lunars hor d'oeuvres (part one)

:: Pork Belly ::

Purchased the meat at Buds Meat. 

Brine for 12 hours. Slow roasted the 5lbs pork belly in the oven at 250 degrees for 3 hours and at 275 degrees at 1 hour. 
Olive oil.  Salt.  Pepper. Balsamic vinegar.

:: Dough ::

Flours. Salt. Sugar. Milk Powder. Yeast. Water. 

Let the dough raised over night at room temperature.  

:: Cookie Cutter ::

Our secret for perfectly rounded buns. 

:: Buns Assembly Line ::

Baking sheet light oil. Plastic wrap to retain moister so dough won't dry out.

 :: Sake Infused Green Onion ::

Finely cut green onions soaked in Sake for an hour.

:: Cilantro ::

Picking the prefect leaf. 

:: Mangoes ::

Half a dozen of mangoes cut into little squares.  Some were sweet and others were not that great. 

:: Cubes of Mangoes ::

Labor of love.  This was our contestants for the holiday foodie contest party that took place on Saturday night.  The guests had a choice of either making hor d'oeuvres (total of 48) or desserts (total of 24).  Creative is endless and Matt and I had a ton of fun doing this.  Although were we sick of eating pork belly during our first trial...

   There were a lot of prepping to do and it took up about 80% of the time.  Matt brine the pork belly overnight and we made the dough.. actually, he finished making the dough because I gave up on it.  The flour shifter didn't shift the flour well so the dough wasn't coming out as smooth as the first trial.  My virgoness kick in and I wanted to start over the next day which is the day of the holiday party.  Matt was determine and assured me that it was a good dough.  And he was right!  The next morning, he placed the pork belly in the oven for 4 hours, slowly roasting it. I started rolling out the dough, very thinly and used a cookie cutter to cut the dough out.  That way, the hor d'oeuvres will have the same shape with even consistency.  While chopping up the green onions, Matt had a great idea of soaking it with Sake.  It gave the green onions a little punch and tasted yummy, too! We purchased a bunch of cilantro and started going through it for the right leaf - not to small or overly big.  The mangoes was a lot of work.  Took me about 30 minutes to cut it up.  We purchased 6 mangoes but really only need about 2.


...To be continued...
:: Part Two - Assembling the Lunars and how we got the name ::