New Year Goodies Galore!!

Woo hoo!! Look what I got! Received these today… these are the exquisitely made, very dainty Japanese confectionery that I posted about the other day. Kawaii! (Cute!) (As the Japanese would say ) Actually, I made a mistake. The other day, I said they were made from Konnyaku jelly, but after eating them today, I realized they are not Konnyaku. They are various Japanese confectionery – some are made from jelly (the 2 square pieces and the white flower), some have a white bean paste filling with a mooncake-like pastry (the 2 round yellow-brown ones), some are mochi-like with red bean paste filling (round pink one), some have hard, very sweet sugar centers (pink flower), and some are just very, very sweet (center yellow round one).

Each of the designs is so exquisitely rendered. Almost too pretty to eat. I say almost… Quite a few other designs had already landed in our stomachs before I even remembered about taking pictures. I really wanted the tiny tangerine designs that I spotted the other day, but apparently they have long been sold out. Oh well! Still…

What a nice, sweet start to the weekend. I was planning to go down early next week to grab some for the New Year, but I guess my raves about them didn’t go unnoticed . How sweet! (figuratively and literally).

This weekend has turned out to be one filled with several pleasant surprises… It is always such a warm feeling when one thinks about/wishes for something, then forgets about it, thinking it not that important, when out of the blue, without you expecting it, the wish is fulfilled.

I had been slightly disappointed about how my cornflake cookies had turned out, and was discussing with my mum how I could go about modifying the recipe again. Apparently, my mum had mentioned to my aunt (who makes these cookies by the thousands - and I mean thousands – each year), and not only did my aunt promise to forward me her recipe (which should be coming soon), but she also sent me a big jar of the cornflake cookies she made! All the way from Brunei too! Yep! Delivered by plane. Isn’t she just the sweetest?

Every year she spends hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks before CNY baking cookies. She started out making them for family, then friends started placing orders with her… and now she has a full fledged CNY cottage industry going, with a repertoire of some 10-15 different types of cookies! Her cornflake ones are still one of my favorites. She painstakingly forms little rosettes with the cornflakes on each cookie (as opposed to the usual more rough-and-ready method of rolling the balls of dough in crushed cornflakes). This takes HOURS! Everything is still completely made by hand. And the cookies are in nice small one-bite sized pieces. Yum!

She also sent me these…

I love these! Kueh mur (sp?). This is actually a Malay cookie. I have not seen it in Singapore, not even during Hari Raya. Perhaps it is an East Malaysia/Brunei thing?

These are basically icing sugar-coated cookies with a very tender, crumbly, melt-in-your-mouth texture. The recipe is simple enough, but the key to the success of making this cookie lies in the “frying” of the flour before making the dough. The flour has to be “stir-fried” (without oil) in a wok until it is extremely light and “loose”. This is a time-consuming process (perhaps 45mins to 1 hour? Depending on how much flour you have), and requires a great deal of bicep/arm strength! If the flour is not sufficiently “light”, the resulting cookie will be very dense and when eaten, will be this sticky, thick powdery goo in the mouth. Not pleasant! When done right, the entire cookie simply melts away in the mouth, leaving a wonderful sweet taste. Shiok! It is not easy to find a well-made kueh mur.

By the way, these kueh mur cookies are made into small bite-sized balls, which can be popped whole into the mouth. I just realized that from the picture, these things look like humungous golf-ball sized giants! LoL.

This was also part of the gift package that came from Brunei. This is a yearly fixture in our annual “CNY goodies” box sent from Brunei. Kueh Kapit (literal translation from Malay: Cupid cookie), otherwise known as love letters or egg rolls. The roots of this CNY staple are found in the Malay and Peranakan cultures. This is a fragile thin, crepe-like, but very crispy cookie, rolled into a cigar-shape.

The Malay/Peranakan version differs from the Chinese rendition in that the former has a touch of coconut milk/cream added to the batter, which gives the cookie incredible aroma, fragrance and a richer, more complex taste.

This is another very time-consuming, labor-intensive festive cookie to make. It takes hours of sitting in front of hot iron griddles, cooking each individual piece of cookie dough. Clock watching is of the essence. It takes mere minutes for the thin cookie to cook. If you remove the cookie several seconds too early, it may result in a too light-colored cookie. A few seconds too long, and the cookie will be too dark. It takes a lot of practice and experience to get each cookie looking very similar in color to each other.

