shiokadelicious!

It Depends On Whether You Are A Romantic Or A Realist…

…as to which Mid-Autumn Festival legend you are more likely to believe or even enjoy.

There is of course the romantic, if somewhat tragic, legend of Chang Er, the immortal beauty who lives on the moon. There is also the story of stoic patriots who overthrew the evil occupiers that ruled their land.

Some will say that the ancient tale of Gods and Goddesses is the “true” legend ; others will insist that the festival is but a commemoration of brave men of history. I will say that the modern (as we know it today) Mid-Autumn Festival, or by its more commonly known name, Mooncake Festival, is an amalgamated tribute to both legends.

Let’s start at the beginning…

Once upon a moon…

(Now, remember, these events happened eons ago, and so memories are a little hazy in spots; there are several versions, so you’ll have to decide for yourself which one you like. Okay, on with the stories…)

As I was saying : once upon a moon… the Earth had ten suns circling around it. Usually, each sun took its turn to illuminate the planet, but one day, all ten suns appeared together, scorching the Earth with their heat. Rivers dried up, the land became barren, and scores of people died. Seeing the death and destruction on Earth, the divine archer Hou Yi, who was renowned as much for his deep compassionate nature as for his sharp shooting skills, shot down nine of the suns. And so, peace and prosperity were once again restored on Earth.

Hou Yi became a hero and was made the Emperor by the people. Unfortunately, with power and fame, also came the downfall. Hou Yi, heady with absolute power, became a tyrannical ruler who was obsessed with obtaining immortality so that he could forever remain the Emperor of the land. Instead of governing the people, he spent his days cultivating the Elixir of Life (a practice we call in Chinese “nian dan”).

Hou Yi's wife, the very beautiful (reputedly the most beautiful woman that ever lived) Chang Er, was afraid that an immortal Hou Yi would bring endless suffering to the people. So she sought out the vial containing the Elixir potion, and drank it, thus preventing her husband from getting hold of it. Immediately after she drank the Elixir, she became immortal, and flew up to the moon, where she remains to this day, accompanied by the jade rabbit.

And so it is that on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month - the day when the moon is at its roundest, fullest and brightest for the whole year - we mortals here on Earth can, if we look carefully enough, see Chang Er, our Moon Goddess, who saved us from an eternity of tyranny, dancing on the moon with her rabbit. On that day, we make offerings of food to the Goddess of the Moon.

This was the folklore that I heard and loved, as a little girl cuddled next to my mother as she told me the story. As I grew up, I heard many different versions. Here’s another one that I like…

The divine archer Hou Yi took compassion on the people on Earth and decided to save them from the severe drought and heat that plagued the land, by shooting down the nine extra suns that had suddenly appeared in the sky one day. It turned out that the suns were actually the Jade Emperor's own sons. The furious Jade Emperor banished both Hou Yi and his wife, the very beautiful divine fairy Chang Er, to a lifetime on Earth as mortals.

The Goddess Xi Wang Mu (Mother of the West Kingdom) took pity on them and gave Hou Yi the Elixir of Immortality. But Chang Er stole the pill and swallowed it. She rose to the moon, where she became the immortal Moon Goddess.

Hou Yi's love for Chang-Er outweighed his anger at her deed, and he built her a magnificent Moon Palace out of fragrant cinnamon wood to shelter her from the cold. Touched by his love, Chang-Er pleaded with the Goddess Xi Wang Mu to make her husband immortal as well. The Goddess agreed, but punished her for her selfish act of swallowing the Elixir of Immortality by separating the two, sending Hou Yi to the sun.

And so, Chang-Er now rules over the lunar kingdom, while Hou Yi rules over the solar kingdom, and they can only meet once a year on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month - a day when a celestial bridge appears linking both moon and sun, allowing the lovers to meet. As for the mortals on Earth, we commemorate the lovers, and Hou Yi’s merciful act of shooting down the nine suns, by lighting lanterns on the 15th night, that they may shine out a path for the lovers to meet.

