Notes about Recipes in this book

• House special roast pork buns (Char siu bao)

  • bwhip on November 14, 2020

    These turned out great for us, though I was confused by quantities in the recipe. I cut the recipe for the pork (Char Siu) in half, since only three cups are needed. When I got to the part about food coloring in the marinade, I did a double-take. A half cup each of red and yellow food coloring? A half cup? I’m used to seeing a drop or two. I just left it out, and added water instead. Using the bun recipe, the initial dough was quite loose and sticky, as though it needed more flour. I added more while kneading after a couple of hours of rising and it worked out fine. End result was puffy and soft, and the pork filling was fantastic.

• Gauu zi: shrimp master filling

  • bwhip on November 15, 2020

    We loved these dumplings, though again there was a curious oddity in the recipe. The recipe says "Combine all the ingredients in a blender. Blend at high speed until sticky like grout or a paste, 3 to 5 minutes..." It then says to be sure not to overmix. That seemed like a crazy amount of time to blend. I used a food processor, and found that it became the desired "paste" texture in less than 10 seconds. Either way, the results for us turned out great, with lovely flavor and texture in the dumplings.

• Plain cheung fun

  • mjes on August 07, 2021

    I tried this wrapper replacing wheat starch with corn starch to meet a guest's dietary restrictions. My steamer doesn't hold a quarter sheet pan - promise not to laugh when I say I used cake pan bottoms - the removable kind obviously. This had an advantage -- I couldn't overfill the pans so they all came out thin. In a sheet pan I suspect it would have taken me some time to master judging the thickness correctly. These are excellent wrappers - a very neutral flavor that marries well to almost any filling and dipping sauce.

• Scallion pancakes

  • mjes on August 07, 2021

    This is my favorite scallion pancakes - primarily for it's use of boiling water. I've also tried it using fried sage rather than scallions which worked quite well.

• Szechuan tofu noodles

  • wcassity on October 30, 2022

    Delicious!

• Sloppy Joe noodles (aka spicy chicken Bolognese served over wheat noodles)

  • Dannausc on January 17, 2021

    Fine, not memorable.