STEAMED BAU WITH A CHICKEN CURRY FILLING

Here's a fictional bau story and a true recipe.

A Bau Story ~ (or skip it) ~

It's hard to picture bau on a plate and Dad on a chair together, face to face. But curry was a different matter altogether. He had to have it everyday. Like water. Especially a fish curry. So if Mom asked (which she would do almost everyday) what she should cook with this or that, accompanied by a plagued and tired look on her face, Dad would simply answer "curry" without flinching, without looking, without thinking. You would think that that would be the end of Mom's problems. But no. That was her problem.

Was that why she left him? We often wondered. Because right after she did she abandoned curry and went for bau. Bau this, bau that, it was bau, bau, bau. 

Finally, exasperated, Janna asked her one day after school 


"What's with the bau Mom? " 

"This is the one thing your father hated. Bau. And I hated all that curry. Everyday. To cook, to eat, to cook, to eat. Why do you think I left him? "

Janna who was strangely unaffected by our parents' divorce until that moment glared at Mom through her dark, almond eyes from behind her thick fringe. Yes, it was a long fringe that she grew so she could stare at a boy at school without looking like she was staring at a boy at school. Then she got up, scraping the kitchen chair backwards against the floor, stomped over and reached for a pau. As soon as she snared it in the palm of her hand she headed for the kitchen door, opened it and stood there for a moment as if debating if that was the right thing to do. Then with a fling of an arm the white, round bun flew like a jet plane and crashed into the Cat's Eye tree about 10 meters away. Leaves rustled, birds flitted, bird wings flapped and Mom opened her mouth to start a cry of astonishment that didn't come. That was when my older sister walked out, lived with Dad and never came back.

Ever since then Mom started making bau with a curry filling. She made it like a machine, emotionless, her fingers deftly pleating white circles of dough over a crimson, spicy filling, her dark eyes blank, her lips a line, almost as if defiance and submission had fought out a duel and neither won. I would watch her and feel my mind wander. Was this what life was all about? Curry or Pau? Either this or that? Or this and that? Or this with that?  Often in bed I would shake my head in the void of the night so that those confounding and senseless thoughts would spill out and things would be right. It never did. Then one day, two years later, Mom whispered in a wasted and dying voice, 

" If you hate something bad enough it will surely come back and haunt you." 

With that she let out her last breath, closed her eyes and died before me. I felt her dry hand go limp in mine. I looked down at the dead tributaries of bumpy veins embossed on the back of her hand. I ran my finger along one of them, slowly. And in that silence, alone with my dead mother I heard my heart thumping and felt my temples being squeezed by God.

I have never, since, hated anything as badly as I hated my mother at that moment, and myself, for not figuring it out. So that she could have saved herself. Because it was not the bau or curry after all. It was hate that consumed her life.  


And Janna knew.

Therefore I am now.....balanced.


I love Bau and Curry. Curry with Bau, Bau or Curry, Curry over Bau, Bau over Curry, Curry inside Bau. I love bau. And curry. :)

The recipe ~

The bau recipe is from my previous post taken from Terri's Hunger Hunger

Chicken curry filling ~

370 gm chicken breast, skinned and diced

1 large medium onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 cm ginger, minced

1 - 2 T curry powder, any, mixed to a slurry with 2 T water

1 T cornstarch mixed to a slurry with a little water

1-2 T cooking oil (I used vegetable oil)

1-2 T oyster sauce

salt to taste

Heat the pan and then add the cooking oil. Throw in the diced onion, garlic and ginger and saute until fragrant or the onion pieces turn translucent.

Add the slurry-ed curry powder and stir and watch carefully so that the paste doesn't burn. Add the oyster sauce. Add the diced chicken, mix well and then add salt to taste. you may add a little water if the mixture seems dry.

Finally pour in the cornstarch slurry and stir quickly so that the sauce won't get lumpy. Taste again and adjust salt.

The final mixture should be a thick curry almost a paste with diced chicken in it. ...like spaghetti sauce or sambal.

To make buns ~

Tear off pieces of risen dough into 50 gm pieces. Roll into a ball and roll out with a small rolling pin on a floured board into a small circle about 3 inches in diameter. Thin the edges by lifting up the circle of dough and pressing the edges with your thumb and first two fingers all around the circumference. Then place the flattened circle of dough onto the palm of your hand.

Then using a teaspoon scoop up some filling and place in into the centre of the dough. Start pleating the edges like in this video. :)

                                                       

I made a mess . Some of the curry sauce leaked out while I was "pleating" and my 'pleats' were not exactly pleats. But who cares :)


As each bun is filled and shaped line them with squares of grease-proof or baking paper and place them in the basket of a steamer (detached from the steamer bottom) about 1 inch apart. Let them rest for 10 minutes but not more (if left to rest too long the buns will rise and flop after steaming). Meanwhile heat the water of your steamer to a rolling boil them place the basket of buns over the steamer pot and steam the buns for 10 - 12 minutes until risen and puffy. 


I didn't count but this recipe definitely made more than 10 buns.

RACHAEL RAY'S AGLIO OLIO (GARLIC & OIL) WITH SPICY SHRIMPS & SWEET PRESENTS

I love Aglio Olio...


I love colours and...


I love Pinterest. Why didn't anyone tell me that Pinterest could be so addictive? To the point of ridiculousness. Yours truly now needs a neck brace. And a good spanking.


Oh and I love presents.


J had given me these from her travels to Italy and Spain recently. How sweet ~ as sweet as the presents.....rainbow coloured pasta and a delicious looking red pesto sauce in a cute little jar. The pasta colours were all natural :)

I'll use the pesto sauce tomorrow but for today I was craving some Aglio Olio.....my favourite way to cook pasta...forever.