This was how the original Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations came about. The legend also coincided with the completion of harvest, and thus both events melded together to become a time for joyous and festive celebration of love, family and the year’s harvest blessings. Certain foods came to be associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival, such as the pomelo, baby yams and lin jiao. (More on these later.)

However, the mooncake - the best known symbol of the modern festival - was not originally a part of the Mid-Autumn Festival. It did not make an appearance in Chinese social culture until seven centuries ago. And this is where the “pragmatic” folklore of the Festival comes in…

It all started with the 14th century revolt by the Chinese against their Mongol rulers, who had invaded and occupied the land.

In 1376, the Chinese overthrew the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty (1280-1376) in an uprising brilliantly hatched by the former leaders of the preceding Sung dynasty (960-1280). Unhappy at having to submit to foreign rule, these former leaders set out to co-ordinate a rebellion. They knew that the key to success was the element of surprise; they had to make sure their plans were not discovered. As the Mid-Autumn Festival was drawing near, the rebellion leaders ordered the making of special cakes to be distributed to the population as festive gifts. Into each round cake was stuffed messages and instructions urging the common folk to rise up and rebel against the Mongol rulers on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

And so, on that fateful night of the full moon, the rebels, led by Liu Bowen, successfully launched a midnight assault and overthrew the government. What followed was the establishment of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644).

Thus, to this day, mooncakes continue to be eaten on the Mid-Autumn Festival, to commemorate that historic return of China to Chinese rule.

Subsequent to the rebellion, lanterns became even further entrenched as an integral symbol of the Mid-Autumn celebrations - so much so that the festival is also often called the Lantern Festival - for it was lantern-bearing messengers who delivered the round cakes containing the revolutionary messages to the people. So lanterns are lit each year, on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, to remember the courageous patriots, as well as to light the way for Chang Er and Hou Yi.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Apart from the mooncake, there are many foods, albeit less well-known, that are associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival. Most of them are simply seasonal produce that are found only during this time of the year, and need not necessarily carry much significance or symbolism.

One of my family’s favorites is the baby yams (taro) from China. Their yearly appearance is fleeting - usually only available for a week or two before and after the Festival; so when they are in season, we usually take full advantage of the chance to enjoy these soft, fluffy delights.

We sometimes simply steam them and eat them as is, but our favorite way of enjoying them is to slow-braise them with pork in dark soy sauce. The yams soak up all the intense and rich flavors of the pork and become absolutely, incredibly delicious! This is homey, rustic, down-to-earth food at its best! We’ve made this dish a couple of times already in the past week alone, and each time, it has been sublime! (Sorry, not a very pretty picture I know - dark soy sauce dishes are notoriously unphotogenic, unfortunately.)

These yams are smaller in size than regular yams/taro.

And are usually around the size of a head of garlic.

Inside, the raw flesh is an off-white color - rather different from the purplish hue of the regular taro.

When cooked, they take on a slightly grey cast with a tinge of lilac. But don’t let their nondescript, perhaps even rather unappealing, looks fool you. These yams, when fresh (lush-looking, round and full-bodied without deep indentations) and of good quality, have a gorgeous soft, tender, slightly powdery, very fluffy texture. Eaten on their own, they have a very subtle and delicate natural sweetness; when cooked with meat and boldly flavored with dark soy sauce, they take on layers upon layers of tastes and aromas. Spectacular!

(The above photo is of yams that have been quickly flash-fried before being slow-braised with the pork. Another way to prepare the yams would be to make them into fries or wedges, which are eaten simply with just a light sprinkling of salt.)

Another seasonal food is the lin jiao…

This is a starchy nut that is somewhat reminiscent of the Chinese chestnut.

Personally, I’m rather unsettled by the looks of this thing; and I’m not one that’s easily put off by “weird” food - - I mean, I’ve eaten deep fried scorpions, deep fried ants and grasshoppers, and even the sperm sac of a whale (I don’t think in reality it was really a whale; just a very large fish - the Japanese restaurant serving it was probably just trying to dramatize things a little). But this nut, I do not like the appearance of; it always, without fail, gives me the goosebumps. I think it looks terribly evil. Don’t you? What with that devilish horn shape… and those hair-like things growing out of the top. *Shiver*

When uncooked, it is extremely hard. Well, when cooked*, the shell is still very hard. To open it up, you either have to use a nut cracker, or like me, use a cleaver to cut it into half, and then pop the flesh out of the shell.

