to grandma’s baked char siu bao.  Her version of the classic Cantonese barbeque pork bun uniquely contained sauteed celery, and that became the catalyst for my etouffee baos.

Out of all the CharcutePalooza challenges thus far, tasso ham required the least amount of time to prepare and could be done in a single day.  After curing for a few hours, the pork had to be smoked.  Since I didn’t have any existing smoking equipment, I opted to buy a small stovetop smoker.  In hindsight, I probably would have been happier spending a little extra more money on the larger model.

The smoker came with some alder wood, which I read is commonly used to smoke seafood.  As such, I decided to use that as the source of smoke and make my etouffee a shrimp etouffee.  After reading through the manual, I was surprised to learn that the smoker is designed to create a 375 degree smoking environment.  Since the hot smoking recipes in Charcuterie call for a 200 degree smoking environment, I started the process on a medium heat stove for about 10 minutes in order to get the wood smoking and then transferred the smoker to a 200 degree oven.  It took about an hour for my 1-inch thick slabs to get up to temperature.

With the tasso ham done, I turned to making pork-shrimp stock for the etouffee.  Using the pressure cooker method, I was able to make a nice pork stock from fresh meaty pork bones in about an hour.  Once the pork stock was strained, I added it back to the pressure cooker with the heads and shells from the shrimp I peeled for the etouffee and boiled it at pressure for about 10 minutes.  I made sure to squeeze every ounce of shrimp head goodness when straining the stock for a second time.

As the pork-shrimp stock cooled overnight in the fridge, something odd happened.  What looked like tiny mountain ranges of amazing pork and shrimp fat congealed at the top.  Usually the fat congeals flat, but not this time.

With all my mise en place finished, I started making the etouffee.  Despite having set out to eat the etouffee in bao form only, I simply couldn’t control myself.  Once it was done, I had to have a plate over rice right then and there.  Luckily for me, my Asian heritage pretty much guarantees that I’ll have leftover rice in the fridge 6 out of 7 days of the week.  The spices from the tasso ham melded nicely with the sauce and the smokiness from the alder wood definitely went well with the shrimp.

With my plate of etouffee over rice devoured, I turned to thickening the sauce a little more so I could fill the baos without making a huge mess.  I could have easily just used more flour in the roux when making the etouffee sauce, but I wanted to experiment with xanthan gum for the first time after being inspired by the use of it in pasta in this post.  One gram of xanthan gum thickened the sauce enough to the point where I could easily portion the etouffee onto the bao dough, but it did make it a little clumpy.

In the end, the etouffee baos were good, but I preferred the etouffee traditionally over rice because it had a higher sauce to starch ratio.  Although this is something easily remediable for next time, this meant there was simply more flavor in each bite when eaten eaten over rice.

As for the tasso ham, the smokiness heightened the etouffee a lot.  Being a fan of American barbeque, especially Chicago style rib tips, I can definitely say that I’ll be using my new smoker a lot this summer.  The only issue is that it makes my home smell smoky and savory for a good 4 or 5 days, which isn’t a necessarily a bad thing.

 

Shrimp Etouffee (adapted from here)

Mise En Place

1. 75 g (~0.17 lbs) onion, diced
2. 75 g (~0.17 lbs) bell peppers, diced
3. 75 g (~0.17 lbs) celery, diced
4. 175 g (~0.39 lbs) tasso ham, diced
5. 490 g (~1 lb) shrimp, peeled
6. 355 g (~1 cup) stock
7. 113 g (1 stick) unsalted butter
8. 16 g (~2 Tbsp) flour

Method

1. Melt butter in a large pot over medium-high heat
2. Add the flour once some of the liquid has evaporated from the butter.  Stir to make a  thin roux.
3. Add the onion, bell peppers, and celery and stir until softened, about 5 minutes.
4. Add the tasso ham and shrimp.  Simmer until thickened, about 5 minutes.
5. Serve over rice.

