Dim Sum Madness!

Boy have I ever been slacktastic with the blog this past week!? Trust me I do have excuses! Between housewarming parties, deadlines at work, and Holiday parties with the fam... poor copperpots has been neglected! But fear not! I've been having lots of foodie fun and have more than a fair share of photos for drooling over! =)

So lets start with the dim sum extravaganza Dave and I had not long ago!

I had masses of char siu left over from a dinner I'd prepared a while back and wanted to make use of it. So that meant Congee!! And of course some char siu bao!

So first thing was first.. and that was preparing the congee, since it takes around 4 hours to get nice and thick the way I like it.

I started with the ever lovely century eggs...



I dont imagine many people would eat my congee if they saw these little buggers before they were finely diced and thrown into the pot to simmer away...



I mean they are UGLY as anything... but they really arent as scary as you'd think.. as long as you like the flavor of eggs.. because they are VERY eggy!!



Above is one sliced open... they pretty much look like black jello... with a grey/green yolk in the middle.. yea I know, not exactly the way you want to see an egg.. but trust me, I believe they are what give an authentic congee its unique flavor. Just be sure to dice them up finely or you might OD on egg flavor! ;-)

Below is a shot of the congee probably 2 hours into its cooking... eggs just added... yum. I am always fascinated with how just 1 cup of rice can turn into this much soup... I decided next time I make congee I am only going to use a half a cup... the two of us can never finish the whole lot.. and too many leftovers would just burn us out I'm sure. Never tried freezing the stuff... not really inclined to.



I decided to do something different with the char siu bao this time.. I carried on making the filling as I usually do, but used the pastry recipe from Chow Times.




Although I liked Suanne's recipe for the pastry better than the one I'd used before.. Dave said he prefered the yeast based bun. So I guess its a matter of taste. =)

The greens in there is an Asian green called yu choy sum... I just boiled this up and served with some warm oyster sauce poured over top. Choy sum gets these beautiful little yellow flowers... so pretty.

I also ended up with a little extra dough.. so I decided to make a couple of dan ta (Chinese egg tarts) to round the whole thing off.

All of this did take forever... but its what I do now that I am hoooked on dim sum (thanks to an old room mate from Hong Kong that made me an addict)... and cant make it all the way to Orlando to hit up Chans... I have to do it myself! =( But its goooood.