On September 27th, 2024, The Gluten Free Bao Company held its first ever pop-up event at Arthur’s Market in Schenectady, NY!
For those unfamiliar with the concept of a pop-up, it is a temporary business operated out of an existing space. In this case, Arthur’s Market generously agreed to host us for a one night event. As long time patrons of Arthur’s, we were excited to work with them and knew we would be in good hands!
Exterior of Arthur's Market in Schenectady, NY
Once we had a date set for the pop-up, the next step was settling on the menu! We’d been using our baos to serve everything from Philly cheesesteak to Ethiopian sega wat, but for our first event we wanted to stick with traditional Asian flavors. This meant the traditional gua bao was a must! We had long been fans of Momofuku’s pork belly baos, so we put our own spin on their version with maple and tamari, to celebrate the first week of fall!
Maple Tamari pork belly bao!
The HMS Bao-nty was inspired by our favorite dish from Philadelphia. Han Dynasty is a Sichuan restaurant in our old neighborhood that specializes in spicy cuisine rated on a scale of 1 to 10. They served what they called a “dry pepper style” fish that ranks as an “8” on their spice scale, and was our go to dish whenever we ate there. It’s no exaggeration to say we probably had that dish twice a month for the entire time we lived there. When we moved to upstate New York, we had to learn how to make this dish for ourselves. It turns out the dish is based off of a popular Sichuan dish called La Zi Ji, which is traditionally cubed chicken served under a mountain of dried chilies and Sichuan peppercorns. For your convenience, we've strained out the chilies and peppercorns, leaving the spicy, aromatic oil that gives this dish it's addictive flavor!
The HMS Bao-nty!
We have many vegetarian friends, so having a vegetarian option was important for any event. We didn’t want to offer tofu as just a protein substitution for an existing dish, but wanted to serve something specifically designed to showcase tofu as a main ingredient. Mapo Tofu is a dish any Chinese family should be familiar with. It is traditionally made with ground pork and chicken broth, but the tofu is the star of the show. We substituted shiitake mushrooms and vegetable stock to make it vegetarian friendly. Even Krisanna, who is not big fan of tofu in general, loves this dish!
The Ma-Bao Tofu!
Finally, we wanted to offer something sweet for dessert. When we first started The Gluten Free Bao Company our friend, Jen, suggested we try throwing our baos in a deep fryer and see how they turned out. Well, the results were revelatory! Because our baos use a yeasted dough, the texture was similar to a traditional yeast donut. Those of us familiar with gluten free donuts know that they are usually the dense, crumbly cake donut variety, but these fried baos had the same fluffy, chewy texture I had missed since going gluten free! We immediately dubbed these “bao-nuts” (bao-gnets was also an option, but probably too regional a reference) and served them with miso caramel dipping sauce to pay homage to their East Asian roots.
Bao-nuts
Bao-nuts with miso caramel dipping sauce
Coming up in Part 2: Planning for a pop up event!