A, my sis, had also given me an enchanting kitty dish cloth  she had bought in Perth ...and which I'll never use as a dish cloth of course. I never use presents in a way that will make them wear out. I like keeping them like little treasures for important 'little moments'...... unless they are to be eaten of course.

N the girl had also given me a stack of beautiful Japanese plates and bowl "for your food photography"....so I had used them for some food photography as suggested. 

Aren't people nice? :)


Rachel Ray's Aglio Olio scored five stars. I just had to try it.


I quartered the recipe and used coriander leaves instead but this is the original ~


The recipe ~

Aglio Olio and Spicy Shrimp


Spicy Shrimp :


1/2 kg jumbo shrimps
1 lemon, juiced
1/4 chopped flat leaved parsely
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
4 cloves garlic, crushed and peeled
coarse salt, about 1 tsp
2 T extra virgin Olive oil (evoo)


Aglio Olio :


1/4 cup evoo
1 tin anchovy fillets ( I did not use this..I'm sure it made a difference)
6-8 large cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1/2 tsp crushed pepper flakes
1/4 chopped flat leaf parsely
coarse salt
500 gm spaghetti, boiled until al dente


tomato and onion salad on the side
crusty bread as accompaniment


Combine shrimp with next 5 ingredients and toss to coat evenly.


Heat a large frying pan add the oil and fry shrimp in 3 seperate batches. Fry until the shrimps just turn opaque, lift it out and keep aside.


Return pan to heat, add 1/4 cup olive oil, add anchovies, garlic and pepper flakes. Break up anchovies until they break up and dissolve into  the oil and garlic mixture.


Toss spaghetti in the pan with parsely and garlic oil, then season with salt to taste. 


Serve spaghetti and onion and tomato salad and crusty bread if you wish.

BIG BAD WOLF BOOK SALE !!!

We went to the BIG BAD WOLF book sale! N the man, N the woman and R the man At MAEPS in Serdang......We arrived. We queued. We hounded. We hunted. These were what I snared. Thirty eight books with a total damage of RM415. NICE!

Ten of them were hard cover cookbooks, nineteen were novels and the rest were what-nots. :PPP

All books were at 75-95 per cent discounts. Al novels were a mere 8 ringgit each, hardcovers were 20-25 ringgit each and the rest were pure cheap as well. 

N the man snared a stack, N the woman snared a stack and R the man snared a stack. But I snared the mostest. Need I say more?

Don't be too jealous. I'm going a-huntin' again. Bulls eye!

YUM!.... Look at those cookbooks :)))

WOO HOO ! I snared the mostest. :)

ICED GEMS

I used to spy these gems at Chinese grocery shops. They were sold amoung many other kinds of biscuits which were stored and displayed in gigantic glass jars with push-down galvanized caps, usually placed strategically at the open end of the shop and were sold by the catty. 

Apart form Iced Gems we also had our local 'Oreos', our local Chocolate Bourbons, our local custard creams and our local Jammie Dodgers.....all being delicious legacies left behind by our then colonial masters. 

KGB (not the Russian kind) manufactures these biscuits locally today, packs them in large square tins and places them on supermarket shelves. The only thing that's missing in them are Iced Gems and loads of flavour. 

So this post was inspired by what I saw at Molliemakes. I now vehemently and officially declare Molliemakes as my number one craft magazine. Trust me ~

However, it wasn't as simple as getting the weighing scale out and dusting off the flour.  I found a (only) recipe for it from a blog called Pimp That Snack. I must say they came very close in flavour to the real thing. The real thing meaning average. Let's face it...we bought these because they were pretty, adorable and colourful. And who could resist biting off that hard sugar dome which dissolved in your mouth after a few bites and crunches. I couldn't. 

The most challenging part about making these Iced Gems was finding a small enough cookie cutter to cut out the rolled out dough into tiny half inch rounds.

After much hand wiggling and mind bending I settled for the round end of a large piping nozzle. I then had a hard time easing each dough circle out of the nozzle after every stamp. I used my clean fingernail. But ...yes I suppose they were worth the effort for Nostalgia's sake. Once the rounds were cut out i then used a fork to make the characteristic lines around the edges and pressed the circles down with my finger to flatten it a little before baking them. Jeeeez.

Iced Gems ~ the recipe ~

8 oz flour
1 T baking powder1/4 tsp salt
3 oz butter
1/4 pint milk

Pre-heat oven to 375 F, 180 C.


Place all dry ingredients into a large bowl. Rub in butter until the mixture is like fine breadcrumbs. Pour in 2/3 of the milk first and bring the mixture together to forma  dough. If the mixture seems too dry to form a soft but firm dough add more milk. Roll out the dough on a floured board to about 1/2 centimeter thick. Cut into rounds about 1 cm in diameter. Mark the edges with a fork to make indentations all around the circles of dough and press down with your finger to flatten it a little because the cookie will rise upon baking. Place on a cookie sheet and brush with milk before baking for 25-30 minutes. take out from oven and cool before icing them.

Royal icing ~


450 gm icing sugar, sifted
2 egg whites
1 T lemon juice

food colours of pink, light green, violet and yellow


Whisk egg whites until frothy using a whisk. Stir in sifted icing sugar with a wooden spoon until smooth. Add the lemon juice and mix again. If the mixture seems too soft add extra icing sugar. the final mixture should be smooth but firm enough to hold a soft peak that doesn't flop over itself too much.

Divide the icing mixture into 4 seperate bowls and colour them accordingly. 


Place each bowl of icing into a large piping bag fitted with a medium sized star nozzle. I used a Wilton 22 start nozzle. you can also use a plain round nozzle. Pipe dollops onto each of the baked and cooled biscuits.


Let the icing harden and then store in air tight containers.