Char Siew Bug
Monday, September 18, 2006
While available in chinese restaurants here, I don't buy char siew as it's so expensive and somehow, doesn't taste quite the same. Or am I just being biased?
This of course presented a problem since a good deal of my favourite dishes contain some level of char siew. And so, began the Make Your Own Char Siew journey.
After several attempts, I've got it down pat. The key ingredients are hoisin sauce, chinese wine, sesame oil, sugar, pepper to taste and red food colouring. As for the measurments, I can't tell you off-hand because I do this by 'guess-timation' and feel. What you need to do is, mix the above ingredients, marinate the pork loins (cut into strips) with it, leave in the refrigerator over night and grill in the oven, using the marinade as basting liquid. With regards to the colouring, some choose to omit it because of health reasons (artificial additives and what not) but I'm old school. I grew up with flaming red char siew so in went the red powder.
This was what I made last week, a whole kilo's worth of char siew: 
I normally make a sizeable batch and freeze the lot for future use. This time, I used most of it at once because I wanted to make char siew buns (roast pork buns).
This batch yielded around 18-20 buns. I'm not sure because, ahem, I might have scoffed down one or two when they came out of the steamer. One has to do a taste test, don't you know. Again, I store it in the freezer until needed.
Anyways, I had leftover filling and didn't have the heart to throw it away. Well you wouldn't either if on top of grilling the meat, you also had to stir fry the filling. So while those babies were on the cooling rack, I poked around the cellar for ingredients to whip this up:
Char Siew Pastry.
And that, was how I spent my Friday afternoon. Not too bad considering I was feeling under the weather and my son had a classmate over for a 3.5hr play date.
Speaking of play date, this boy R, share the same quiet and relaxed temperament as my son. As a result, they play very well together. However, many times I had to look out the front and back yard to see what they were up to because they were that quiet. As every mother will tell you, quiet is not normal. They must be Up To Something. But no, these two boys were angels that afternoon. Well, except for the one incident when R scaled up to the top (yes, top) of the street light on the pavement along our front yard. Agile like a monkey doesn't even begin to describe it - he made it look like second nature. I almost had a minor heart attack while my son found a new hero.
Labels: she bakes, small bites
The Dutchess of Cookalot whipped this up at 5:03 am 0 calories
