1. Drain the rice thoroughly. Spread it on a plate and set aside.
2. Place the mushrooms and dried shrimp in a microwave-safe container just large enough to hold them. Barely cover them with water, then cover the container tightly with plastic wrap. Microwave on high for 2 minutes. Let cool and drain, reserving the soaking liquid. (Or let the mushrooms and shrimp soak in hot water for 30 minutes to 1 hour.)
3. Fill the rice cooker bowl one-quarter full of water, close the cover, and set for the regular cycle. If the water boils before you are ready to cook the pearl balls, flip the switch to the Keep Warm position (switch back for cooking).
4. Meanwhile, peel the carrot, cut into chunks, and finely chop in a food processor. Measure ¼ cup and reserve the rest to use as a garnish. Chop the bamboo shoot in the same manner. Measure ¼ cup and reserve the rest for another use.
5. When the mushrooms are cool enough to handle, trim off and discard the tough stems. Chop the mushrooms and puree them in a food processor with the shrimp and 2 tablespoons of the reserved soaking liquid. Add an additional tablespoon of the soaking liquid, if needed, to obtain a chunky puree.
6. Place the ground meat in a medium-size bowl. Add the chopped carrot and bamboo shoot and the mushroom-shrimp puree. Add the remaining ingredients except the rice and lettuce leaves. Gently mix with a wooden spatula or a large spoon to blend the mixture thoroughly without packing it down.
7. Line the bottom of the steamer basket with the lettuce, cabbage, or chard leaves. Shape the meat mixture into small meatballs, each about the size of a walnut or smaller. As each meatball is shaped, roll it in the rice so that it is covered as thoroughly as possible. Arrange as many meatballs as can fit, without touching, on the lettuce leaves in the steamer tray. (Leave a little space between the meatballs. Their rice coating expands as it cooks, and they will stick together if they touch.) Place a pinch of the reserved chopped carrot on top of each pearl ball.
8. Place the steamer basket over the boiling water in the rice cooker and close the cover. Set a timer for 12 minutes, and steam until the meatballs are cooked through; cut into one meatball to test (the exact cooking time will depend on the size of your meatballs). Repeat until all of the meatballs are formed and cooked. Serve hot.
barbecued pork buns (char siu bau)
Bau buns, encasing a filling of char siu pork, are a popular dim sum item in Cantonese restaurants. They were a specialty in the nineteenth-century Cantonese dim sum restaurants catering to the tastes of English merchant traders and Russian immigrants. The traditional way to cook them is to steam them until fluffy white, a snap in the stacked rice cooker baskets. For that real Chinatown flavor, you must buy the meat ready-made from an Asian grocery in the deli department (hanging next to the Peking ducks), where it is cooked the traditional way—in a hanging oven. There is an age-old technique to shaping the buns, usually made with a homemade yeast dough, and it will take you a few tries to get them right. In lieu of the homemade yeast dough, we used commercial frozen bread dough and it was a smash hit! These buns will be a bit smaller than those you buy in Chinatown bakeries.
MACHINE: Large (10-cup) rice cooker ;
on/off only
CYCLE: Regular
YIELD: 24 buns
SAUCE
1½ cups chicken stock
1½ tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine (available in Chinese markets) or medium-dry sherry
1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 teaspoons ketchup
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
FILLING
4 cups finely diced prepared char siu (Chinese barbecued pork)
½ cup diced yellow onion
Two 27-ounce packages Bridgeford frozen dinner rolls (each package has 3 loaves of 6 pull-apart rolls), thawed
1 large egg white beaten with 1 teaspoon water and ¼ teaspoon sugar until foamy, for egg glaze
1. Make the sauce: Place the stock, oyster sauce, wine, hoisin sauce, soy sauce, ketchup, and sugar in a heavy saucepan; stir to combine. Place ¼ cup of the mixture in a small bowl and whisk in the cornstarch; pour back into the saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until thickened and smooth. The sauce should be the consistency of thin mayonnaise. Remove from the heat and cool in the refrigerator.
2. Make the filling: Place the pork in a medium-size bowl. Add the onion and sauce and mix with a spoon. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours but no longer than overnight.