[* To cook the nuts, simply boil in salted water for about 2½ to 3 hours.]

The texture of the flesh is rather similar to the Chinese chestnut - maybe slightly crunchier. But it has a “cow smell” which I’m not fond of at all. And no, it’s not because of its looks that I’m saying it has a “cow smell”. It really does have a gamey taste and aroma, which I find decidedly unappealing - especially in a food of plant origin. Give me a roasted Chinese chestnut anytime.

Just of interest, the ones with the purplish-tinged flesh have slight bitter overtones, whereas the yellow-fleshed ones have a sweeter note and a stronger crunch to them.

Actually, the whole family doesn’t really like eating this nut, but my mum would buy some every other year or so, simply because, I suspect, it reminds her of her childhood memories of playing with them as toys. She has told me stories of how, even as young children, she and her siblings never ate these lin jiao. Instead, each Mid-Autumn Festival, when my grandmother bought these nuts, they would thread them onto thin wooden skewer sticks and make them into spinning toys! I am inclined to agree that this was probably a more fun way to use these nuts, but I think I would still not want to play with just evil looking things!

I’m just glad lin jiao only makes its appearance around Mid-Autumn Festival, and that just as quickly as it appears, it also disappears. The reasons why such an unappealing-looking food would be made a part of a highly auspicious occasion eludes me, but there you have it. I suppose it could be simply because this is the only time of the year that this nut is available.

Anyway, on to more appealing, and decidedly tastier, foods…

There are of course some foods that do carry much auspicious symbolism.

From the earliest times of the Festival, a tradition of offering and eating round fruits developed; these symbolize the fullness of the moon and the fullness of family harmony and fulfillment (yuan man).

One such fruit is the pomelo. This bi-annual fruit is in season during both Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) and the Mid-Autumn Festival, and so plays a highly symbolic role in both festivals. It is considered an auspicious fruit because its Chinese name sounds like the word "blessing" and its Cantonese name sounds like "to have", thus symbolizing abundance.

Pomelos are now available almost year-round, but the off-season, forcibly ripened fruits are a ghostly (and ghastly) shadow of the sweet, juicy in-season offerings.

I tell you, nothing quite beats eating wedges of well-chilled, succulent pomelos on a hot, humid, muggy day - that indescribable pleasure of the little sacs of sweet, juicy nectar exploding in your mouth with each bite! Exquisite!

Of course, the best known symbol of the Festival is the mooncake. As I have mentioned in my previous posts, the mooncakes of old were nothing like the ones we know today. The original mooncakes - sent out on that history-changing night of the rebellion - were but simple and plain round cakes of dough. Nowadays, mooncakes are sweet - and rather expensive - indulgences that come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and flavors.

What hasn’t changed though is their symbolism and significance. They still symbolize unity - of family and country - and they continue to signify harmony and fulfillment (yuan man). Each year, on Mid-Autumn’s night, as the entire family gathers together for a reunion dinner, the mooncake reminds us of the blessings of the love of family that we have received in the past year.

Before we bring the curtain down on mooncakes for another year, here’s one final look at one that’s a mix of old and new - one that is highly traditional in looks and feel, but with an interesting modern twist.

This is an offering from Yang Hua Cake House (which I have already mentioned previously). It is a traditional Teochew la bing, but with an interesting he ping (union) filling.

The filling is a combination of red bean paste and winter melon paste. It’s a surprising pairing, but one that works - at least for me; I like the interesting blend of textures and flavors. The texture of the red bean paste is more akin to that which is usually found in tau sar pau (red bean paste steamed buns), rather than that which is normally used in mooncakes. The winter melon paste (dong gua rong) is nicely smooth, with a subtle sprinkling of finely diced candied winter melon adding an intriguing sweet, crunchy bite to it.

