Chinese Beef Pie and Jiu Cai He Zi (Chive Boxes)

Following the Asian theme from last week, we made something with our own dough: Chinese beef pies and chive boxes. Actually, part of the reason we decided to make the chive boxes was because the rip-off Asian store happened to have chives, which we had been looking for the entire week. But this pairing actually turned out pretty well. Fish’s mom recently started making her own beef pies, which was the inspiration for that part, and Six’s family makes their own chive boxes, so we both knew what the end product should be…except neither of us had actually made them alone from scratch.

Part one was figuring out exactly what to put. Six insisted on shrimp for the chive boxes; in fact, he insisted on both dried and fresh shrimp, which he blended together in our handy food processor. The other ingredients were pretty standard: egg, chives, and vermicelli.

Mixing up the ingredients was a bit of hassle, since the pan we used wasn’t quite large enough. We also had a little trouble cutting the vermicelli, but we managed to fish it out and cut it on a cutting board. But, once we did mix them together, we started nibbling away (woops). The filling was really yummy, so we considered just eating all straight, but we did have the resolve to make the chive boxes in the end.

The ingredients for the beef pie were a little more elusive. Fish wasn’t certain what her mom uses, but we sort of hand-waved it with some minced beef, scallions, ginger, garlic, white pepper, sesame oil, and soy sauce. Six suggested (credit to his dad) putting in an egg to help the filling stay together better, which actually worked really well.

Next, we made the dough! On Saturday, we used a recipe that gave us some not-so-great dough. It was either way too dry or way too wet, and we couldn’t tell which, probably because we let it sit so long that it actually started cracking on the surface by the end. Nevertheless, we managed to roll some out. Six is really good at rolling the dough, so he was responsible for that. Fish knew how to wrap the beef pies, so we had good teamwork.

In wrapping up the chive boxes, Six called them “empadas,” by which he meant empanadas. He still gets it wrong.

All in all, the first day was a success! Even though the dough was t h i c c, they tasted pretty good. The only problem was, we had a ton of filling left over…again.

So, we had to make more! Six found a new recipe for the dough, so we tried that, and it worked out a lot better. The dough was “plushy as a baby’s butt” according to Six. (The secret is probably letting the dough rest. Like a baby!) We were able to make the skin a lot thinner, even though we think it may have still been too wet because it kept sticking to our mats. Fish learned how to roll out the circles like a pro!

With our experience, our Sunday products were prettier than the ones Saturday. We managed to finish the rest of the filling with a little dough leftover.

We even made a family and cooked it!