3. Meanwhile, let the bread dough rise according to the package directions. Turn the risen bread dough out onto a clean wooden work surface. Use 1½ dinner rolls for each bun, flattening them together into a thick round. Place the round of dough on the work surface (don’t shape on cool marble or ceramic because it will stiffen the dough). With the palm of your hand, press down on the center and rotate your palm, spiraling out from the center. The dough will grow into a 3- to 4-inch-diameter circle (not lopsided, please) with a pretty spiral pattern radiating from the center like a flower. Don’t use any flour. Repeat with the remaining rolls.
4. Assemble the buns: Cut twenty-four 3-inch squares of parchment paper and place them on a large baking sheet to hold the filled bau. Place a heaping tablespoonful (we use an oversized spoon that holds about 2 tablespoons) of the chilled filling in the center of a round of dough; don’t overfill or the filling will fall out. Bring the dough up over the filling and, holding the two sides between your thumb and third finger, twist the edges to encase the filling. Place the bun, twist side down, on a parchment square on the baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough rounds and filling, spacing them at least 4 inches apart. Cover loosely with a damp tea towel and let rise at room temperature until puffy, about 45 minutes.
5. Fill the rice cooker bowl one-quarter full of water, close the cover, and set for the regular cycle. If the water boils before you are ready to steam the buns, flip the switch to the Keep Warm position (switch back for cooking), but you want a vigorous boil with lots of steam for these.
6. Brush each bau with the egg glaze. Arrange the bau, each on its own square of parchment, in two steamer baskets; we do the steaming in two batches, so it is 6 bao per basket. Place the stacked baskets over the boiling water in the rice cooker and close the cover. Set a timer to 18 minutes and steam until the bao are big and puffy. Don’t remove the cover before 15 minutes have elapsed; open the cover away from yourself to prevent burns. Remove the bau from the steamer basket by slipping a spatula under the parchment paper; place on a wire cooling rack.
7. Serve the bau the day they are cooked, warm or at room temperature, or freeze in plastic freezer bags for up to 2 months. Reheat in a microwave (no need to thaw) for 2 to 3 minutes for a quick dinner.
honey flower rolls
Plain steamed breads are good served with roasted Peking duck, roast ham, roast or fried chicken, and even roast suckling pig. Being a breadmaker, Beth couldn’t resist trying a steamed bread in the tiered baskets of the rice cooker, just like she has seen in China town. While the rolls cook, you can watch the steam swirl around and the rolls rise into a piece of edible sculpture. This flower reminds us of a chrysanthemum. Be sure to use bleached white flour—since that will make the whitest rolls—in combination with some bread flour, which will make a springy dough suitable for the steaming. Since the rolls are not baked in an oven, there will be no crust. The rolls are pure white, fluffy, and tender-soft from the first bite to the last. You can mix the dough in a bread machine, as it is written here, or by hand. While these are usually eaten with other dim sum, they are also good with jam and a cup of tea. Vital wheat gluten is sold in supermarkets near the flour as a bread dough enhancer.
MACHINE: Large (10-cup) rice cooker ;
on/off only
CYCLE: Regular
YIELD: 10 steamed rolls
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons water
1½ tablespoons vegetable oil or Asian sesame
oil
½ cup bread flour
2¾ cups bleached all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons mild honey
1 tablespoon vital wheat gluten
1 teaspoon salt
1½ teaspoons bread machine yeast, fast-acting yeast, or SAF fast-acting yeast, or 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
Unbleached all-purpose flour, for dusting
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons Asian sesame oil or nonstick cooking spray
1. Place everything except the last 3 ingredients in a bread machine according to the order in the manufacturer’s instructions. Program for the Dough cycle; press Start. When the full rising cycle has finished and the machine beeps, open the lid and gently deflate the dough. Close the lid and let the dough rise a second time (set a timer for 45 minutes); this second rise makes for a nice light texture.
2. Gently deflate the dough and turn it out onto a work surface sprinkled with a few teaspoons of unbleached flour and the baking powder. Flatten the dough slightly with your palms and begin gently kneading it; the dough will effortlessly pick up the flour–baking powder mixture from the work surface. The flour mixture will be incorporated quickly while you knead and the dough will be smooth and springy to the touch. Cover the dough ball with a clean tea towel and let rest on the work surface for 15 minutes to relax the dough.
