Family Story
Dim Sum
I never had Chinese food when I was growing up — after all, there are not a lot of kosher ways to make spare ribs or mu shu pork. But Dad’s family ate Chinese all the time and Dad was excited to introduce me. The first time he took me to a Chinese restaurant somewhere in New Jersey, he ordered his favorites: moo goo gai pan and shrimp in lobster sauce. Of course, moo goo gai pan is all vegetables — not exactly my favorite.
All of the Chinese restaurants then were Cantonese. Moo goo gai pan and shrimp with lobster sauce were pretty out there. Most people got one from column A and one from column B: sweet and sour chicken or pork, spare ribs, chow mein, and chop suey, whatever that is. It was not until we moved to Washington that we found out about the “new” spicy Chinese cuisines of Hunan and Szechuan. We experimented with them slowly, but “”our”” Chinese restaurant was Nanking on the corner of 9th and K. Don’t bother looking for it now; they tore down that block to build the Convention Center.
We went to Nanking regularly, sometimes during the week and sometimes on weekends. We noticed that on Sundays they served something we had never seen, but only to the Chinese patrons. We asked about it, and our favorite waitress told us it was dim sum, or tea cakes. We had never heard of or seen dim sum before that.
So we tried them. Nanking served five varieties of steamed shu mai with different fillings: pork, shrimp, sausage, beef, and something else. And a round doughy ball that the waitress told us was called a pork bow. The shu mai (we did not know then that was its name) was good; the pork bows were great.
We went to Nanking regularly when I lived in D.C. and from our apartment in Alexandria. I can’t remember why we stopped going — maybe we just got tired of Cantonese — but by then we were living in the house in Silver Spring and we heard about the Golden Palace, a restaurant on 7th Street in Chinatown that had a wide variety of Dim Sum every Sunday.
Everyone in the Golden Palace was Chinese and the menu was in Chinese. So we tried everything! The Chinese menu had about thirty items. The first time we went, we ordered numbers 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, and 26. The next time, we ordered numbers 2, 7, 12, 17, 22, and 27. And so on. We kept the original Chinese menu and wrote a description of each dish. Some were really weird. Dad always talks about the golf balls on chicken feet (neither the balls nor the feet were edible as far as I was concerned) and there were some gooey things that looked like worms. The Chinese really liked sticky rice, but I was not a fan. My favorites were the crepes made of rice flour and filled with various meats. A very weird consistency, but I liked it.
After a while, dim sum became more and more popular, and lots of restaurants served it on weekends. When Tung Bor opened on Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring, it became the new “”our place.”” We loved going on weekends and taking other people so we could order a wide variety of items.
I still love eating dim sum at restaurants and while I have tried everything at least once (fortunately the Chinese do not make potato dim sum), now I mostly stick to my favorites. To this day, my very favorite are still the pork bows from Nanking, and this recipe is closer to Nanking’s than I usually find in Chinese restaurants today. Most pork bows in restaurants today are made with barbecued pork. And fortunately, we found the New Canton, a Sacramento restaurant that makes great dim sum.
Source: Sunrise Chinese Cookbook
Ingredients for Buns
- 1 packet yeast
- 1 cup warm water (about 110°)
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons oil
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3¼ cups flour
Ingredients for Filling
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 1½ pounds lean pork cut into ¼ inch cubes
- 2 cloves minced garlic
- ½ teaspoon grated ginger
- 4 teaspoons sugar, divided
- 4 tablespoons soy sauce, divided
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 tablespoon dry sherry
- ¼ cup water
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
Instructions
Dissolve yeast in warm water. Blend in sugar and oil. Let mixture stand in a warm place until bubbly (about 15 minutes). Mix in salt, then slowly incorporate flour. Knead until smooth and elastic (8-10 minutes). Place in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise until dough doubles in bulk. If you are not ready to use the dough, you can punch it down and let it rise a second time.
While dough is rising, mix together garlic, ginger, 2 tablespoons soy sauce, and 2 tablespoons sugar. Add cubed pork and stir to coat; set aside to marinate until ready to cook.
Mix together remaining 2 tablespoons soy sauce and sugar with dry sherry, cornstarch, and water for cooking sauce.
Heat a wok or frying pan to high and add 1 tablespoon of oil. When oil is hot, add marinated pork and stir-fry until browned (about 5 minutes). Add 1 medium-sized chopped onion and continue stir-frying until onion is limp (about 2 minutes). Add cooking sauce and cook, stirring, until sauce bubbles and thickens. Let cool.
When ready to shape buns, punch down dough and knead on a lightly floured board for 1 minute. Cut dough into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a round disc about 4½ inches in diameter. Press outside edges to make them slightly thinner than the center. Place about 2 tablespoons of filling in the center of each round. Pull edges of dough up around the filling and twist together to seal. Set bows crimped-side down on a small square of aluminum foil or parchment paper, and set aside to rise for 30 minutes.
For steamed buns, place in a covered steamer over gently boiling water for 12 to 15 minutes. Steamed buns will not brown but will remain white. For baked buns, place 2 inches apart on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350° until golden brown (about 15 minutes).
Glenda’s
Secrets of Success
- I usually make at least a double recipe of the dough and of course I use far more garlic in the filling than the recipe calls for.
- The tricky part of this recipe is forming the buns. You must keep the filling on the inside as you are closing it so the dough can adhere together properly. If you put too much filling on the dough and it leaks over the edge, it is very difficult to ever seal the edges. Try dabbing the wet part of the dough with flour. I bake the ones that do not seal right to keep leakage on a pan rather than in the steamer. (Dad has never noticed that he gets all the defective buns.)
- I use a boneless pork roast or thick cut pork chops. You can use chicken instead. You can also simply make empty buns by shaping the dough into a ball.
Rachel’s
Secrets of Success
- I have tried many different recipes for making bao bun dough and fillings over the years. Recipes that include baking powder (plus yeast) in the dough come out closer to what you’d get at a Dim Sum place, so I usually add 1 teaspoon of baking powder along with the salt and flour. If you are using instant or fast-active yeast, you can skip the 15 minute proofing step.
- You can also shape these as folded buns by rolling each ball as flat as you can, brushing with vegetable oil, then folding in half like a taco. After you steam them, open down the middle, fill, and eat as a sandwich. My kids like a simple filling of chicken cooked in teriyaki sauce.
“There is no such thing as a little garlic.”
A. Baer
Cooking with the Claremons 
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