Taiwan

I'm a lot more excited for this meal than I was for the last one. For starters, I definitely have a fondness for East Asian food: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. I also love bao, which are Chinese steamed buns. For Taiwan, I made gua bao, which are bao that have been folded and filled with pork belly and pickled vegetables. They technically originated in the Fujian province of China, which is the province closest to Taiwan, but gua bao are also considered a very Taiwanese snack or street food. In fact, if you search for gua bao, many of the recipes describe them as "Taiwanese pork belly buns."

I started with making the marinade for my "pork belly" aka soy curls (more on those later). Soy sauce, sesame oil, and shaoxing--Chinese cooking wine--are three essential ingredients in my pantry. I have started buying all three in bulk. The furthest left ingredient in the picture above is sort of a vegan replacement for fish sauce. It gives a nice savory flavor to sauces and stir fries.

Next, I pickled my veggies. Often, pickled mustard greens are used. You can buy bags of frozen pickled mustard greens at Asian markets, but I decided on a simple mix of carrot and cucumber. It offered a nice crunchy contrast to the softer ingredients. I just did a quick pickle in vinegar and soy sauce.

Then I got to work on my bao dough. I make baozi, which are filled bao, quite often and it's one of my favorite meals. It's also not quite as difficult as it may seem. I used the same recipe for these as I normally do for the baozi--yeast, water, sugar, baking powder, oil, and flour mixed together, kneaded, and left to rise.

Instead of shaping into discs and filling with vegetables like I normally would, however, these were shaped into oblong ovals, then folded over in half with parchment paper in between the top and bottom flaps so they wouldn't fuse together.

Then they were placed in a steamer basket and steamed for about 8 minutes until nice and fluffy. Steamed breads are so underrated.

For the "pork belly" component of the dish, I used my new favorite meat substitute: soy curls.

Once hydrated, soy curls take on a meaty and slightly chewy texture, similar to shredded chicken. I've never actually had pork belly, so I'm not sure how similar they are, but I will say I later used them to make chicharrones and it was delicious. Like tofu, soy curls soak up whatever flavors you cook them in. I marinated them in a soy sauce glaze then stir fried them in a wok until browned.

The genius of the buns is that they're folded before steaming, giving the appearance of being split open without having to actually split it open, and you get the nice fluffiness throughout.

Once I filled the buns with the cooked soy curls and pickled veggies, I dusted them with some prepared peanut butter powder. It seems peanut powder is pretty common and traditional, but there are also lots of recipes and pictures out there using more coarsely crushed peanuts instead. I think the powder stays on a little better so you don't have bits of peanut falling off as you're trying to it.

This one is definitely a recipe I'd make again, in fact I'm not sure why I haven't! I may have to add it to the list for next week's meals.

Recipes Used: Taiwanese Gua Bao // Pork Belly Buns // Teriyaki Tofu Gua Bao