One also sacrifices the skin on the tips of your fingers when making this cookie. When the batter comes off the griddle, it is still soft. But it hardens very quickly, and so before it does, when it is still piping hot, the cookie has to be very quickly rolled into the cigar shape – by hand!

What makes a good kueh kapit? The biscuit must be as thin as possible yet still strong enough not to break too easily. It must be tender but not too fragile. It must be light and crispy without being hard. It must be golden brown – not burnt but not too pale. It must be just right. Tall order, no? It is a labor of love, and oh so delicious! Great on its own, even better with ice cream!

Every year, we get ours from an elderly Malay woman who has been making these for decades!

All of a sudden, the New Year gifts have been pouring in over the last couple of days.

More pineapple tarts. These are hand-made by a friend. Another labor of love.

Hmmm… I think we have a little too many pineapple tarts now… 5 types! Oh boy! My poor waistline!

Oh, and would you believe, we received 4 big nian gaos from various friends. If you add the two we had already bought, that makes for a lot of nian gaos this New Year! Haha! I can see us having nian gao pan-fried with egg for breakfast for quite some time to come!

We also received these…

They look like pork bak kwa, they feel like pork bak kwa, but they taste quite different from the regular pork bak kwa. These are chicken bak kwa, a supposedly slightly healthier version of the pork bak kwa (BBQ sweet meats), but I doubt so, given the amount of grease and oil this version also comes swimming in. And personally, calorie for calorie, fat gram for fat gram, I would go for the one and the original… the pork bak kwa. But this version is great to have to serve to Muslim friends.

When eating bak kwa, I always pick the pieces that have more of the chao tar (burnt, crispy) edges. Ooh! I love those crispy bits! Yummy!!!

My mum also bought more New Year goodies today.

These are the true traditional Chinese almond cookies. They are very dense, dry, powdery cookies – quite hard, not crunchy nor crispy. When placed in the mouth, they sort of melt into a powdery, thick mixture. Not my cup of tea unfortunately. I always feel like I’m imbibing mouthfuls of powder! Come to think of it, I haven’t come across someone who actually likes eating these, and yet a lot of households buy them every year. I'm not even sure what the tradition is behind these almond biscuits. Nowadays of course they come neatly packaged in individual packs, displayed in an elegant gift box, as opposed to the traditional tin can of old, into which dozens of the cookies are stacked, one on top of the other.

Fa gao (steamed cakes). They are basically light, fluffy, airy steamed cakes made from flour, sugar and water. During CNY, they symbolize prosperity and wealth, as “fa” sounds like the Chinese word “to prosper”. My mum would normally buy a large one that is shared by the family during breakfast on the first day of the New Year. Today, she came home from the market with these – mini fa gao in pretty pastel shades, as opposed to the usual brown or white. She wanted to try them out before the New Year to see how they tasted before deciding what to get for New Year’s Day. I think they look rather pretty and elegant. I like!

We will be making keropok (deep fried prawn crackers) over the next few days. These are dried crackers made from minced prawns. When deep fried, they expand around 4-5 times in size, and become a white, crispy and light cracker. These keropok are still sometimes served with roast chicken in some Chinese restaurants.

Our family remains partial to the famous Brunei keropok – thin, very crispy with a full-bodied prawn flavor. When the keropok is made too thick, the deep-fried cracker will be hard and dense, instead of being light and crispy.

While we are on the subject of famous Brunei food products, there was also a HUGE block of belacan (fermented shrimp paste) included in the “gift pack” we received today. I’m not well-versed in the subtleties of different belacans, and cannot tell the difference between run-of-the-mill and out-of-this-world belacans, but so many people have waxed lyrical about the Brunei-made belacan. I know that two former Presidents of Singapore as well as many Singaporean cabinet ministers order this stuff in bulk. Only recently, the family of a minister visited Brunei, and carted back tens of kilos of this stuff!

Belacan is truly pungent. Neighbors many doors away will always be able to tell which family is having belacan in the next meal! But it is so very delicious when added to a variety of dishes. The shrimp paste is usually combined with chilli paste to form sambal belacan, which can then be used in vegetable stir-fries, fish or meat dishes and so on.

Wow! A food-filled weekend indeed!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All rights reserved.
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