Chives, napa lettuce, and pork dumplings with store bought skin. I made a gelled aspic for the filling, so when you bite into one of these hot boiled/fried suckers, the inside is full of tasty, drippy juice.  Use the fattier ground meat, as the lean makes a sort of crumbly rather than luscious texture that a good dumpling should have. I very loosely followed the recipe by Grace Young, The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen, a great source of mysterious soup tonics that my grandparents made for the winter.

These pancakes are made partially with chinese chives because that's what I have!

3/4 cup boiling water. The hotter the water the chewier the dough!
1 tsp salt
3 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup cold water
butter or sesame oil
salt for sprinkling
6 green onions, chopped into rounds very finely
peanut oil


Whisk salt into the flour. Pour boiling water slowly into the flour, bringing the dough together. Once the dough is a shaggy mass, add the cold water little by little and knead until the dough pulls away from the bowl. Dough should not be excessively sticky, but elastic and smooth yet still pliable. Rest for one hour.


Divide dough into 6 pieces. Roll into very thin, practically translucent, scant 1/8 in thick rounds. The thinner you get it, the flakier the pancake. Brush with butter and sprinkle with onions. Roll the dough tightly into a long skinny cigarette. Roll the cigarette into a snail shape, pinching the end closed. Roll the dough out again to whatever thickness you prefer. I like them mostly about 1/4".


Heat a layer of oil to shimmering in a heavy pan. The depth should be about the 1/4 the thickness of the pancake. Fry a tester, browning both sides and flipping only once. Drain on paper towels. If the inside is still too doughy, turn down the heat. If the surface isn't golden brown with a bit of charred green onion, turn up the heat. The finished product should be chewy in the middle, translucently crispy on the outside, with flaky layers sometimes peeling up.


Serve immediately or layer the uncooked rounds in saran wrap and freeze. No need to defrost before frying!


*I like to gradate the onion density mostly from one side - say the right to left - and then roll in a perpendicular direction - bottom to top - so that the onions don't poke out later. You'll see what I mean. You can also saute the onions in a bit of fat before adding to the dough, making a nice aroma.

I've been extravagantly cooking taxing Chinese recipes today. Here is the first test result for baozi stuffed with pork, and a recipe that includes changes I'll incorporate the next time I want to spend all day in a kitchen.

Char Siu Bao

2/3 cup warm water, 150g
2 tsp active dry yeast, 8g
1/2 tsp white vinegar
2 tbsp pork fat, oil or shortening
1 cup all purpose flour
3 cups cake flour, I used two parts Softasilk and one part unbleached King Arthur
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
3 tsp water *

1/2 onion minced very fine
200g of char siu pork, finely chopped
1 tsp rice wine
1 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame seed oil
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp corn starch

Stir together water, yeast and a tsp of sugar. Rest till foamy, about 5 minutes. Meanwhile sift together flour and the rest of the sugar into a mixing bowl. Make a well in the center. Stir white vinegar and pork fat into the yeast. Pour slowly into the well, stirring in flour slowly with a fork. After the dough becomes a shaggy mass, knead until the dough is smooth and elastic but still soft. Cover and let rise for about 1hour or until almost doubled.

For the filling, dissolve corn starch in water. Sweat onions in a pan, then turn up the heat. Swirling briefly between the each addition, pour rice wine, oyster sauce, soy and sesame oil. Swirl in cornstarch water and add pork. Lower to simmer and reduce till the sauce is thickened.When dough is ready, dissolve baking powder in 4 tsp water. Push out dough for a large surface area and sprinkle baking powder water on top. Knead again for several minutes, just till baking powder is combined. Cut the dough in 16 pieces. Briefly knead each piece of dough to get a smooth consistency in a round ball then roll them into 3" rounds, tapering the edges, about a scant 1/4 in thick in the center. Dollop one generous tsp of filling and make the bun.Shaping pretty buns are a little tricky, but this video helped me get some basics down. Use your thumb to poke down the filling as you go. Create an upright volcano crater at the top by pleating around the edge and gently twisting and pinching the crater closed with your nail. Make sure they are truly closed or they will erupt like a volcano during cooking. Stick each bun onto a 1.5" square of parchment paper. Let rest while setting up steamer and filling, so the buns can rise a bit more, a little less than 30 minutes. The following batches end up waiting longer, so one way to do it is to time them so you are making and steaming at once.