The more robust flavors of the red bean paste melds well with the more subtle tastes of the winter melon paste; while the slightly crunchy bite of the latter provides a nice counterpoint to the smooth silkiness of the bean paste. Plus, the color contrast makes for a nice change from the usual monochromatic theme; and is a rather appropriate symbolism of yin and yang, of the moon (Chang Er) and the sun (Hou Yi), and of the union of family and loved ones.

I also really appreciate the well-made traditional Teochew flaky pastry crust in Yang Hua’s version. As you can see, the layers of the pastry are well defined and separated; not clumped together into a dense mass. The crumb is beautifully light and crisp. And most importantly, it is crisp throughout - there isn’t a rim of dense, doughy, undercooked pastry where the filling meets the crust.

This is another nice mooncake find for the year.

[Oh, and in case you are wondering how you can tell, just by looking at the uncut mooncake, whether the filling is a combined or singular paste filling… you look at the sesame seeds decoration on the top of the mooncake. If there are four spots of white sesame seeds, the filling is pure winter melon paste; if there are both white and black sesame seeds imprinted onto the surface of the mooncake, then it is a red bean-winter melon pastes combination.]

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Mid-Autumn Festival, as it is celebrated in the 21st Century, has a mix of traditions taken from both ancient folklore and Chinese history.

Some still pray to the Moon Goddess for family unity and harmony, or, in the case of single women, for a good husband! And it is still customary for whole families to gather and sit out under the full moon and shang yue liang (literally: to admire the moon).

And as a nod to history, mooncakes continue to be given as gifts to friends and family, and are enjoyed in each household as a symbol of unity and harmony.

Perhaps the ultimate mixing of the two different legends of the Mid-Autumn Festival can be found on many mooncake boxes, which are commonly adorned with images of the beautiful Chang Er in her luminous, flowy gown, carrying the jade rabbit. Chang Er and mooncakes - two different tales from two different times of history, coming together into one inseparable tradition of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

So to all who are celebrating the festival tonight, I wish you and your family a most joyous and peace-filled Mid-Autumn Festival. Zhong Qiu Jie Kuai Le!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

Activating My Green Fingers, If Any

Happy Monday to you! Hope you had a fantabulous weekend!

I’d like some advice please.

I’m thinking of starting a tiny patch-sized herb garden. I’m tired of the constant “struggle” of buying fresh herbs from the supermarket / market, not using all of them up, and feeling guilty when they end up having to be thrown out.

While I won’t say I have black thumbs (is that the correct saying?), neither will I classify myself as a green-fingered magician. Plants very often don’t like me; or maybe I don’t give them enough attention for them to like me!

So, I’m thinking I should start with herbs that are fairly low maintenance and fairly hardy – things that will thrive in our tropical climate, and under my less-than-perfectly-attentive care.

Right now, my heart’s sort of set on coriander (I love and use tons of this stuff, so it’s probably worth my while to plant some), sweet basil, rosemary, dill and maybe thyme – just to start.

Questions:
• Do all these herbs fare well in tropical weather?

• Or are there other suited-to-the-tropics herbs you would recommend?

• Where can I get propagated plants of these herbs? Or do I have to grow them from seeds? I’ve heard that Cold Storage sells some potted herbs, but I have not been able to find any at the Centrepoint branch. May I know where I can get small pots of these herbs in Singapore?

• What sort of care do these herbs need? Sunlight or shade? Daily watering or not? Constant trimming or just leave them be?

Lots of questions I know, but growing herbs is totally alien to me. I’ve cooked with them for years, but have never grown or cared for them.

Heh! It almost feels like having a baby! Scary but exciting.

Any help or advice would be so very much appreciated!

Thanks!

Smooth, Snowy Sweetness

Perhaps you may have noticed : in the last few weeks, I’ve been going through a phase of desiring, and thus indulging in, a fair bit of homey Chinese comfort foods. Maybe it’s the tremendous work pressure I’ve been under lately, but I’ve just been wanting lots of restorative, soulful foods. And being one with a sweet-tooth, more often than not the comfort foods that I crave are sweet. So I’ve been working my way through my little repertoire of traditional Chinese sweet soups or tang shui / tong shui.

