On Saturday I told Alex that we should take a break from making so much Asian food and try some other cuisines. I know that back in November I promised to make more Asian recipes, but maybe I took it a little too far... So now I am going to try to make more varied cuisine - next up on deck are some Italian and American meals. And then maybe more Middle Eastern and who knows what after that? Anyway, to celebrate this resolution, I decided to go all out and make one last Chinese meal using my new Andrea Nguyen cookbook - Panfried Pork and Scallion Mini Buns. I will go on record and say that this recipe is crazily labor-intensive. It took hours for us to make the filling, then make the dough, then wrap the buns, and finally cook them. It didn't help that there was about an hour of rising time for the dough. Anyway, if you are going to make this dish for dinner you really want to start by 5 pm, rather than doing what we did by starting at 7 and finally eating at 10 pm. Otherwise you get hungrier and hungrier while folding the buns and you start to feel like you won't be eating the buns for dinner, but for breakfast the next day.
So it was a bit of a late dinner, but it was totally worth it. These buns are awesome - much better than the version I had last at Vanessa's Dumpling House on the LES. I will probably roll the dough a little thinner next time because some of of the buns were a little doughy, but seeing as this was our first attempt at the buns, I think we did a darn good job. Alex said that the buns were "kind of awesome" and I honestly agree with him. They remind me of the buns I used to eat in China. The filling was tasty and juicy, the dough fried up very nicely, and all together it made for an excellent meal. We served the buns with some baby bok choy we made like the Chinese Broccoli in Oyster Sauce. What a wonderful way to end to a fantastic streak of Asian meals!
Recipe after the jump
