Getting Back To It: Pork Buns, Indian Dinner, Thai Ceviche, Pork Ball Soup

Just back from a two-week holiday in New Zealand, Melissa and I are feeling fat and happy after all of the indulgences of the season. Both still recovering from the 36-hour trip back to Boston (free flights, terrible itinerary), but ready to get back into the kitchen...

There were a couple of dishes we didn't get posted before leaving on Christmas Eve. Melissa's best recent experiment was her pork buns. These were similar to the Chinese treat, but Melissa used a stuffing that was more Indian-inspired: curried pork mince with small cubed potatoes, canned corn, carrots and onions. She made a very moist yeast bread dough and raised it once before wrapping up the fully cooked filling (still warm) to form stuffed dough-balls. These were left to rise again in a springform pan, then put into the oven to bake.

The nicely browned surfaces were achieved by brushing with egg glaze halfway through baking. The result was hot, fragrant, moist buns with piping hot curried pork filling; something like a cross between samosas and Chinese pork buns. Melissa served two on a plate with a scoop of extra filling on the side.

One of the last meals we had before leaving our apartment and cat in the capable hands of Amanda's parents, Carol and Russel, who were visiting from New Zealand for the holidays, was saag paneer with chicken curry on warm naan (see Indian Feast from our gewurztraminer tasting last summer for some similar Indian ideas). This was my request, more or less, since I called from the grocery store to say I couldn't resist those tasty packages of naans so we should maybe have some Indian food. Alas, Shaw's had neither paneer nor Halloumi, so we made due with some locally made fresh mozzarella cheese. We can't really recommend this, since the texture is wrong and the cheese is a bit bland, but the spinach, chicken and curry seasoning were really nice on the oven-warmed Indian bread. We had a bottle of Cono Sur "Vision" gewurztraminer (2007, Casablanca Valley, Chile) with this meal -- a favorite of ours and a very popular entry at that gewurz tasting we held last year.

After a single day of recovery from our travels, we went to a fantastic all-day meal with some new friends in Cambridge. The hosts had put together plenty of wine, a starter of do-it-yourself Tunisian brik (look that up) and a great main course of New Zealand lamb shank with dried apricots and large pearl couscous. They had prepared gallons (not kidding) of homemade veal stock for the lamb dish and their own future use, and a few large containers of it were sent home with the rest of us as party favors. That veal stock came in handy the next day, when we had Amanda and her parents and Evan over for Sunday dinner.

First, we shared a special wine with our guests: a bottle of 2006 "The Ascent" Reserve Chardonnay that we bought from the Ascension Wine Estate in Matakana, New Zealand, when we were married there in March of 2007. We selected a number of wines on the occasion of our vineyard wedding, and the chardonnays are ready to drink, so we brought them back with us from this year's visit. It's a rich, creamy wine with peach, apple, toffee and vanilla flavors. The remaining bottles will be enjoyed on another occasion.

Melissa started the dinner off with a nice fresh Thai-style ceviche (recipe previously posted) while we enjoyed one of the many New Zealand sauvignon blancs with which Carol and Russel had graciously stocked our wine shelf at the end of their stay here (along with some nice NZ pinot noirs and a chardonnay I look forward to tasting) -- unnecessary since they were doing us a huge favor by looking after our beast of a cat, but much appreciated nonetheless.

The veal stock was used for the main course of pork-ball soup. Pork balls were formed using fine ground pork loin with garlic powder, Thai chili paste, sambal oelek, fish sauce, salt and pepper, and boiled in a veal stock base. These were set aside to cool while sliced shiitake mushrooms were boiled in the same stock pot for about ten minutes and then taken off heat until the ceviche course was finished. Just before serving, Melissa re-heated the stock to boil some vermicelli noodles for 5-6 minutes, then added back the pork balls along with some gai choy (Chinese mustard cabbage) for color and texture. Very tasty soup.

The dinner was topped off with a dessert of pineapple and mango crumble with toasted coconut topping (recipe and photo at the end of this post) along with a really nice late-harvest gewurztraminer we brought back from New Zealand (2005 Judd Estate, Gisborne, by Matua Valley). Not a bad start to the new year...