The Albatross

Lazy Saturday!! It's a day for lounging around and ignoring chores, smokin' some grass and playing video games.

Also, for tasty breakfasts.

Today I made a simple steamed egg, something very tasty but very easy to make. The steamed egg is delicate, soft, jiggly and very flavorful. Best of all, it can be seasoned anyway you like. I like spicy, sour things, so I put chili crisp and vinegar on it, but you can make it savory or sweet or do whatever. There's no law, only tasty egg!

INGREDIENTS

• 1 part Beaten Egg
• 2 part Water
• The Smallest Pinch of Stock Granules (Dealer's choice)
• Light Soy Sauce
• Sesame Oil
• Green Onion
• Spicy Chili Crisp (Lao Gan Ma)(Optional)

METHOD

1. Combine beaten egg with water with The Smallest Pinch of Stock Granules.
2. Filter mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl and use a chopstick to gather and pop any remaining bubbles.
3. Steam egg bowl for 7-8 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, combine soy sauce and oil and chop green onion. Once egg is steamed, drag a knife through it in any pattern you wish and pour over seasoning mixture, top with onion and lao gan ma and serve!

Notes

• You can season this however you like. Sometimes I add mirin or vinegar, depending if I'm going to make it spicy or not
• You can use any kind of stock granule, but you SERIOUSLY only need the smallest pinch. I use daishi, often, and I use less than a 1/16th of a teaspoon, you really only need a very small amount to flavor this well.

I like to steam up some extra veg with this, usually bok choy or heat up a pre-made steam bun. It's fairly easy to make even while still waking up and yields a wonderful tasty meal. Enjoy!

Hey!! This worked pretty well!!

This is a pretty standard bao recipe with minced mock char siu pork and bbq sauce stuffed inside. I was worried it was gonna be too salty, but it turned out quite nice, deffo gonna make this kinda baozi again. I've included a quick recipe for the bao dough below.

I love how fluffy and soft this dough is and I make it often enough to know it by heart. Give it a shot!! Stuff it with anything!!! I usually do some sort of mushroom and bok choy mix, but, seriously, put anything in here, or even nothing, as I did with the buns in the center of the basket as I ran out of filling.

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INGREDIENTS

• 300 g Bun Flour
• 20 g Tapioca Starch
• 1/4 tsp. Salt
• 1/8 tsp. Baking Soda
• 255 g Warm Water (110°F-115°F)
• 15 g Granulated Sugar
• 3 g Dry Active Yeast
• 1 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil

METHOD

1. Combine sugar and water and bloom yeast for 10 minutes or until foamy. While yeast blooms, combine flour, starch, salt and baking soda in a mixing bowl and mix thoroughly.
2. Once yeast is bloomed, add to dry ingredients and add the vegetable oil and mix to combine. Knead well until dough comes together, adding water or flour as necessary, dough should be soft, but not sticky.
3. Rise in an oiled and sealed container until doubled in size. I recommend using a container twice the size of the original dough so you know the rise is done when the container is filled.
4. Dough is ready to use! I make 14 medium sized buns (two for breakfast for a week) out of this, so I separate them out into 37 gram balls before rolling into 4"ish round disks, fatter in the center before filling with about 2 Tbsp. of filling and closing however you like. You can adjust that as you wish for whatever sized buns you want.

Notes

• This will work with AP Flour, but it works better with Bun Flour. What is bun flour, you ask? I have no idea. My local Chinese grocer had a bag of something called "Wheat Flour (for buns)" so I grabbed it and it works better than AP Flour. The ingredients read "wheat flour". Why it's better is a total mystery. I bet it's protein content, tho. I see some bao recipes recommend cake flour, so maybe lower protein flours are better.

Okay this one's just visual for two reasons, Rosh Hashanah was a few months ago and it's challah... It's a super forgiving recipe, you can do it drunk off your ass with coffee mugs as measuring cups. I should know! I'll do a proper challah recipe post at some point, I'm sure.

This one is PURE bragging because I fuckin' nailed it, I mean look at that, how gorgeous is that?!

...this one was particularly wonderful, mine usually don't look this perfectly stupendous