Char Siu Bao

When my husband and I had an opportunity to travel to Indonesia last year, I came home with the taste of new flavors on my tongue and a desire to introduce my kids to some international flavors, or at least flavors that were foreign to them (I realize that if you go far enough back in America's history, most of our food is "international").
I thought I would introduce a different cultural meal once a month or so, but I didn't make it very far in my plan. Today, finally, I made a start.

Tonight I made Char Siu Bao. Char Siu Bao (Char Siu is "pork") is Cantonese in origin, but many cultures have a steamed or baked dumpling with a meat filling.  This same dumpling in Hawaiian would be Manapua.

My experience with bread making came in handy with the pouch portion of the dumpling, and (surprisingly) I only needed to buy the pork loin as the rest of the ingredients were already in my kitchen.

While this recipe does take some time to prepare, now that I know how it goes together I would break it up into steps that would fit into a week night schedule better.  (i.e., cook the pork loin one day, make the filling during the day that I want to serve it, and then prepare the "bao" in the afternoon for a final evening assembly.

I served my Char Sui Bao with fried rice, and set the table with chopsticks for a more authentic feel.  We had some leftovers because the dumplings are quite filling, but they definitely won't go to waste.