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It looks like I may have a lot of “Fails” with this Food of the World party, but we sure are having fun learning about different countries and their cuisine. This month Diane had us visiting Malaysia. See how we made Pork Curry Steamed Buns, and grab some recipes to make your own.
Malaysian cuisine has melded with many of its neighboring countries, to create its own unique flavors on Asian dishes. While doing my research I came across Rasa Malaysia. the #9 Food Blogger in the world! That is pretty impressive and makes me surprised I hadn’t come across her before. Bee, the owner is from Malaysia, but now based out of California. She shares traditional Asian dishes, that are simple to make, and some with a more Westernized twist.
I browsed the Malaysian section on her site and had a hard time choosing something. After looking at recipes forever Mark leaned over, and said: “Try those steamed buns!” Yeah, that sounds good…except steaming bread sounds tricky. Mark recalled our trip to Japan though, where we had a pork filled steamed bun that he just loved – and so did everyone else because the line to get one was huge!
Mark got pretty excited about trying these out, that he jumped up and started cooking up a couple different pork curries. Of course, he didn’t write anything down, so I have no recipe for you – but head over to All Recipes and search curry. There’s a lot of good ones on there. So while he did that, I followed Rasa Malaysia’s recipe for Sweet Potato Mantou (or Steamed Buns).
I was a little nervous, when it took a long time to rise, but crossed my fingers they would still turn out. My verdict – these are better baked than steamed unless you have the right equipment. Bee’s recipe has you put the buns on baking or steaming paper sheets. I didn’t have either, and didn’t think they would matter – they do! By not using these, the bottoms of our buns were still very doughy.
Eventually, I gave in, and just baked the last of them. Ah-maze-ing! Oh, and I also used Bread Flour because I couldn’t find Bao Flour (I found steamed bun mix at our Asian Market, but not Bao flour). That could have been the reason for the extra long rise time, but I really don’t know.
Try these Chinese Steamed Buns from Yum of China
I think the sweet potato addition to the dough, really was wonderful, but they worked better in the oven. So if you want to make these, but also want to avoid steaming them, I baked mine for 10 minutes in a 350 oven.
Do you have a favorite recipe from Malaysia? Share it in the comments!
I had a roomate from China and on some Sunday's her mother would bring us pork buns from Chinatown… they are really delicious. How cool that you went to Japan. I love that your husband got excited about making the fillings. Thanks for telling us about the Maylasian blogger I will check her out now.