In any case, put a scant 1/2 inch of water into the bottom of the pot. I use a perforated metal circle that lines the rice pot and then a bamboo steamer, lined with muslin or leafed lettuce, on top. Heat to a high simmer but not an angry boil. Place the buns, without touching the sides or each other, into the covered steamer for about 15 minutes and serve immediately.

To reheat leftover buns, wrap in a moistened paper towel and microwave for 10 seconds or however long it takes for your buns to heat up!

*My dough was slightly yellow because of the flour. In Asia, they apparently use a superwhite low gluten mix that I haven't bothered to look for, Hong Kong brand. I like my bao to be smoother rather than whiter, but I suppose that comes with practice. Also, yellow spots in the dough are a sign that the baking powder has not combined properly. I sprinkled it onto the dough this time, but I think I will try knead more or add it earlier.

 The kind of "char siu bao" that David Chang makes at Momofuku are actually not "bao" (noun), although the process of making them can also be called "bao" (verb) - overly pedantic, I know. The dough, however, is the same as a basic "mantou". Mantou themselves are usually a sweet steamed dough (sometimes steamed and fried) shaped into bun or dinner roll without fillings, while a bao has fillings bundled (as opposed to wrapped) in a discrete package that usually bursts with juices when you bite into it. The Momofuku pork "sandwich" style dish is one I usually only have at formal Chinese dinners, like wedding banquets, and I believe goes by a different name than "bao". Platters of tian mian jiang, a sweet dark paste sometimes substituted with hoisin plum sauce, and slivered green onions are brought to the table with lacquered slices of Peking duck skin.Yes, only the skin, fat rendered away, is brought to the table. Guests brush on the sauce themselves and compose the ingredients inside a plain round of mantou that is folded in half. For the Cantonese and Californians, mantou seems to be the standard, but Peking (or really Beijing) Mandarin style mandates a kind of thin flour "crepe" (made unlike a French Crepe as properly performed in Eat, Drink, Man, Woman). To confuse the issue more, these flat pancakes are referred to as "buo bing" or "bao bing", "bao" in this case meaning thin, as in thin as a crepe. Both styles are really good. The duck breast is served in a separate preparation, sometimes noodle or stir fry, while the carcass makes a rich white soup. Some restaurants serve the duck up to 5 ways, so ordering Peking duck should never be taken lightly and is typically done only as a special occasion treat. These are the moments when I miss my estranged relatives, so I can eat some real Chinese food instead of whatever my vocabulary limits me to. Sigh. In any case, Chang's marketing has got my Google search all confused and I'm not the only one. If you don't live in New York, most major cities ought to have a restaurant that serves at least one rendition of this very classic, distinct dish.

Before I really started to appreciate Chinese cuisine, this is what my parents ordered so they could get me to eat something when we went to certain restaurants. I have never seen this dish made at home, probably because it requires quite a bit of oil. However, the right balance between ginger and aromatics makes the dish feel lighter. The cooking process for this dish is fast. It is essential that the ingredients are prepared ahead.

Dry Fried Green Beans

peanut oil
3/4 pound green or long beans, ends snapped, rinsed and dried. I use my salad spinner.
4 dried red chili
1" length of ginger, peeled and minced
4 cloves garlic, crushed and minced
3 tbsp preserved vegetable (radish), rinsed and minced. Sometimes I don't bother with the rinsing.
1/2 tbsp dried shrimp *optional
3 green onions
1/4 lb minced pork
1 tsp rice wine
1.5 tbsp soy sauce
sesame oil

Heat wok to med high heat, almost searing temp. Add peanut oil to nearly smoking. If there are too many beans to come into direct contact with the pan, separate beans into batches, portioning the oil. More oil equals more blisters, but using less will just require more time. Constantly, stir and fry until the beans become slightly limp and kind of wrinkly. Remove when they are textured but before they become too charred. Sometimes I pick the early finishers out one by one. Drain on paper towels.