This is another very simple, terribly easy to prepare, and yet highly satisfying and enjoyable tong shui…

It is deceptively simple, yet brimming with varied flavors and textures. It involves but four ingredients (at least in my version; although other stuff can and are commonly added too), of which two are among my all-time favorites – which, I suppose, makes this tong shui an automatic winner in my book. The fact that it has a myriad of purported health benefits does it no harm either in staking its claim on my heart. What a nice added bonus - to be able to indulge my desire for something sweet and, at the same time, be comforted in knowing that I’m also eating healthily. It doesn’t get much better than this!

Of course, the best thing about Chinese dessert soups is that they are not confined to being after-meal treats alone; they are eaten at all times of the day – whenever the fancy strikes… breakfast, mid-morning break, lunch, tea, supper… any time of the day is a good time for a soothingly reassuring bowl of sweet tong shui.

Very often tong shuis are seen as an useful tool to help regulate the body’s systems – either to cool them down or to warm them up, depending on the ingredients used to cook the soup. Other times, a balance between “yin” and “yang” is sought – a harmonious blend of “cooling” and “warming” foods lovingly simmered into a sweet, chunky broth.

The snow ear fungus is used in both savory (as written about previously) and sweet soups. Personally, I prefer the dessert version – for obvious reasons, given my love of most things sweet. This fungus is said to be good for clearing “heaty” phlegm-filled lungs. However, a less known – and definitely less discussed – benefit of the snow ear fungus is in the... umm… shall we say “housekeeping” department. This usefulness was related to me by a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Practitioner some years back. Snow ear fungus, when slow-cooked for a fairly lengthy period of time, takes on a gelatinous texture, with a slightly slippery (some would say slimy) feel. And therein lies its secret – it works wonders in smoothing and lubricating the body’s “plumbing” system as it were, and makes things flow easily again, if you know what I mean. This is obviously not a “benefit” that gets trumpeted loudly under normal circumstances, but I’m told it’s a highly efficacious – not to mention tasty – solution to an uncomfortable problem. And hey, I think it sure beats having to imbibe copious amounts of dry, scratchy, sawdust-like bran! But enough of this already… And if you don’t suffer from said inconvenience, then snow ear fungus is also said to be wondrous for achieving a snowy, smooth complexion. So pay heed, ladies!

Along a similar vein, in terms of cooling benefits for the lungs, is the lily bulb (bai he in Mandarin). This is the scale leaf of the bulb of the Lilium plant that has been dried. When cooked, it has a very subtle and delicate sweetness, and a soft, almost nut-like texture – fairly reminiscent of the lotus seed. I adore bai he – almost more than I love lotus seeds, and I like lotus seeds a lot! While I tend to add lotus seeds to a lot of the soups I cook, especially the dessert soups, the bai he makes a less frequent appearance, for some reason or another. But that doesn’t mean I love it any less. I really enjoy its subtlety of flavor, and yet at the same time, its certain robustness of body. To read more about the lily bulb, click here and here. And to see a picture of it in its uncooked state, click here.

Of course, it goes without mention that my version of snow fungus tong shui has lots of lotus seeds (dried or fresh) in it. Some people also like to add thin slices of lotus root to the soup; though I have to confess to not being terribly keen on this combination of textures – the crunchy lotus root seems somehow disruptive to the scheme of things. But that’s just me.

The final ingredient in my tong shui is Chinese Wolfberries – for a dash of color. They also add a nice touch of natural sweetness to the soup. As mentioned before, these wolfberries are great for keeping the eyes bright and sparkling.

Alternatively, the tong shui can be lightly sweetened with dried red dates (which are more warming on the body than the wolfberries) instead. On occasions, I have also seen this sweet soup being made with dried longans added.

So really, there is a great deal of flexibility as to what goes into a tong shui. Some people choose the ingredients based on their benefits for the body or on the “imbalance” in the body systems that they are trying to “adjust”. Others choose purely according to their personal taste preferences.

The cooking process is the same as for almost all sweet soups – the ingredients requiring the longest cooking times go into the pot first ; subsequent ingredients are added in phases according to how much simmering they require ; the sugar is the last to go in.

