Xiao Long Bao

First a short story on my experience with this food, and then a reasoning on why we decided to choose it for cooking club.

I'm actually not sure the first time I had xiao long bao, but something makes me think it was at 168 in 2000, possibly ordered by Ying during a lunchtime meal. At any rate, despite 168 being "the best Chinese food in the east bay" -anonymous (A. Yen) source, the "soup dumplings" didn't blow me away, and somewhat set the benchmark for what I came to expect from xlb as a dish: somewhat thick, grayish/brown skin, wrapped around a meat filling which may or may not have included the actual "soup" ingredient.

Fast forward to late 2011, when Ei-Lun took me to the fabled Original Din Tai Fung in Taiwan on Xinyi road. There was so much hype about this place, and not just this resturant, but the particular location, the original, that I didn't bother trying to discount the hype. Instead, I embraced the hype, and held the highest standard possible and fully expected my lofty expectations to be exceeded. As with many of the other food adventures from our Asia-food-adventure trip, once again I realized I had never in my life had "real" xiaolongbao. Whatever I had eaten in the past that shared the same name, had nothing to do with these dumplings; they were simply amazing.

Since that fateful meal, I've tried two other locations of Din Tai Fung, one in Taiwan, and one in Los Angeles, and can now tote the same line as the other fanatics (and family members) which is: "You cannot beat the original Din Tai Fung!"

Knowing the amount of lore around this dish, the incredible technical skill required to form the dumplings, the importance of the filling, the quality of the wrapper, and ultimately the challenge of trying to replicate, or surpass the epic Din Tai Fung dumplings was what enticed us to pick this dish.

So here we are, a few days from cooking club and are only on attempt #1. It's possible we will hit a home-run on the first try, and we've been watching videos and looking at pictures, but I have a feeling this recipe and the many others on the web will get plenty of use by us on our way to Din Tai Fung xiao long bao perfection!

A couple of notes on the ingredients, 99 Ranch didn't have the pork skin, but said to come back tomorrow, they would have it. Whole foods didn't have pig skin, in fact they looked at us funny when we asked. We used a prosciutto for the ham, and we used wheat flour (gluten) for the "high gluten" flour (thanks Agnes!). Also, we bought a can of chili oil from Din Tai Fung in Taiwan for the dipping sauce. (ginger, vinegar, soy sauce, chili oil) We picked up some bamboo steamers in the south bay at a restaurant supply store near Ranch, and got the paper with holes in it, instead of using cabbage. The Din Tai Fung in Taiwan uses actual cloth for that purpose.

Test run notes 3/12: Forget the wrapper recipe here, instead we used one from here which only uses water and all-purpose flour. We were also able to use our soba-class skills from Japan to knead the dough to the right consistency. The first try with the recipe below yielded some pretty funky looking dough, and way way too stretchy/rubbery. (also it required sitting for 4hrs, vs. 30mins for the all-purpose flour one) When rolling out the wrapper, get them as thin as possible, nearly see-through. Also, using the recipe below for the soup, you end up with 2 cups of liquid, it says to use only 1 cup for the filling, but save the other cup. When putting together the filling put 2 parts of the filling and 1 part of the coagulated soup. The final test run was with the ultra-thin wrapper, and +extra-soup, and was quite tasty. Holding it up with chopsticks resulted in a see-through, sagging dumpling, filled with pork filling and some steaming hot soup! One step closer to Din Tai Fung, a few thousand left to go...


Base Recipe

Ingredients
Wrapper

• 3/4 cup high gluten flour
• 1/3 cup less 1 tablespoon water
• 1/3 cup plain flour
• 1/4 cup boiling water
• flour for dusting
• 2 teaspoons oil

Soup

• 180 grams skin of pork
• 225 grams chicken breast
• 140 grams pork
• 60 grams Chinese ham
• 1 scallion
• 2 slices ginger
• Chinese rice wine
• salt

Filling

• 285 grams ground pork
• 2 tablespoons light soy sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon ginger and scallion water
• pepper
• sugar
• 2 teaspoons sesame oil
• 2 teaspoons Chinese rice wine

Making the soup (makes 2 cups. use only one)
Wash and clean pork skin. Parboil in boiling water with the chicken breast and ham. Place all the meat in a saucepan with 6 cups of water. Add scallion and ginger and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer till pork skin is soft. Continue simmering till only 2 cups of liquid remains. Strain and reserve the liquid keeping the pork skin. Diced the saved pork skin. Food process the pork skin and liquid in a blender till milky. Season with salt and leave to cool. Use before it gelatinizes.

Preparing the Filling
Place the ground pork into a mixing bowl. Add salt and light soy sauce. Stir with chopstick or wooden spoon continuously and in one direction only. Add the rest of the ingredients. Continue to stir in the same direction until the mixture forms a thick paste.

Pour in one cup of the prepared soup, a little at a time, stirring to mix thoroughly with the pork.

Wrap in plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator to cool.

Preparing the wrapper (makes 40 wrappers) [See above recipe line from the 3/12 test run, instead of this one.]
In a large mixing bowl, mix the 3/4 cups of high gluten flour and 1/3 cup less one tablespoon less water until it resembles bread crumbs. Knead into a dough.

Place the plain flour in a mixing bowl. In a small saucepan bring 1/4 cup of water to the boil. Add the 1/3 cup plain flour and move the saucepan away from the flame, stirring the flour vigorously with a wooden spoon. Leave it to cool a little before kneading together with the high gluten flour dough prepared earlier. Cover with clean damp cloth and leave to rest for 4 hours.

Forming the dumplings
Place 2 teaspoons of oil on the worktop, put the dough on top and knead for a little while. Cut the dough into 4 quarters. Form one quarter into a 2cm roll. Divide the cylinder into 10 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball. Flatten each piece with the palm of your hand into a disk. Use a rolling pin to roll the disk out forming a 6cm disk with the edges thinner than the center. Make a well with you thumb and first finger and drape the disk over. Let it sag in the middle to form a recess for the filling. Use a teaspoon to place 2 teaspoons of filling. Carefully gather the edge of wrapper making folds and holding on to them till fully gathered. Traditionally, 18 folds are made to close the dumpling.

Steaming
Cut out 10 cabbage leaf disks or use thin slices of carrot and stick one piece to the bottom of each dumpling. Place the dumplings in a 200mm bamboo steamer. In a large saucepan or wok, bring water to a rolling boil. Sit the Steamer on a rack over the boiling water, close the lid and steam for seven minutes. The dumpling is done when the filling feels firm to the touch. Serve with a small dish of thinly shredded ginger in vinegar. (and chili oil and soy sauce)

Misc
Video on chowhound.
Another recipe on the web that goes in to greater detail on the ginger-scallion water here.