Siu Yuk: Chinese Roast Pork

As crazy as it may seem, there was a dark time in my life when I gagged at the thought of eating a piece of meat with any visible fat or skin on it.  The texture of fat and the thought of eating something that could contribute to heart disease scared the crap out of me.  Being a fat kid who loved to eat in my youth, this aversion perplexes me now that I think about it.



Unfortunately, it wasn’t until the past few years that I started liking siu yuk: Chinese roast pork.  I feel like I really missed out all the times my family would get Chinese BBQ, which always included an order of Chinese roast pork.

The first step in making Chinese roast pork was to make my own freshly ground five spice powder.  I’d never used Szechwan pepper before and frankly didn’t know what it looked like, so it was exciting to utilize them for the first time.  They’re the deep red pods seen above.



Typically the entire pig is roasted for Chinese roast pork, but I wanted to concentrate on what’s considered by many as the most sought after part of Chinese roast pork: the belly.  In order to get the skin extra crispy, it’s heavily salted to draw out as much moisture as possible and let to sit overnight.  The skin and meat are also rubbed with five spice powder.  During roasting, the skin is brushed with vinegar to promote the crackling and bubbling of the skin.



The alternating layers of fat and lean is what makes the belly so desirable, while the crispy skin adds much needed texture to the bite.  Sometimes it can feel a little too fatty though, and I’m not afraid to trim off a layer or two of fat.



About a year ago, I heard of Momofuku’s now infamous pork belly buns.  They reminded me of the traditional preparation of Peking duck, but with pork belly instead of duck.  Taking that as inspiration, I made my own steamed bao from scratch and slapped a couple pieces of the roast pork, green onion, and Hoisin sauce in between the bun.  Needless to say, it turned out to be a winning combination.

Baked Taro Bao

After making steamed char siu bao, I felt confident enough to try making baked bao.  I didn’t want to do char siu again, though, and I wanted to do a sweet rather than savory bao.  A few options for the filling crossed my mind: custard, cream, red bean, yellow mung bean with ginger, green mung bean, black eyed peas with coconut milk.  In the end, I chose taro because I thought it would be fun to work with fresh taro for the first time.

Cutting into the taro was a little surprising.  Most taro I’ve seen has been more on the grayish-purplish hue, but this variety was a lot whiter than what I am used to seeing.  I later realized that taro changes color slightly upon cooking, which may explain the discrepancy.  In any case, preparing the taro filling wasn’t too complicated:

• Peel, cut into thin slices
• Steam until soft, ~30 minutes
• Mash
• Heat oil in cooking vessel
• Add taro and sugar to taste
• Cook until thickened

I followed the same technique and recipe in preparing the bao dough as I did with the steamed char siu bao.  However, to construct the bao, I used a slightly different technique than the steamed bao.  Instead of bringing all the edge of the dough up to the top and twisting to seal, I brought in opposite edges into the center and folded them as if I were wrapping a gift.  I then made sure to bake the bao with the folds on the bottom to give them the distinctively smooth top that baked bao are known for rather than the puffy top that’s common in steamed char siu bao.

I also had some spare cheese in the fridge, so I thought it’d be pretty awesome to fill a bao with cheese.  The cheese was a random mélange of gruyere, mozzarella, and 2 other cheeses I couldn’t make out.  The previous week I discovered that my grocery’s deli sold end cuts of meats and cheeses at dirt cheap prices.  I scored a ton of random yet high quality meats and cheeses for a couple of bucks.

   

Baked bao typically has a glaze or egg wash on the top for sweetness and color.  Unfortunately, my egg wash came out a little sloppy.

The bao itself could have turned out better.  It wasn’t light enough for my tastes, but the flavor was there.  At this point, I’m too inexperienced with dough to really know what to do next time to make the bao lighter.  The taro filling turned out well, though, so that sort of offset any shortcomings of the bao.