Snow Ear Fungus Tong Shui

• Soak the snow ear fungus until softened – about 20 minutes or so. [Different batches may require different soaking times.] Rinse well under running water to remove all sand particles. Break the fungus into medium chunks (you can, like me, just use your fingers for this, or a pair of kitchen scissors).

• Check the dried lotus seeds to make sure each one has had their stems removed. De-stem those that still have the green “heart” in them. Rinse well, drain and set aside.

• In a large pot, place enough water to produce the amount of soup you want, the fungus and the dried lotus seeds. [If using fresh lotus seeds, which require a much shorter cooking time, add them later, together with the lily bulbs.] Cook on high heat until the water comes to a rolling boil. Reduce the flame to the lowest setting, and leave to simmer gently until the fungus is tender (about 2½ to 3 hours).

• In the meantime, give the wolfberries a quick rinse, drain and set aside. The lily bulbs should also be given a quick wash and drained well.

• Once the snow ear fungus have reached the desired tenderness, plop in the wolfberries and the lily bulbs. Simmer for another 20 to 30 minutes or so, or until the lily bulbs are tender.

• Add rock sugar to taste. Allow to dissolve completely before removing the soup from the heat and serving.

Shiok!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

Glad Tidings

Just a quick note : I have been informed by Cold Storage that they have a new shipment (from their new distributor) of Arnott’s Tim Tams - - in the Classic Dark flavor! (And of course, also in the regular milk chocolate flavor too.)

So, for those who have been missing these bikkies and been suffering withdrawal symptoms (or am I the only incurable addict around here? ), they should be available at Cold Storage outlets. I’m not sure if they are available island-wide though.

As for me and my mum? We’re two happy campers today… now that we have gotten a whole new stash of our daily sugar fix!

Thanks to Cold Storage for making it happen.

Going Looney Over Mooncakes

This is the time of year when I really do go quite looney (not that I don’t display vestiges of such behavior from time to time during the rest of the year) over mooncakes. I love mooncakes; but I can also be quite finicky about which ones I’ll eat. They have to be worth the while, if you know what I mean – worth all that sugar, fat and calories!

What has been somewhat odd for me this year – during my annual ‘mooncake binge’ – is a seeming shift in the desires of my taste-buds; my palate seems to have gone all traditional on me.

For some reason, the mooncakes that I have enjoyed in previous years have failed to entice, much less excite, my taste-buds. As I was walking around the Takashimaya Mooncake Bazaar a couple of weeks ago, tasting all the “brands” that I had thought were safe, long-time “enjoyments” (I won’t use the word ‘favorites’ – that’s a little strong), I was surprised to find that they no longer appealed. Someone’s tastes have obviously changed: either me or the mooncakes (oh alright, that’s a lame stab at humor ; but humor me anyway – I’m a little high on mooncakes).

Goodwood Park’s and Begawan Solo’s wuren (mixed nuts) mooncakes feel very sweet on the palate; a lot sweeter than I remember them being previously. Most of the various lotus seed paste and red bean paste varieties from the various high-end hotels and bakeries seem rather run-of-the-mill somehow; not exciting enough for me to want to take them home with me. And this year, I am being left morose and bereft of any custard mooncakes. How can this be? A mooncake festival without any custard mooncakes to eat! But alas! It is true. My standard fall-back from East Ocean doesn’t taste the same this year, and I haven’t found a replacement - not in the offerings by Hong Kong’s Peninsula Hotel or one of the other Hong Kong bakeries that is showcasing at the bazaar.

However, it is not a completely mooncake-less festival, thank goodness. Instead, my taste-buds have found enjoyment from an unexpected quarter. Unexpected for me at least. What has emerged as some of my favorites for this year are a couple of the offerings from an old, long-established, very traditional bakery in Chinatown – Tai Chong Kok (or Da Zhong Guo in Mandarin; literally translated as “Big China”).

I don’t remember having tried their mooncakes before; in previous years I’ve tried those from some of the other “famous” Chinatown traditional bakeries, but not Tai Chong Kok. Several weeks ago, my mum came home with a couple of their mooncakes, and we both instantly liked their red bean paste (dou sha or tau sar) ones. This was before the Takashimaya Bazaar; and even after visiting each of the bazaar’s close to 40 mooncake stalls, we still like Tai Chong Kok’s red bean paste mooncake.

