Chicken kelaguen inside the siopao bun is the bomb! The salty-tangy flave of the kelaguen marries so well with the soft, sweetness of the steamed bread. It's kinda like sweet flour titiyas and kelaguen on the go. For my non-Chamorro speak friends, in a nutshell, chicken kelaguen is a mixture of chopped chicken, onions, lemon, salt, hot pepper, and sometimes coconut.
I like my kelaguen a little fache' -- or wet, in English -- and very lemony. However, that's not the best recipe when you want to make chicken kelaguen siopao -- trust me, it's terrible. The trick then is to not make the kelaguen wet, and to reduce the amount of lemon. To be honest, I probably like my kelaguen a little too tart -- so the kelaguen I use for siopao still has plenty of flavor, just not as much lemon. Another thing, I use the Yours Lemon Powder -- not the fresh lemon juice, or fresh lemon China, or even fresh calamansi. Again, with the powder you get plenty of flavor without a lot of moisture. I do add a tiny bit of water -- a tiny, tiny amount -- just to get the powder and salt going.
Don't add coconut or green onions either. Coconut tends to make kelaguen spoil quickly. The color of the green onions would not be appealing once the siopao is steamed, frozen, thawed, and reheated.
I scoop a lot of flour in any given week. And I've been making siopao more often than normal -- crazy kid's sports schedules! Anywhose, I did notice a subtle difference in the siopao between my "normal" cups of flour vs. my slightly scant cups of flour. It's the same dough recipe in my book, A Taste of Guam, but sometimes I like to mess with it a little. I made siopao last week using my "normal" scoops of flour, and keeping the oil to just the level of the measuring spoon. Yesterday, I used slightly scant scoops of flour, and round spoons of oil -- a lovely, but subtle difference -- especially in how the dough felt. I don't think my family could tell the difference, but I sure could feel that the steamed siopao bread was softer -- and I steamed for 18 minutes 45 seconds vs. 19 minutes. And when reheated, let the kelaguen siopao cool down -- it tastes better than when hot.
I steamed half the teriyaki and kelaguen siopao on Wednesday -- I finish them today!
If you've never made siopao before, follow my original recipe. If you've made it several times, try using scant cups of flour, and rounded spoons of extra virgin olive oil.
The recipe is in the video below. The list of ingredients only show up if viewed on something larger than a phone -- a YouTube bug. When you are on YouTube, it's also in the "Show More" tab below the video.
:-)
paulaq
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