[Sca-cooks] OT: It's that time again...

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Debra Tonjes:
>Are you talking about meat Buns or red bean paste buns?
>
>Althea, looking forward to visiting a local chinese restaurant for New Years
>in Phile...
>
>  --Steamed Juicy Buns (amazing to relate, we have finally found a
>>  frozen version of these that we actually like, and we've figured out
>>  that restaurants overcook these and then manhandle them, which is why
>>  they're never juicy unless you make them, carefully, at home, or go
>>  to a restaurant that specializes in Shanghai cuisine, where such buns
>>  are taken more seriously -- but they look like little drawstring
>>  money-pouches, so we figured they might be appropriate in this *ahem*
>  > improving economy)

These are a Shanghai-style bao-ze. They seem to come in vegetable or 
meat varieties (I've never seen a sweet one), and differ from your 
more common steamed bao (f'rinstance char siu bao or roast pork buns) 
in their shape, size, and lightness of the dough. I think the dough 
for bao tze is leavened, unlike a standard wheat dumpling dough, but 
minimally so, since bao tze are typically very juicy (and therefore 
hold liquid). Sometimes known in English as juicy buns or soup 
dumplings. Often chilled, jellied stock is mixed into the filling to 
make them extra juicy. The absolute, immutable Shanghai classic 
filling seems to be crabmeat and pork, mixed. The ones we got got are 
all pork.

You eat them with chopsticks, holding your porcelain soupspoon 
underneath to catch the juice, which, as with oysters, is considered 
by many to be the best part, or at least a crying shame to waste.

Adamantius