Tai Chong Kok is about as traditional as you’re going to get in Singapore, when it comes to old-fashioned Chinese bakeries. All forms of marketing glitz and razzmatazz are eschewed for tried-and-proven simplicity and practicality. No glossy, embossed designer paper bags here; you get to carry your mooncakes home in a simple brown paper bag – the type that harks back to the 60s and 70s: brown, with red and white string handles. The big (very big), bold red letterings printed onto the bag are the only nod to design and branding. Even then, they declare quite simply: “Tai Chong Kok Bakery, Mid-Autumn Mooncakes”. Simple, direct and to the point.

Inside the bag, the mooncakes are wrapped up the traditional way – no fancy wooden gift boxes in plush hues of plums and maroons; none of those flashy, elaborately illustrated metal gift boxes thank you very much. After you have chosen your mooncakes, they are stacked together, turned onto their sides, and rolled up and wrapped in white greaseproof paper. To give this plain outfit a dash of color, a piece of auspicious hong-bao red paper is then wrapped around the cylinder-shaped package and the ends secured with the humble and useful, but decidedly inelegant cellotape! Again, no flowery, descriptive marketing prose on this piece of red covering – “Mid-Autumn Mooncake” is all that it says.

Here’s an innocuous bit of trivia: the width of this red piece of paper is made to exactly fit the height of four regular-sized mooncakes stacked together. As you can see from the very top picture, because I purchased only three mooncakes this time round (on a third visit to the shop to replenish our fast disappearing mooncake stock), the red paper juts out a little on either end.

Their red bean paste mooncakes have been a pleasant discovery for us.

These mooncakes - made entirely by hand - have a distinctly rustic look to them. They do not have the clinical exactness and perfection of the hotel- or modern bakery-made ones. The ‘bas-relief’ design on the tops of the mooncakes is sometimes a little indistinct and faded in parts, but it all adds to the appeal. There’s a rather charming, rakish air to them; almost a certain confident nonchalance - as if declaring that it is the substance and not the appearance that matters.

Indeed, it is in the taste department that they show their strength. The red bean paste is very clearly home-made. I can actually taste the red beans in the paste – it sounds obvious, but this is not always the case with a lot of red bean paste products, where oftentimes, there are barely any pure notes of red bean flavors under all the sugar and additives.

This filling has a fuller body and a more robust bite and mouth-feel; it is less sweet and less silken due to the smaller amounts of oil and ‘smoothening agents’ used to cook the paste. I like the taste and feel of this red bean paste a lot - such a contrast to the ubiquitous slickly smooth offerings on the market.

I don’t know if you can see this clearly from the photo, but there is actually a tinge of red in the red bean paste. Again, this may sound obvious, but is yet another not very common occurrence. A lot of Chinese-style (as opposed to Japanese-style) red bean pastes are actually black (or very close to it) in color – due to the large amounts of the additive “pang sar” (sorry, I’ve no idea what this is called in English), which is used to add bulk and silky smoothness to the red bean paste. At least here the pang sar is kept to a minimum, and I can actually see the red beans in the red bean paste!

I also enjoy the somewhat different texture of the crust. It has a firmer, more robust bite to it that I find very appealing. It’s less oily too.

It actually feels like I’m eating a “real” mooncake when I bite into this red bean paste version – the crust is nicely thin, aromatic with a crusty firmness; the red bean paste tastes and looks like red bean paste; and there is a rather generous sprinkling (which is not necessarily as common an occurrence as might be thought) of melon seeds to finish off the textural and flavor contrasts.

There’s one final bonus too – the price. Whereas most plain “red bean paste–melon seeds” mooncakes sell for around S$7 (US$4) per piece, these go for a mere S$3.70 each. How’s that for a deal? However, here’s a caveat : the same mooncake at the Tai Chong Kok stall at the Takashimaya Bazaar is selling for around S$5+! A whopping 35% price differential! At first we thought that they had simply increased the prices across the board as the Mid-Autumn Festival drew closer, but when we went back to their Chinatown outlet after visiting the Takashimaya Bazaar, we found the price at the bakery was still S$3.70.

