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| Xizhou Babas - mmm, mmm good! |
by Ashley
While you might think that after
five months my palate would have had enough of Chinese food, in fact my infatuation
with the dishes of this region continues.
We are presented daily with new street foods to taste, new spices to
smell and new textures to experience. Some
of the tastes are so delicious that we talk about them for hours, plan
restaurants around them, dream about them.
Xizhou, the small town that houses the Linden Centre, our home base for
the past two weeks, is famous for its Baba, a flaky, round bread that is made
with either scallions, garlic and ground pork or sweet bean paste, rose jam and
brown sugar. During out time in Xizhou
in 2010/11, our family had become fans of the bread, and upon our return, Perrin
declared that she was going to eat one every day! I had talked to the folks at the Linden
Centre about working with some local food makers as a way to help in the
community, and, while the idea didn’t pan out completely as planned, for our first
two days here, I worked with a Baba maker just off the town square.
The production and cooking of babas
was performed like a fine ballet piece by a husband and wife team with the
surnames Zhang and Ya. The speed and
ease with which the couple cranked out those babas was astounding. All of this took place in and in front of an
open, tiny, very basic and not-at-all clean space. Zhang manned the griddle-oven on the street
outside while Ya and I sat at a desk-sized table at the right side of the
shop. The left side of the table was
cluttered with bowls of ingredients – a massive bowl of ground pork, a bowl of
brilliant scallion greens, a container of sticky, stringy brown rose jam, a
mound of red bean paste, a small container of salt, a metal canister filled
with melted lard and a paintbrush, and, most horrifyingly, a massive bowl of
pork lard. The mountain of lard
dominated the table. Never had I seen
anything like it and very quickly I understood why those babas were so
delicious. In the same way that
Americans use lard in apple pie crusts to offer a crust a flaky, light quality,
so too were the babas enhanced with lard…and I had yet to discover just how
much!
To the right side and back of the
table was the layer of dough. Imagine rising
pizza dough spread to cover an entire table the size of an average office
desk. That was our dough, and as we
worked, we chopped pieces off of it, pushed it back when it encroached on our
space, and periodically, Ya roughly tamed its rise with a handful of
water. At the furthest right end of our
table was a round piece of wood akin to a pizza board onto which we placed the
prepared babas when they were ready to go into the “oven”. The dough sat atop a thick layer of flour
that served the dual purpose of keeping the dough from sticking to the table
and offering us a source of flour when we needed to flour our rolling pins, our
hands or the baba board.
Outside, on the street, was the
“oven” where Zhang turned the dough from flaccid, greasy disks into the
delicious, crispy items beloved by locals and visitors alike. The oven was ingenious. It consisted of an enormous cast iron frying
pan, about two feet in diameter, that sat on a stand above a simple wood
fire. Zhang oiled the inside of the pan
with a small amount of melted pork lard, swished the lard around with a
well-used, straw hand broom, and then, with one quick movement, deftly shook
all 7 baba from the board into the pan. He
then covered the pan with an enormous lid, on which he placed a collection of
hot coals, thus delivering heat to the babas from the top as well as the
bottom. After about four or five
minutes, Zhang opened the lid, shook the babas about to make sure they were not
burning, replaced the lid and continued “baking” for another 4 minutes, until
the babas were golden brown.
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| The oven pan |
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| Heat from the top and bottom |
My first question upon joining Ya
and Zhang at the baba stand on Monday morning, was where to wash my hands. They looked at me quizzically and replied
that there was no need, but when I insisted, they motioned to the back
courtyard where I found a sink. No soap. This is common in China. Sinks with no soap. Having taught elementary and preschool for
years and having conducted various experiments with my students to illustrate
the importance of hand washing to hygiene and health, I was more than a bit
disturbed, but, as I had been eating the babas and everything else in this
country for two weeks with not a stomach problem, I pushed the issue from my
mind, reminded myself that I hadn’t visited the toilet recently, wiped my wet
hands on my pants, and eagerly joined Ya at the table to make the babas.
To make a baba:
- · Use a cleaver to cut seven pieces of dough from the slab (or whatever number fit your oven)
- Grab a handful of lard and top each rough piece of dough with about 2T of lard
- Pinch the top of the dough down over the lard and then fold the dough over again so the lard is tucked inside the dough
- Flip the little package so the seam is down and use a small rolling pin to roll it a few times so you have a long, flat piece
- Turn the piece so it is vertical and fold the top third down and the bottom third up, turn it over and roll it again (this stage reminds me of making croissants…add fat, fold, flatten, fold, flatten, etc.)
- Fold it a third time, but this time smash the resulting folded package with your hand to flatten it a bit
- On top of the package of dough, add another 2T of lard (Yes, I am not kidding), a sprinkle of salt and about 2T of ground pork
- Take a handful of scallion greens and smash them down with your palm onto the pile of ingredients. It’s ok if they overflow.
- Bring the top of the dough down over the ingredients, then fold then entire thing over again so that the dough conceals everything and the resulting shape is like an omelet that is lying horizontally in front of you
- Flip the omelet so the seam is down
- With a cleaver, whack a series of cuts the length of the omelet-sized package of meat-filled dough. Do not cut all the way through. The ingredients within should be visible along the cuts but not gushing out. It takes more pressure than one might think.
- This is the tough part: with the cut omelet-shaped package of baba in front of you horizontally, use your hands to pull it a bit longer to the sides. Then use your right palm to begin rolling the dough toward the left at a slight downward angle.
- The dough should now look almost like a croissant in the vertical position
- Turn the dough so that it is horizontal again, pinch both ends with your fingers, keep the left hand still and use the right hand to twist the dough toward you while pushing the dough into itself. If you do it right, you’ll end up with something that looks like a cinnamon roll stacked against your left hand
- Plop it with the spiral side up onto the table
- Place a small pile of scallions on the table, place the cinnamon roll on top of the scallions, smash it down with your hand and roll it out a few times, turning it as you roll until it is a circle about 6” in diameter.
- Flip the dough over so the scallions are on top and place it on the floured baba board
- Grab the can of melted lard and brush the dough with a layer of lard
- Take another handful of lard (YUP!) and top each baba with another T+ of lard
- If you like pork, take another bit of ground pork and crumble it around the top of the bread
- Voila! Zuo wan le! It’s done!
- Pop that sucker and its six companions into the oven and let them cook for about 4 minutes
- Open the oven, turn the babas so they don’t burn, and replace the lid
- When they are golden brown and the meat is cooked, after about 8 minutes, they should be done
- Eat that beauty and don’t think about the vast quantity of LARD that is in it!
As you can imagine, our family’s plan to eat a baba every
day changed dramatically after I calculated the quantity of lard in every baba, but
don’t worry, we still managed to put away a number of them over our few weeks
in Xizhou, and Zhang and Ya’s business was all the better for it.
