Day 98: Yesterday, a much-anticipated large box arrived on my doorstep in a light dry-ice mist: soup dumplings, "Chinese street food" per the label, a gift from my sister-of-the-heart Mousie. All plans for what I was originally intending to eat for dinner went out the window. I simply had to try these right off the mark! And nothing would do but that they should be presented for my dining pleasure in the proper setting, so I climbed up on a chair and pulled my Chinese tableware down from the highest shelf. To prepare the flash-frozen xiao long bao, I lined my aluminum steamer rack with parchment paper and arranged five dumplings with appropriate space between them. After the water had reached the boiling point, I placed the rack inside the pan and steamed them for 11 minutes as directed. Now because a soup dumpling has the soup on the inside, they're a little tricky to eat. You don't just pop one in your mouth, because the soup is quite hot. One method is to open the dumpling with chopsticks. The alternative way is to bite off the top of the cute little twist. In either case, the soup can then be slurped out or poured out into the spoon or a bowl (I did the latter), and then the dumpling itself can be consumed in one or two bites. They were absolutely delicious! Although I don't aspire to making xiao long bao myself, other bao recipes are easier to make from scratch, and at some point in the near future, I'll be giving that a try.
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