Little Chef Vegetable Spring Rolls

These spring rolls are another Kam Man frozen purchase. These are serious about the vegetable part. The filling is pretty much just shreds of cabbage and carrot and whole green peas! The only seasoning I can detect is pepper. The shells are standard pastry wrap, so no complaints there. The toaster oven prep we gave them yielded acceptable outside crispness. Overall, a totally decent spring roll, I just wish there was a little more flavor to them. I would rate them slightly higher than the K Fat Inc. rolls, and of course much much higher than the "grain" rolls. Looking back at that review, I am amazed I gave them a 2... I might have to revise that down. Having to finish the packages was like torture.

Score: 3.5/5 - Totally presentable spring rolls.

Sauces

Sauces are an important complement to dim sum. There are two generic sauce types we use with dim sum around our house, sweet and savory. The sweet sauce is almost always a sweet chili sauce, here it's Mae Ploy brand. I do like plain "duck sauce" too, or whatever one calls the slightly fruit based sweet sauce used with appetizers, but I like the little added spark of chili. It's not really very hot, though, usually. This particular brand is not super exciting to me, I find the chili bits a little too tough without much benefit. The savory sauce of choice is a vegetarian take on "oyster" sauce, here Vegetarian Mushroom Flavored Sauce by Coin Tree. This is a salty, thick brown sauce. Not hoisin sauce. Thinner than that, and no real flavor besides salty and umami. This particular one is actually quite good. It's a little thinner and lighter in flavor than many I've had, and actually went really well on the radish cakes. I'm not going to rate them properly, I just wanted to show you my typical sauce array!

Chen Hsiang Frozen Radish Cake

Radish cakes are one of those things that you usually only get in a restaurant, and usually in a restaurant they have shrimp bits in them and are served with "oyster" sauce. These ones I bought frozen at Kam Man. In a restaurant they would be cooked on a griddle, fried to crispiness on both sides and kinda pasty in the middle. Pan frying these on not too high heat gets the same effect. I had mine with vegetarian mushroom sauce; thick dark salty sauces are the way to go with these things. I enjoy this brand Chen Hsiang, but I have to admit that I haven't really seen another frozen version, which surprises me since they don't lose a lot in freezing.



Score: 4/5 - An overall satisfying radish cake. They're supposed to be like fried paste!

Chef One Sesame Peanut Butter Bun

Sesame seeds and dry peanut butter come together in the filling of this bun to create a great taste. The filling is a little on the dry and crumbly side, and a little sweet, but it works. The filling portion suits these relatively small buns. The bun itself is just OK; the bread is not as chewy as some of the other brands. Generally, it just acts as a medium for the filling. In other flavors of bun, that would be a problem, but with the great taste of the sesame peanut butter filling it's OK that the bread is there to just prop it up. These are one of Ross's favorites. They are definitely better than the plain sesame filling buns. I've yet to find this flavor elsewhere.



Score: 4/5 - A unique bun. Peanut butter and sesame temper each other in the filling.

Homei Custard Bun

Another bunch of buns from Kam Man are in the review pipeline. These custard buns from Homei are above average. The buns themselves are on the small side, as many custard buns are. The dough is soft, and the bun skin is relatively thin. The custard is a generous portion. The custard is smooth and tasty, still loose, not a firm gel. The flavor is overall pleasant. I would buy these again.



Score: 4/5 - Above average, nice, relatively thin but fluffy bread, generous sweet filling with good texture.