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.

Har Gau: Chinese Shrimp Dumplings

My first adventure in making dim sum dumplings turned out to be a great success.  Riding the momentum of a successful batch of siu mai, har gau was the next natural option for my exploration into making dim sum.  Har gau and siu mai are dim sum staples and two peas in a pod.  In fact, if you go to a dim sum restaurant that serves out of carts, the cart pusher that has har gau and siu mai will typically announce “har gau siu mai” in one slurred breath.

Dim sum at a restaurant can be great, but it can’t replace the fond memories of my grandma waking up before dawn to hand make a huge spread of dim sum whenever we visited.  My sister’s favorite thing were what we affectionately called “happy faces”.  Essentially, “happy faces” were dumplings filled with ground pork and green onion and named so because they looked like a smile when constructed.  The scratch-made wrappers were most likely made from wheat flour and are essentially the same translucent wrappers used for har gau.  Knowing how well my grandma made those wrappers, I had a lot to live to up.

Because I’m still very new to working with dough in general, the wrappers refused to roll out to my desired thinness.  Every time I would try rolling a piece out, it would quickly shrink back to where it started from.  My inexperience made the wrappers turn out highly questionable and sadly didn’t come remotely close to what my grandma used to make.

Typically the filling has no visible signs of soy sauce but mine obviously did.  Either most restaurants don’t use soy sauce in the filling or use so little that you can’t see it.  The dumplings are also supposed to have nicely pleated seams to seal them.  My “nicely pleated seams” were more like crudely smashed together dough.

 

As you can see, the wrapper turned out too thick.  The wrapper should be translucent.  Overall, it was a passable dumpling wrapper but a terrible har gau wrapper.  The flavor of the dumpling, though, turned out well, albeit a little too soy sauce-y.  One of the hallmarks of great har gau is the clean shrimp flavor that comes through in each bite and this was somewhat muddled with my heavy hand for soy sauce.

Just like the siu mai, I forgot to write down the ratios and technique when I made the har gau.  These measurements are essentially a best guess based on rummaging through Google search results.

Har gau wrapper:

1. 250 g (~1 c) water +16 g (~1.25 T) lard => bring to boil
2. 170 g (~1.33 c) wheat flour + 20 g (~3 T) corn starch => bowl
3. Step #1 + step #2 => mix
4. Step #3 => wait until cool enough to handle, knead until smooth
5. Step #4 => divide into 24 equal portions, roll out into 4” diameter circles

Har gau filling:

1. 1 green onion => fine chop
2. 1” piece of ginger => grate or mince
3. 2 t soy sauce + 1 t sesame oil + 6 g (~1 t) salt + 4 g (~1 t) sugar + 7 g (~1 T) corn starch => mix, dissolve
4. 500 g (~1 lbs) shrimp + 45 g (~0.1 lbs) pork fat + steps #1-3 => mix

Har gau:

1. 1 t filling + 1 wrapper => center filling, moisten 1/2 wrapper edge
2. Dry wrapper edge + moist wrapper edge => seal, pleat
3. Step #2 => parchment, steam, 6-8 minutes

Siu Mai: Chinese Pork Dumplings

The first words in Chinese that I ever learned were most likely “har gau” and “siu mai.”  Whenever my family would go out for dim sum, there were always a few guarantees: jasmine tea, har gau, and siu mai would all be ordered.  Har gau and shiu mai are probably the 2 most popular dim sum items with most families, but they can easily be botched.

Bad shiu mai is typically rubbery and contains a lot of filler like fat and cornstarch.  Sadly, I’ve never had a memorable siu mai in Chicago; well, memorable for the right reason.  I certainly remember having terrible siu mai in Chicago and the dim sum here just doesn’t compare to Southern California or even Houston.

In fact, I had the worst dim sum of my life (and worst meal in recent memory) at the highly regarded Little Three Happiness restaurant in Chicago’s Chinatown.  It’s held in such high esteem that a popular Chicago internet food forum was named after it.  How that place is still in business and why people like it is beyond me, and the online community’s recommendation of it has made me distrustful of most ethnic restaurant recommendations in general.

Good siu mai in my book tends to have a decent amount of fresh shrimp per dumpling rather than just a tiny amount.  Even though it’s a pork dumpling, I enjoy the presence of shrimp as it plays well with the inherent porky fattiness of each bite.  There’s a good reason why many Asian cultures have traditional dishes rooted with a pork and shrimp combination: it just works.  Some people also top their shiu mai with a pea and/or some diced carrots for color which I opted out of due to laziness and because it doesn’t add much flavor.

Traditionally, the outer skin is made from a lye-water dough.  However, I chose to go with premade wonton wrappers as I was confident I would totally mess the skin up if I made it from scratch.  Construction was a bit troublesome at times as some dumplings started to lose their shape, droop, and spill out of the wrapper.

 

Afraid that the wrappers would stick to the bamboo, I placed some all-mighty parchment paper down for the dumplings to rest on.

Like I said, I tend to prefer a decent amount of shrimp in siu mai, but this particular one had a bit much.  The entire top half of the dumpling was all shrimp.  It was still really good, though.  Unfortunately, I’m not 100% sure about the following ratios because I forgot to write down the recipe I followed.  As long as you generally have the base ingredients, it’ll turn out fine.  Just taste and tweak as you go and change the ratios to your preference.

Siu mai:

1. 1” piece ginger => mince
2. 1 green onion => dice
3. Shiitake mushrooms => dice
4. 1 Tbsp soy sauce + 1 Tbsp oyster sauce + 1 tsp sesame oil + 1 tsp Chinese rice wine + 2 tsp sugar + 1 tsp cornstarch + salt => mix
5. 450 g ground pork + 225 g shrimp + steps #1-4 => mix
6. Won ton wrappers => fill with step #5
7. Siu mai => steam until done, ~10-15 minutes