Pork Buns, I Love You

I did it. I finally tried the Momofuku pork bun recipe that Monkey sent me ages ago. The opportunity presented itself in the form of a causal coworker get together at my house, meant to be centered on board games (namely Settlers of Cataan) and food. I decided to use my guests as guinea pigs in this pork bun experiment. Verdict?

Pretty damn good.

The pork belly took a while to cook but the flavor was delicious. The dough for the buns didn't puff as much as I would have expected (probably because my yeast was old) but they still turned out surprisingly fluffy. This recipe definitely took effort. I cooked the meat last night and was sweat shop bun making/steaming this morning. In retrospect, I should have made everything in advance and frozen the buns till ready to cook (as the recipe suggests). Maybe I would have had more time to actually hang out with guests instead of running around like mad.

Sadly, my tooth was acting up (I believe I have yet to blog about my missing tooth...don't fret I know you're dying for the gory details so I'll post soon) so I didn't really eat as many as I wanted. That is to say I ate like 5 instead of the 20 I would have liked.

Here's the spread. One of my coworkers helped me make chicken wings (deep fried and slathered in delicious teriyaki style sauce). Others brought aloo gobi style cauliflowers/potatoes, an asian noodle salad, and beer. Everything was tasty. Sadly we spent so much time eating and chatting that we didn't have time to play board games. Next time!