Today is the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival. I should probably be writing about mooncakes, which are traditionally gifted during this week. But let’s face it–mooncakes just aren’t that tasty. You know what Chinese food is tasty? Dim sum.
At dim sum, where servers push around carts of food, the fried sesame balls known as jian dui are my personal favorite. Andy, Dalton, and even my Lawyer Sis all prefer nai wong bao.
Nai wong bao is also known as a pineapple bun, although no restaurant actually puts pineapple in them. (Except for this one chain called Lunasia, which serves the closest dim sum to us but which Andy has deemed “a travesty.”) White people nicknamed nai wong bao “pineapple buns” because of the roughly hexagonal scale pattern cut into the dough and because nai wong bao is “so hard” to say (especially compared to words like “onomatopoeia” and “Worcestershire”).
Inside the soft bun (bao) with a cookie like topping is yellow (wong) steamed milk (nai) custard.
Nai wong bao is the reason our family is at the dim sum restaurants before the doors open. I don’t think I’ve even been to a place where they didn’t run out of nai wong bao…except for Lunasia, of course. Dalton alone can eat three of them AFTER stuffing his face with three entire orders of har gow (shrimp dumplings).
I’m not sure why there’s never enough nai wong bao. You’d think restaurants would make more of them, especially when the ingredients are simple and inexpensive, especially compared to har gow. Maybe it’s the proofing time? Or the space they take when proofing?
Maybe it’s all a ploy to get customers in early.
Andy was recently in Hawaii, visiting his mom. But Andy and his mom, unlike his East Coast wife, do not always have their eyes on the clock. They went to dim sum almost daily, but not when the doors opened. And each time, the nai wong bao was all gone.
Sad.
By the time Andy got back to LA, he had decided he would make his own damned nai wong bao. He consulted his bread baking book and YouTube. Then he got to work:
They turned out pretty well.
I posted pictures on Instagram. Midwest Mark immediately demanded the recipe. Betsy of Motherhood and Martial Arts mocked Mark, rolling her emoji eyes and implying he was dreaming if he thought he could actually make them. Mark then insisted that the gauntlet had been thrown and called for a “Blogger Bakeoff.” He’s been hounding me for the recipe on his blog and on Instagram.
I suspect Mark’s envy of our neighborhood cooking contest is the driving force behind his desire to show off for a bakeoff.
Betsy is having none of this. She has done entire posts about how baking is her Waterloo and refuses to pick up Mark’s gauntlet.
But here’s the recipe Andy used, should any of you choose to accept it!
I look forward to hearing about Mark’s adventures in the kitchen.
We wore green, pinched each other anyway, and listened to the Irish Rovers on St. Patrick’s Day (despite being Protestant or atheists). Small gifts appeared on Valentine’s Day morning. There were Easter egg hunts and chocolate bunnies. Our 