3. Cut ten 3½-inch squares of parchment paper. Divide the dough into 2 equal portions. Cover one portion with the tea towel. With a rolling pin, roll 1 portion of dough into a 12 x 8-inch rectangle. Leaving a 1-inch border all around the edges, brush the surface evenly with 1 teaspoon of the sesame oil or coat it with a film of the cooking spray. Roll up jelly-roll fashion, starting from the long edge, and pinch the seam to seal. The cylinder will be only 1½ to 2 inches in diameter. Using a sharp chef’s knife, with a gentle sawing motion, cut the cylinder into 10 equal portions, each separate portion being about 11.8 inches thick, taking care not to squash the cylinder. Repeat with the remaining portion of dough.
4. To shape the flower rolls, press 2 separate slices side by side with the cut sides facing front and back, rather than up and down. Hold a chopstick horizontally and gently press it down the center of the two slices, all the way down to the work surface; you will push out and fan the rolled edges (this area will puff and expand more during the steaming to create the open flower petal effect) while attaching the two slices at the same time. Place each roll on a square of parchment and set in the steamer basket, leaving at least 1 inch of space between them on all sides; 6 flower rolls will fit easily in each basket. Cover loosely with the tea towel draped over the basket while forming the other rolls.
5. Let the rolls rise at room temperature until puffy and doubled in bulk, 30 to 40 minutes. (The rolls can be refrigerated on a baking sheet before this last rise, covered tightly with a double layer of plastic wrap, leaving the rolls to rise slowly and be steamed up to 8 hours later, if necessary. Bring the pans to room temperature and let rest for 20 minutes while preheating the water in the rice cooker.)
6. Fifteen minutes before cooking the rolls, fill the rice cooker bowl one-quarter full of water, close the cover, and set for the regular cycle. If the water boils before you are ready to steam the flower rolls, flip the switch to the Keep Warm position (and switch back for cooking), but you want a vigorous boil with lots of steam for cooking these.
7. Place the steamer baskets over the boiling water in the cooker and close the cover. Set a timer for 20 minutes and steam until the rolls are puffy and dry to the touch. When done, remove the cover quickly so that no drops of water drip into the baskets, and remove the baskets from the cooker. Using a spatula, transfer the flower rolls to a wire rack or serving platter, if serving immediately.
8. If not serving immediately, let cool completely on the racks and store in plastic bags in the refrigerator for up to 5 days, or in the freezer for up to 2 months. To reheat, steam the cold rolls for 7 to 10 minutes or microwave for a few minutes on high. Eat immediately.
sticky rice in lotus leaves
This is a most extravagant dim sum! These fragrant and savory packets are rustic in appearance, thanks to their all-natural covering: dried lotus leaves, which can be purchased in Chinese markets. Lotus leaves are surprisingly large, especially when you realize that in the package, they are folded in half! Some people never cook sticky rice (glutinous rice, also called sweet rice) in their rice cookers, believing it must be steamed in a tray over boiling water for the best texture. This is generally true, but in this case, the rice is mixed with so many other ingredients that we feel it is all right. If you wish, feel free to steam the soaked rice in a cheesecloth-lined steamer tray for about 25 minutes instead of using the rice cooker. Dried shrimp has a rather strong flavor; if you don’t like it, use ¼ pound shelled fresh shrimp instead, adding it to the skillet when the chicken is almost cooked. Chinese dried sausages are available in Asian markets; use another cooked sausage (like kielbasa) if you can’t find them. If you can’t find dried chestnuts, and don’t feel up to shelling fresh ones, you can leave them out. They are a frill, though a tasty one. Making these is a bit of a production, like making tamales. Also like tamales, these freeze well. Reheat in a steamer or in the microwave.
MACHINE: Large (10-cup) rice cooker ;
on/off only
CYCLE: Regular
YIELD: Serves 6 to 12 as an appetizer or snack
2¼ cups (3 rice cooker cups) sticky rice
2¾ cups water
6 lotus leaves
2 tablespoons dried shrimp or ¼ pound raw shrimp, shelled and deveined
¼ pound boneless, skinless chicken (about ½ breast or 1½ thighs), trimmed of fat
2 teaspoons plus 2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon plus 2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine (available in Chinese markets) or medium-dry sherry
1¼ teaspoons Asian sesame oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon peeled and minced fresh ginger
10 dried chestnuts (available in Asian markets) or cooked and peeled fresh chestnuts (optional)
1 to 2 ounces Chinese dried sausage (about 1 sausage) or cooked smoked sausage such as kielbasa
½ cup diced ham
1 green onion, white and tender green parts, thinly sliced
¼ cup grated carrot
¼ teaspoon salt, or to taste
⅛ teaspoon ground white pepper or freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
1. Up to 4 hours ahead and at least 1 hour ahead, wash the rice in a bowl or strainer until the water runs almost clear. Place the rice in the rice cooker with the water. Let the rice soak for 1 to 4 hours.
