Making Bak Chang in Melbourne

A week ago Maggie suggested that we make some bak chang. A week later we did it! It was surprisingly not as difficult as we, or at least I, thought it would be. The fact that she has learned the wrapping steps from her mom helped a lot but anyhow, it was our first time and we didn't have any experienced bak chang maker with us so we definitely deserve that pat on our backs for what we accomplished at the end of the day :)

I know the rice isn't dark or looking appetising enough but it tasted ok. We could have stirred in more dark soy sauce.

Guys being the typical guys... lol

Ok lah, they did help out. We needed loads of chopped garlic and shallots and let me tell you, on top of cleaning up after cooking, I absolutely hate chopping garlic/shallots/onions. It's messy, it's boring and it's not fun at all. So, no prize for guessing who ended up with the job :P

From this experience, I can say it isn't exactly difficult to make these savoury dumplings but it is very time consuming to prepare both the ingredients and the dumplings. You need to soak the ingredients a few hours and days before cooking and also, it's not easy to estimate how much we're able to produce at the end because it all depends on how you assemble the filling and how big are your bamboo leaves. 

Since a friend asked me for the recipe, I'm going to share it here. This is how we did it and I don't claim this to be MY recipe. We grabbed ideas from recipes online as well as the recipes from everyone's mothers and grandmothers, and some basic cooking instincts. This isn't baking so there is no need to be extremely precise with the measurements.

I'll divide it into 4 parts: Leaves, pork, extra filling and rice.


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Leaves

For dry leaves, soak it for 2-3 days so that the leaves softens. Change the water once (or twice if you're really anal about it) and clean the leaves in between. Put some weight to make sure all the leaves are covered in water. I read online that you can boil it to soften it which is actually faster but I didn't have a wok or pot big enough to fit the leaves so I just soaked them. You will need about 50-75, depending on the quality of your leaves. This recipe produces about 25 small dumplings, 2 leaves for each so technically 50 should be enough but prepare extra just incase some of them are damaged or there is extra fillings.

Pork

-Cut about 500gm of pork belly (the ones used in siu yok, sam zhan bak) into strips and marinade them overnight in some dark soy sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil and five spice powder (we didn't use it cos we didn't have it but it tasted ok, use it for extra awesomeness I guess..). 

-Soak about 100gm of dried shrimps (har mai, or heh bi) in hot water for a couple of minutes, then drain and dry them. 

-Soak about 13 medium sized dried shitake mushrooms (25 if small) in hot water for a couple of minutes until soft, drain, cut the stalks off and squeeze the excess water out of it.

-Heat oil and fry 1 bulb of chopped garlic and about 2-3 thinly sliced shallots until slightly brown, then throw in the dried shrimps and stir for about a minute or two. Then add the pork and mushrooms and a star anise. It's not necessary to fully cook the pork but if you want to taste it and adjust the seasoning, yes please make sure the pork is fully cooked first.

-At this point if you think your filling is not looking dark enough, you can add more dark soy sauce. You can also shake in some pepper if you like the peppery taste. If you think it's not salty enough, add some salt of course.

-When done, remove star anise and set the pork aside.

Extra filling

There are lots of extra fillings you can put, the ones I'm more familiar with and love are salted egg yolk and dried chestnuts. The more premium and expensive stuff are dried oysters (oh gua, or in Canto hou see) and dried scallops. They basically give more flavour and taste. I've never realised how premium and expensive they are cos I've been eating dumplings made with love from my grandmother for years T_T

-Crack some uncooked salted duck eggs and separate the whites and yolks. You can use the whites for anything you can think of. Depending on how many eggs you can afford (It's AUD1.40 each here far king hell), we used a quarter of the yolk for each dumpling, about 7 yolks for this recipe. If you have extra you can use half. Or if you want extra cholestrol, you can use one whole yolk.

-Soak the dried chestnuts in hot water for a couple of minutes, dig out the brown stuff and wash it, then boil them till they are tender. I know not many people like to eat dried chestnuts so you can adjust the amount yourself.

Rice

-Soak the glutinous rice for about 2-3 hours then drain it.

-Heat oil and fry 2 bulbs of chopped garlic and 2-3 thinly sliced shallots until golden brown.

-Add about a tablespoon of salt, stir, then add the rice and stir until it is coated evenly with oil. 

-Add a tablespoon of dark soy sauce, soy sauce and some pepper. If you like it darker, add more dark soy sauce. 

-When the rice gets slightly sticky, stop cooking and set aside.

Here's a video to show how it's wrapped:

So it's rice, filling, rice. If you've eaten one you'll get the idea, just make sure there's a pork, mushroom, dried shrimp and the additional filling. You need to watch a few more different videos and practice. Maggie told me her mom learned the wrapping with sand, which I think is a good way.

If you look at the video, you'll see how they hooked a couple of strings onto something and tie it so the dumplings are tied together in a bunch. Besides being more organized, it's easier to tie when the string is suspended, otherwise you need someone to hold the dumpling and another to do the tying.

Usually people use those straw kinda grass thingie to tie but we couldn't find that. We used hemp strings cos we didn't like the fact that raffia is plastic and it's going to be boiled.

Once everything's done, boil a big pot of water and dump all the dumplings in and let it boil for 1.5-2 hours. Make sure there's enough water to cover the dumplings.

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You can find most of the ingredients including the bamboo leaves and strings in Asian grocers, preferably one that stocks up on more Chinese ingredients than Korean, Japanese or Indonesian. As for salted eggs, remember to check if it's uncooked. We mistakenly bought a dozen of salted eggs only to find out it's actually cooked when we cracked it. Uncooked salted eggs are not as common as cooked salted eggs so keep an eye on that.

Next, I think I wanna try making the 'alkaline' dumplings, gan sui zhong, the yellow one with red bean filling.