There’s a market on 9th South and 5th East, just west of Liberty Park, that carries the widest variety of South Asian foods in the city of Salt Lake, from seasonally-available roasted duck and fresh Thai eggplant to curry powder and an aisle of every noodle type imaginable. If you want more-specialized Japanese or Korean foods, there’s a store around the corner for you.
I went to this market in search of a large bag of potato starch – which I did not find, and came away with a bag of Thai dumpling flour instead.
One of my college roommates introduced me to baozi during a trip to San Francisco’s China Town. I’ve been a fan of steamed and baked buns ever since. But, I have not had them since finding out I couldn’t have wheat.
The Thai flour mix is made of rice flour and tapioca starch. I haven’t tested this, but I imagine you could make your own mix using a 2:1 ratio. According to the instructions, I just had to add water. Couldn’t be easier, right?
Wrong.
While I was able to fashion some buns together, I quickly came to appreciate that doing so required a certain dexterity and a practice twist of the wrist that I just did not have. Some of the buns were riddled with holes, others came apart in the steamer, and it took me 10 minutes to scrub all of the dough off my hands. Something was just not right.
With a little wheat-free tamari sauce, they didn’t taste bad, but after my attempt at making these buns basically failed, I decided to stir-fry the fillings with some red cargo rice and avoid the hassle of making any more.
I didn’t really have a filling recipe, but the following is a list of ingredients that I used:
- ground pork
- green onions
- garlic
- mushrooms
- raw sesame seeds
- wheat-free tamari
- cooked red cargo rice
About Stormy Sweitzer - Maoomba-in-chief