Sliced Ma La (麻辣) Pig Ears

I can't say the method used below is the authentic way to prepare this dish, but the outcome was successful. The ears were stewed for about 3 hours in:

• water
• dark soy sauce
• rock candy
• salt
• ginger
• garlic
• cinnamon
• star anise
• si chuan peppercorns
• ground white pepper

Sorry, I don't have the exact measurements of these ingredients because I mainly added the ingredients to taste.

After the pig ears are tender, I fished them out and cooled them in the refrigerator along with some of the stewing liquid (it solidifies into a gelatin-like texture).

Once fully cooled (when the stewing liquid is like jell-o), they are ready for slicing. If you have a mandolin, you could slice them all together, which would create a pretty cool effect (this can be achieved using a knife, but it's a little harder). However, I chose to slice them (try for 1/16"-1/8" thickness) one at a time, perpendicular to the cartilage, with a well sharpened knife. I added some thinly sliced green onions to the dish and finally mixed in the secret ingredient: Lao Gan Ma (老干妈) chili sauce:) This brand has a variety of products, so here is the one I used: 油辣椒.

Anyhow, I hope I have not thoroughly disgusted you with the idea of cooking and eating pig's ears, but they really are good (if you can put aside the notion of eating an usual pig's part). In the meantime, I will be home enjoying its spicy, crunchy and gelatinous savoriness:)

Whole wheat pork & veggies buns

We made buns from scratch and tried our best to document the process:

We used 1/2 organic white flour, 1/2 organic whole wheat flour (along with yeast, salt and sugar).

Here was the result after some warm water was added...

...then with some more mixing...

...then after the dough was left to rise for a couple of hours...

Now for the filling, we used the following (all finely minced): ground pork, ginger, garlic, mustard greens, celery...

...shitake mushrooms, scallions, and dried shrimp.

To the solid ingredients, we added: sesame oil, soy sauce, salt, sugar, fish sauce, and ground white pepper. So this is a photo of the finished filling.

As you can see, the first bun didn't turn out very well, but the rest started to look better:

We decided to steam half and try baking the other half. The buns for baking were flipped over for a more rounded look:

...And the steamed buns 20 minutes later:

...And the baked buns 20 minutes later:

Overall, the baked buns were a bit disappointing because the dough was not fluffy like the steamed ones. It had an interesting texture that reminded me of a different kind of Chinese baked pastry...but that was not the intention. They still tasted pretty good:)