The cheese-filled bao turned out as awesome as I anticipated.  I mean, how can you really go wrong with gooey, melted cheese?

Char Siu Bao: Chinese BBQ Pork Buns

Happy New Year.  Last Sunday was Chinese New Year and in celebration of the Year of the Tiger, I decided to make a couple dim sum staples since I figured I could make them better than most of the dim sum places in Chicago.  I have yet to find a place in Chicago that can come close to comparing to some of the places in California and even Houston for that matter.

I was originally only going to make Chinese spare ribs in black bean sauce, but the smallest amount of spare ribs I could find at the market were 3 pounds.  No biggie.  Chinese people love pork, and there is no shortage of pork-related dim sum dishes.  I’d been wanting to try make bao (is the plural baos?) for a while now, so I figured with the extra pork in hand that this would be a nice opportunity to make steamed char siu bao: Chinese barbeque pork buns.  I’ll save the baked version of char siu bao for another day.

For those who haven’t had Chinese barbeque or are too intimidated by the hanging pigs, chickens, and ducks in the front of Chinese barbeque places: please do yourself a favor and try it.  Order some barbeque pork, roast pork, roast duck, and soy sauce chicken from the takeout counter and you won’t regret it.  A lot of Chinese barbeque places don’t allow you to order barbeque when you sit down at their restaurant and only serve it as take out.  So for anyone in Chicago, I beg of you, please skip Sun Wah’s sit-down restaurant and try their barbeque next time you’re thinking of going there.  It’s actually pretty good even when put up to California standards.



For the buns, I pretty much followed the recipe found here.  You’ll notice that the measurements are by weight, so I was glad that after reading Ruhlman’s Ratio, I bought a digital scale for the kitchen.  I’m a big fan of cooking and certainly baking in units of weight rather than volume as it’s much more precise.  You may also notice the use of “Hong Kong flour.”  I’m pretty sure if you see recipes calling for “Hong Kong flour” you can substitute it with cake flour or any other flour with a low percentage of protein.

As this was my first time making any type of bread, I was pretty scared I was going to screw something up.  Anything that calls for the use of yeast has always freaked me out for some reason.  I always have the feeling that I’m going to somehow kill the yeast thingies and they won’t do their job.  After kneading for a good 10 minutes, I left the dough alone to (hopefully) double in size.



Unfortunately, after an hour the dough had barely risen, but I was impatient and wanted to eat some char siu bao ASAP.  I portioned the dough into ten 70 gram balls, rolled them out, and stuffed them with the Chinese barbeque pork that I made overnight.  I was pretty lazy when it came to making the pork.  All I did was throw the spare ribs into a crock pot with some char siu sauce, green onion for aromatics, and a little of my endless supply of homemade stock.  Surprisingly, the pork came out really good considering the amount of effort involved.



I’m still trying to figure out the best way to seal the buns, because I found the method of folding the sides up and twisting to not be 100% fool-proof.  On a few of my buns, it was really hard to get the dough to seal even with the twist.  These pesky buns that wouldn’t seal very well ended up opening up during the steaming process, leaving a sad pool of water inside of them from the condensation dripping down into them from the steamer’s lid.



Overall, though, I was very pleased with the results.  I can honestly say they were as good if not better than most steamed char siu bao I’ve had.  The bun itself was super fluffy and super moist.  Sometimes the buns can be dry to the point where you can’t take more than one bite of bun before reaching for a glass of water to help it go down.  This usually happens during the first or last bite of the bun, when only the bun part is left.

Knowing how to make the basic bao dough also opens up a lot of options.  Traditionally speaking, barbeque pork buns and custard buns are the most popular.  But I can use bao dough for Vietnamese-style banh bao filled with traditional Vietnamese fillings, for flat buns to be eaten with roast duck or pork belly (a la David Chang), or even for peanut butter & jelly sandwiches.  And yes, I did try eating it with PB&J and it was pretty amazingly awesome.