Bao wow wow! W

I do occasionally find myself approving of modern innovations, be they in fashion, cinema, music or food.

So while I can comfortably give Grime music and wearing sockless brogues a wide berth, I do rather enjoy the vogue for decent shortback-and-sides haircuts and I swung a pretty much non-stop shoe when I heard Taylor Swift’s most recent recording.

Food-wise, I’m loving the current popularity for ‘hygge’ and all things Scandinavian, though some of us have been extolling the virtues of Nordic cuisine for decades, mentioning no names. The clean flavours, the use of light pickles and cures, the sharpness of fermented yoghurts and creams, all suit our local cuisine well.

The other week I spent my birthday dinner with family and friends at a smashing Ambleside restaurant called Lake Road Kitchen. An impossibly youthful team of four serve a handful of tables the most innovative, fresh and exciting food I’ve had in years. In addition to tongue pastrami, king crab, sea kale, widgeon and sea buckthorn, we enjoyed an incredible piece of aged beef, for which the chef is becoming justifiably famous; a sirloin steak from a 14 year-old Holstein dairy cow, aged for an astonishing 233 days. It tasted incredible, very rich and gamey; my mum saying that it tasted just like the beef she ate as a child.

I suppose that beef was far less of a commodity back then, and butchers could afford to age most of their cuts for a lot longer, adding all that flavour. This was an extreme aging, I’ll admit, but it shows that, with care and attention, and incredible ingredients, chefs can work magic into their menus, and we can all learn a little.

I digress; another trend that’s currently very popular is the rise of the bao bun.

Bao, or to give them their full name, baozi, are the staple street food snack in many Far Eastern countries, where, in myriad forms and with countless different fillings, they are eaten in their millions daily.

You’ll probably be most familiar with the char-siu bao, the dumpling shaped steamed bun filled with that rich, red pork one finds in much Cantonese cuisine. It’s a staple of the dim sum buffet, and I find them irresistible.

The recipe has barely changed since the 3rd Century – essentially it’s a sweetened bread dough, shaped around a savoury filling and steamed until fluffy and soft. It’s a terrific technique, and works with many bread recipes – brioche dough also steams very well.

The most recent variant of the bao is the open bun, which is what we’re making today.

Here, a piece of dough is rolled into a loose oval and very lightly oiled, before being folded and steamed until puffed up.

Then, one simply splits the bun and loads it with any filling one fancies. I wanted a relatively traditional filling for starters, so I chose to make a slow-braised lamb shoulder, rich with hoisin and soy sauces to get the umami bells a-ringing.

A few tasty raw shredded vegetables are all you need to add crunch and colour, along with some sesame for flavour.

The veg in this recipe also make good use of that spiraliser you were bought for Christmas and which you haven’t taken out of the box yet, so you’re doubly trendy!

Get you.