Drop in the red chilis. Turn up the heat to high. Stir in seasonings in order, swirling for 30 sec before adding the next: first garlic, ginger, then radish, white ends of onions. Add pork and wine, breaking up the pieces with the wok shovel. Brown till barely pink. Return the beans back to the wok and stir till blended, then immediately add soy sauce. Continue tossing till the meat is browned and the moisture is gone. The dish should not be sauced and the scallions/aromatics should be a little crispy.

Remove from heat and toss in a very minimal dash of sesame oil. Serve hot, hot, hot with rice!

*Some restaurants serve this dish with tiny dried shrimp, which I always ask to have omitted. This would be a personal preference.

There are plenty literary references to spider silk and the gossamer qualities of fairy clothing and magic thread. However, due to the efforts of two scientists, we are closer to making those analogies reality. The process? A particular breed of malicious looking spider was captured and then restrained in a machine that "milks" the silk. Afterwards, they were released, but the golden filaments were twisted into highly elastic threads and woven into this stunning panel, extremely strong and soft as cashmere. Let PETA chew on that for awhile.

Here's the NPR article with audio.

From David Thompson's book, Thai Food.


The secret to this particular Phat Thai is getting the right amount of tamarind in there. I use a goopy concentrate that is quite strong, so I erred on not enough. I also used half a .14 oz bag of noodle, which requires the rest of the ingredients to almost double. Thompson's recipe is less sweet than typically served in the US, but much closer to how Phat Thai really tastes and looks. If people complain, serve some white sugar with the hot pepper flakes and ground peanuts on the side, perfectly authentic. For some odd reason, Ranch 99 didn't have bean sprouts, so I substituted green beans, which I found was a common ingredient in Thai food stalls.

The Thom Kha Gai was a little trickier. I didn't have any kaffir lime leaves but I zested half a lime with a Microplane and that brought the right aroma out. Thompson also says to soak the noodles for 2 hours. I found that boiling and draining reduces the long wait. The noodles need to be al dente because they do get fried once more. He also says to bruise the lemongrass, shallots and chilies in a mortar, which was a frankly a pain. Perhaps using a strainer for the distracting bits or a very rough whirl in the food processor might be a better solution. I couldn't find any coriander roots either, but I chopped up some of the stems, mortared that, and added it with the lemongrass "paste" step.

I got up this morning and was cold, so I busted out this lounge pant pattern from the November 2008 edition of Burda World of Fashion. The Juki handled everything I tried no problem. I topstitched the seams and made some nice buttonholes on this thick interlock. I'm used to having to adjust for the elasticity of the fabric, so pulling too much on the fabric when sewing the yoke created ripples around the waist. Really, with the Juki I shouldn't because the stitch does the work for me. Hopefully, a good washing will help. I also forgot to shorten the leg and crotch length, so they are sagging round the ankles and higher at the waist then I like, but nevertheless, good for hiding my feet in. Now I'm comfy.

Recipe inspired by a sewing friend and dictated by the contents of my kitchen.

2 cups masoor dal, or lentils
8 cups flavorful chicken broth = 2 quarts
1 scant tbsp coconut oil
1/2 tsp mustard seed
2 dried whole red chilis
1 tsp kala jeera
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp asafoetida
1/2 tsp ground ginger
2 small onions, diced
6 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped
1 stalk celery, diced
2 small carrots, peeled and diced
2 plum tomatoes, seeded and diced
1 tsp freshly ground coriander seeds
1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds, freshly ground
1/8 tsp red chili powder 3 tbsp butter or ghee
bundle of greens - kale, chard, collard, etc - roughly chopped

Rinse lentils till water runs clear. Soak while preparing ingredients.