Milk buns and a box o’ banchan 🍞
We laugh, we cry, we buy snacks in H Mart.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we stan H-Mart and make moar buns. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.
Box o’ Banchan at H Mart
Your local H Mart, if you’re lucky enough to live near one.
Shopping at H Mart is an experience. It’s hard to explain why this Korean grocery chain is so much more than that, unless you have one nearby, but this essay, Crying in H Mart (by the frontwoman of one of my favorite bands!), does a good job of capturing why it’s so special. One does not simply shop at H Mart. One cries at H Mart. Or, if you’re me, you drown your feelings in ramen, right after you get off work, and hope that nobody knows you’re there.* More than just a shoulder to cry on, H Mart also has reliable Korean food fridge staples, so you can meal prep without actually doing any cooking. I always grab a box of veggie banchan, which usually includes spicy bean sprouts, spinach namul, pickled fiddleheads, and shredded daikon. Add some white rice and a runny egg and you’ve got a perfect simple lunch.
*Shout out to the Cambridge H Mart, my OG crying buddy.
Frozen Chinese chive dumplings (冷凍韭菜粿) at H Mart
Your local H Mart, if you’re lucky enough to live near one.
My favorite treat to order when I get Thai food is Gui Chai, which is also somehow confusingly called “Chinese chive dumplings,” even though I see them mostly at Thai restaurants. About the size of the palm of my hand, these round, flat dumplings are filled with lots and lots of chopped chives and have a lovely crispy-chewy rice flour wrapper. Anyways, I’m proud to announce that I found them in the freezer section of H Mart, under the very unwieldy title Frozen Vegetable Cake -- Chinese Leek (冷凍韭菜粿). Rest assured these are the frozen vegetable cakes you are absolutely looking for. Just give them a five-minute fry on each side with the lid on till wonderfully crispy on the outside (but gooey inside). Serve with soy sauce mixed with a spoonful of sugar and rice vinegar.
The Ultimate Guide to Making Milk Bread at your home
Recipe adapted from Healthy Nibbles and Bits
Riding high on the success of last episode’s Pineapple Buns, Five Things I Ate has been hard at work churning out Chinese bakery treats in her smol (borrowed) New York kitchen. Not all bakes are successes, but all of them make a big mess to cleanup, hence the lack of newsletter last week. As a kid, my absolute favorite treat from the Chinese grocery store was Milk Bread -- what we called “Fāng bāo” or square bread in our house, because it was always so perfectly cubular. Milk bread is also the basis of almost all Chinese bakery treats (like Pineapple Buns!) so I set out to tackle this tutorial. I shaped the dough into 20 small buns, but otherwise followed the instructions, using a stand mixer and stopping myself from adding more flour than called for (it’s a very sticky dough, but if you knead it thoroughly and let it rise, it should not give you issues). The resulting buns were very soft and airy and sweet, with a texture like cotton balls. Just a warning — if you’re planning to share with friends, they’re easily squished in a backpack.
Shirakiku Canned Yude Azuki Red Bean Paste at Sunrise Mart
Or online
Now that you have the basic milk bun recipe down, it’s time to get creative with the fillings. I like to start with a classic -- red bean paste -- to make anpan. Growing up, my mom made red bean paste from scratch, using dry adzuki beans, but you can pick up a can of premade paste at your local Asian grocery story for a few bucks. It’s not as flavorful as paste that’s made from scratch, and tends to be very, very sweet. It’s too cloying for me on it’s own but it kind of works perfectly with the milk bread buns recipe; the bread dough is soft and pillowy and the red bean paste is smooth and sweet. Just follow the same recipe above, dividing your bread dough into 20 equal sized portions using a cooking scale, and roll each piece into a circle. Scoop a heaping tablespoon of red bean paste into the center, and pinch closed, placing seam-side down on a baking sheet. Brush tops of anpan with egg wash, and bake for about 15 minutes.
Organic Cold Brew Black Tea Concentrate at Trader Joe’s
You can get this at your local Trader Joe’s.
If you, like me, need to sleep approximately 10 hours a day and then consume a gallon of tea in order to feel awake, then this tea concentrate is perfect for you! Trader Joe’s sells a variety of these little caffeinated beverage concentrates, including coconut cold brew and spiced chai, but I like the cold brew black tea the best. It’s what I’ve wandered the Earth in search of: A way to consume black tea in a form so potent the effects rival espresso. It’s become my holy grail for making milk tea and bubble tea on the fly, iced or hot (just add 1 part tea concentrate to 3 parts milk and 1 part water altho according to the bottle that is way too strong). Oh, and I may have consumed the whole bottle in two days. You can find me bouncing off the ceiling.
Happy long weekend!
Soph