BAO | Cookbook Club

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Throughout 2024 I have been hosting my  Taiwanese American Cookbook Club as a way of celebrating and exploring all of the wonderful English-language Taiwanese cookbooks that have been published in recent years. It’s a special potluck series wherein all attendees make and bring a dish from the featured cookbook.

Our August cookbook club featured BAO, by the eponymous restaurant group in London. BAO was started by a couple of artist-designers-turned-restaurateurs, so true to form, their Phaidon cookbook was a beautiful art piece. I really enjoyed reading the introduction, which laid out their very specific point of view on their restaurants and their cookbook, with their family history in restaurants and also their particular trajectory once they launched their extremely popular pop-ups during the pandemic.

I helped Alex to make the baos for his shortrib bao dish. We started several days before cookbook club so we would have enough time to do everything.

It’s basically a milk bread dough that we then portioned out into equal balls and then flattened and folded in half to make the signature taco shape of the bao.

They then got steamed, becoming extra puffy when they came back out.

Alex made his short ribs on the day of the cookbook club. First some browning in the oven…

 

Then spices and sauces covering the short ribs, and low and slow for several hours.

I made the dubious choice of making Yakult Float drinks, which required making the drinks to order since I had to put yakult foam through a foam-making canister to top each pineapple soda. It was a bit chaotic while also trying to host the gathering. But the drinks were absolutely delicious! Thank you to Candace for lending me your isi foam maker too.

Such a great group for our BAO cookbook club! 

Alex made shortrib baos; Caroline and Saimon made whipped tofu with century eggs; Raya made Yu Shiang Boiled Eggs

Jennifer made the house salad; Kristine made dan bing; Candace made Taiwanese fried chicken

Emily made chilli chicken rice with Meinong daikon; Henry made trotter nuggets with burnt chilli sauce; Jess made dan dan tofu noodles and Taiwanese golden kimchi

Alex made crispy tripe; David made spinach with tofu sauce; and Janice made taro congee.

Such a spread. This cookbook definitely had the most complex recipes. Every single recipe seemed to come with a side sauce and require more obscure ingredients, kitchen equipment, or techniques than you might expect. It’s not exactly ideal for a home cook, but we all managed to improvise and adapt enough to make some really delicious food!

A sampler plate and a look at the assembled bao from Alex’s dish. So good!

In conclusion, we found BAO to be a beautiful book: thoughtfully designed; compelling storytelling. Overly complicated recipes for a home cook, but ultimately delicious. A handful of our participants had been to the BAO restaurants in London and enjoyed them thoroughly as well. Alex and I haven’t been, but it’s definitely on our list now!

Message me directly if you’re interested in joining a future  Taiwanese American Cookbook Club.

Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. She compulsively documents and blogs all of her daily adventures. Follow her on instagram and view more of her professional work at annawu.com.


Taiwanese American Cookbook Club

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