2. At the end of the soaking time, set the rice cooker for the regular cycle. When the machine switches to the Keep Warm cycle, let the rice steam for 10 to 15 minutes. Stir the rice gently but thoroughly with a wooden or plastic rice paddle or wooden spoon. Hold the rice on Keep Warm until you are ready to use it.
3. One hour ahead, soak the lotus leaves in hot water. They are large and you may have to do this in a large stockpot or a scrubbed and well-rinsed sink. Let them soak for 1 hour.
4. Half an hour ahead, put the dried shrimp in a small cup or bowl with hot water to cover. Let the shrimp soak for 30 minutes, then drain and coarsely chop.
5. Cut the chicken into 3.4-inch cubes. Place it in a small bowl with 2 teaspoons of the soy sauce, 1 teaspoon of the wine, ¼ teaspoon of the sesame oil, the garlic, and ginger; stir to combine. Let the chicken marinate for 30 minutes.
6. Place the dried chestnuts in a small saucepan with water to cover. Bring to a boil and boil them for 15 to 20 minutes. Drain and cut into quarters. Slice the sausage about ¼ inch thick. If you are using kielbasa or another thick sausage, cut the slices into half-moons.
7. Transfer the rice to a large bowl. Wash out the rice cooker bowl and fill it one-quarter to one-third full of water, close the cover, and set for the regular cycle. If the water boils before you are ready, flip the switch to the
Keep Warm position.
8. Coat a small nonstick skillet with nonstick cooking spray. Heat the skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken with its marinade to the skillet and stir-fry until it is just barely cooked through. Transfer the chicken to the bowl with the rice. Add the sausage to the skillet and stir-fry until it gives up some of its fat. Transfer the sausage to the bowl and add the ham, green onion, carrot, and remaining 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 tablespoons wine, and 1 teaspoon sesame oil. Stir gently with a plastic or wooden rice paddle or wooden spoon to mix thoroughly. Taste and adjust the seasoning, if necessary, with salt, pepper, soy sauce, wine, or sesame oil.
9. Prepare a large work surface. Lift the lotus leaves carefully out of the soaking water. Open them carefully and cut one in half along the fold line. Place a lotus leaf half on your work surface, green side down, rounded side facing away from you. Put about ½ cup of the rice mixture in a small mound in the center of the leaf. Fold in first one side, then the other. Then fold the bottom and roll up the leaf into a small square or rectangular packet. Some people tie the packets with twine, but this isn’t necessary if you handle them carefully. Place the packet seam side down on a plate. Repeat with the remaining lotus leaves and filling.
10. Stack as many leaves as you can in your steamer basket or tray, resting them seam side down or leaning them against each other so they don’t unwrap. (We can fit 6 lotus leaf bundles in one steamer tray.) Place the tray over the boiling water in the rice cooker and close the cover. Steam for 30 minutes. Remove the bundles with tongs.
11. Unwrap the bundles to eat the sticky rice; the leaf is not edible.
DOLMAS
Dolma translates from the original Arabic as “something stuffed.” While this word can refer to anything stuffed, from a vegetable to a fruit, the most recognizable dolma is rice-stuffed grape leaves braised in a lemony bath. Dolmas are a very popular little bite in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines.
Grape leaves make a flavorful wrapper. Consider them as a Mexican cook regards a corn husk, a Thai looks at banana leaves, the Polish look at cabbage, and the Japanese cook looks at seaweed. Grape leaves end up clinging to the foods they envelop, lending a special flavor. You can buy jars of commercially preserved grape leaves in brine or, if you have access to a vineyard or a lone grape vine in your backyard, preserve your own. Use fresh ones in spring and summer and your preserved canned leaves during the winter.
The Ultimate Rice Cooker Page 37
