Huangshan Meigan Cai Shaobing

Ingredients

• 300 g plain flour, for the water dough
• 60 g lard, for the water dough
• 10 g caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp fine salt
• 150 ml warm water
• 150 g plain flour, for the oil dough
• 75 g lard, for the oil dough
• 70 g dried preserved mustard greens (meigan cai)
• 220 g pork belly, skin removed
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 2 tsp caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground white pepper
• 20 g fresh ginger
• 1 tbsp malt syrup or honey
• 4 tbsp white sesame seeds

Before you cook

• Soak the preserved mustard greens in warm water for forty minutes, then rinse them three times to wash out the grit.
• Squeeze the greens bone dry and chop them finely.
• Cut the pork belly into small dice, keeping the fat with the lean.
• Mince the ginger.
• Thin the malt syrup with a tablespoon of hot water for glazing.
• Line two baking trays with baking paper.

Steps

1. Fry the diced pork belly in a dry pan over medium heat for six minutes, until the fat has rendered and the meat is browned.
2. Add the ginger and stir for twenty seconds.
3. Tip in the chopped mustard greens and fry for four minutes so they soak up the pork fat.
4. Season with both soy sauces, the Shaoxing wine, sugar and white pepper, then cook for two minutes more.
5. Spread the filling on a plate and chill it until it is completely cold and firm.
6. Rub the three hundred grams of flour with sixty grams of lard, the sugar and salt.
7. Add the warm water and knead for eight minutes into a smooth, elastic water dough, then rest it covered for thirty minutes.
8. Rub the one hundred and fifty grams of flour into seventy-five grams of lard until it holds together as a soft oil dough.
9. Divide the water dough and the oil dough into eighteen pieces each.
10. Flatten a piece of water dough, wrap it around a piece of oil dough, and pinch the seam closed.
11. Roll the parcel into a long oval and roll it up tightly from one short end.
12. Turn the roll ninety degrees, flatten it, roll it long again, and roll it up a second time.
13. Repeat with all the remaining pieces, keeping them under a cloth.
14. Heat the oven to two hundred degrees Celsius.
15. Press each roll into a small disc, spoon in a heaped teaspoon of the cold filling, and gather the edges over the top.
16. Pinch the seam tight, turn the parcel over, and press it into a flat round about six centimetres wide.
17. Brush the tops with the thinned malt syrup and press them face down into the sesame seeds.
18. Bake for eighteen minutes, then turn the trays and bake for a further eight to ten minutes until the pastries are deep amber and hard-shelled.
19. Cool them on a rack for ten minutes before eating, so the layers set crisp.