Yellow Bird Buns
Time: 14thC
Place: Mid-eastern Coast, Yuan China
Author: Ni Tsan
Source: Cloud Forest Hall Collection of Rules for Eating and Drinking (Yun Lintang Yinshi Zhidu Ji), translated by Teresa Wang and Eugene N. Anderson and published in Petit Propos Culinaire 60, with remarks by Francoise Sabban in PPC61
Redaction By: Initial Redaction Work by Master Drake (Craig Jones), with major follow-up work by Natalia Vladimirova'doch (Natalie Aked)
Place: Mid-eastern Coast, Yuan China
Author: Ni Tsan
Source: Cloud Forest Hall Collection of Rules for Eating and Drinking (Yun Lintang Yinshi Zhidu Ji), translated by Teresa Wang and Eugene N. Anderson and published in Petit Propos Culinaire 60, with remarks by Francoise Sabban in PPC61
Redaction By: Initial Redaction Work by Master Drake (Craig Jones), with major follow-up work by Natalia Vladimirova'doch (Natalie Aked)
Original Recipe:
How to cook yellow-bird buns:
Take yellow birds and chop up the wing and chest meat with spring onions, brown pepper and salt. Stuff into stomach (ie, probably, body cavity). Use leavened dough to wrap it. Make long small rolls, flattening and rounding down the ends. Put into bamboo container and steam them. After steaming they can perhaps be treated like ‘lees buns’: use brewing lees and fragrant oil and fry them.
Note on Original Recipe:
Yellow birds or yellow sparrows are, focally, Chinese yellow buntings (Emberiza spp.), but the name is used generally for any small yellowish or brownish bird. Brewing lees are a common pickling, marinating, coating and flavoring agent in China, especially the central east where Ni dwelt. ‘Fragrant oil’ is probably sesame oil. The word translated ‘buns’, here as elsewhere, is man-t’ou, probably a borrowing from Turkic manty or mantu (borrowing may have gone the other way, but this is unlikely on several grounds; Buell et al, ms). Today man-t’ou are unstuffed, but in medieval China they had fillings, as their cognates still do in Korea and the Altaic world.
How to cook yellow-bird buns:
Take yellow birds and chop up the wing and chest meat with spring onions, brown pepper and salt. Stuff into stomach (ie, probably, body cavity). Use leavened dough to wrap it. Make long small rolls, flattening and rounding down the ends. Put into bamboo container and steam them. After steaming they can perhaps be treated like ‘lees buns’: use brewing lees and fragrant oil and fry them.
Note on Original Recipe:
Yellow birds or yellow sparrows are, focally, Chinese yellow buntings (Emberiza spp.), but the name is used generally for any small yellowish or brownish bird. Brewing lees are a common pickling, marinating, coating and flavoring agent in China, especially the central east where Ni dwelt. ‘Fragrant oil’ is probably sesame oil. The word translated ‘buns’, here as elsewhere, is man-t’ou, probably a borrowing from Turkic manty or mantu (borrowing may have gone the other way, but this is unlikely on several grounds; Buell et al, ms). Today man-t’ou are unstuffed, but in medieval China they had fillings, as their cognates still do in Korea and the Altaic world.
Ingredients:
Serves 50.
- 2 kg minced Chicken Thigh Meat, or 4 to 6 good sized game hens (when carcass is stripped you want 1.5 to 2 kilos of meat)
- 6 tsp Salt
- 3 tsp of freshly ground Szechwan Pepper (very finely ground and filtered through muslin to remove husks)
- 6 green shallots, finely sliced
- 2kg white leavened bread dough of your favorite recipe
- Sesame Oil
- Brewing Lees (probably refers to Rice Wine or Millet Wine)
Serves 50.
Method:
Optional Part:
- Make leavened bread dough and set aside (allowing it to rise).
- Combine chicken mince, shallots, Szechwan pepper, and salt in a frying pan. Cook until the chicken is just done. Then let chicken mixture stand until cool enough to work with by hand.
- Break off a small piece of dough. Roll into a ball and then flatten so that it is not too thin. Add some chicken mixture to the centre and make long small rolls, flattening and rounding the ends. The amount and size of your dough ball/chicken mix is dependent on how large you would like your final product. Smaller parcels seem to create a better outcome.
- Steam for 10 minutes or until the dough is cooked.
Optional Part:
- Roll each steamed bun in brewing lees until coated.
- Shallow fry in sesame oil until golden.
- I used chicken mince instead of buntings. It would probably be illegal or frowned upon to use any small bunting/sparrow like bird. Tunnel-boned quail is another option, but cost and amount of time to tunnel-bone each bird, make this option impractical for a feast. Another option is game hen over chicken because of the game hen meat produces a stronger flavour. We have not tried bunting but assume it to be a more flavourful meat than chicken.
- Although, strictly following the original directions, the meat mixture would not be pre-cooked, I have thoroughly cooked it before stuffing my ‘bird buns’ for food safety reasons. I do not believe that the chicken would be adequately cooked with such a short steaming time and thin dough.
- Ni Tsan offers an optional part in his recipe, “After steaming they can perhaps be treated like ‘lees buns’: use brewing lees and fragrant oil and fry them.” As Master Drake assumes in his original redaction of this recipe, the brewing lees seals the dough,
allowing the dough to be fried without absorbing a hideous amount of the ‘fragrant oil’. The resulting bun is both crispy and light.
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