Tai Chong Kok sells only the traditional red lotus seed paste mooncake - as the lady in the shop declared to us: they don’t believe in the modern marketing gimmick of white lotus seed pastes. For them, traditional is the best and only way to go. [Oh, in case you are wondering: yes, this traditional lotus seed paste is brown in color, but the poetic and symbolism-loving Chinese call it “hong lian yong” or red lotus seed paste, simply because “red” sounds more elegant and auspicious than “brown”.]

Again, the lotus seed paste is very clearly home-made; the use of genuine ingredients to cook the paste is evident. The sweetness, like in the red bean paste, is also well balanced, and the small sprinkling of pine nuts adds an aromatic touch. The only let down for us is that the paste (at least in the mooncake batch that we bought) has a rather unappealing over-cooked taste to it – what my mum calls overly “lao huo” (literal translation: “old fire” – that is, the paste has been cooked for too long). We find this masks the purity of the natural lotus seed flavors and aromas. We haven’t made any repeat purchase, so I can’t verify whether this is true for all their lotus seed paste mooncakes or just that particular batch.

We have also tried their wu ren (mixed nut) mooncake. And it’s not bad; I won’t say I love it (that special place remains firmly occupied by my mum’s home-made version), but it certainly has a few things going for it, which I haven’t necessarily found in other commercial offerings.

For one, it is pretty chock-full of nuts, and not simply filled out with a large proportion of candied winter melon. It is thus not tooth-achingly sweet.

I have a personal, kind of quirky and utterly unscientific “clue-marker” which I use to help me guess whether a wu ren mooncake is suitably filled with a large quantity of nuts. If it is, it is not uncommon to see small little cracks in the crust of the mooncake (as seen in the picture above) – a result of the pastry being baked around a hard core of nuts instead of around a comparatively softer, candied-winter-melon-filled filling. Just another piece of inane mooncake trivia.

Tai Chong Kok’s version is also not overly starchy. Cooked (dry fried) glutinous rice flour is used as a binder in the nut fillings of all wu ren mooncakes. However, some versions contain a lot more starch than others – after all, the glutinous rice flour can act not only as a binder but as a filler too, and is often used to add bulk. The more flour you use, the less of the expensive nuts you have to put into the filling mixture, and the more profits you make.

What is interesting for me is the dark color of the filling. I don’t think I’ve seen it before; most fillings are neutral-colored. I think this is the result of the use of molasses – maybe?

The filling is made up of generous amounts of sesame, melon and other seeds. But it also has one of my pet peeves when it comes to wu ren nut mixtures – it has “Western” almonds in it! Both my mum and I find this particularly jarring – the hard texture of the almonds (especially if unblanched and untoasted before being added to the filling) is at odds with the more tenderly crunchy melon seeds; they just don’t pair well together. Each bite becomes almost entirely filled with the flavor, aroma and texture of the almonds, drowning out the more delicate taste constitutions of the other nuts and seeds. Unfortunately, nowadays, almonds are a common feature in almost all store-bought wu ren mooncakes. They are big, and thus fill up space easily, and as such are comparatively cheaper to use compared to the other more traditional wu ren nuts.

It is probably too much to hope that a commercial wu ren mooncake will actually have Chinese almonds (lan ren in Mandarin; nam yan in Cantonese) in it ; they are not a cost effective addition where the bottom line is concerned. But they are precisely what make my mum’s home-made version so especially aromatic and delicious. While I may no longer seek that illusive Chinese-almond-filled wu ren, I do sometimes still wish that I can find a commercial wu ren mooncake that is as devoid of Western almonds as it is of Chinese almonds.

Happily for me, this year, we found a wu ren-like (it is not strictly wu ren, but the bakery is selling it as such; and if it’s for me to say at all, I think this is probably a lot more “wu ren” in character than many of the other equally named “wu ren” variants) mooncake that we enjoy quite a lot. We like it enough to have made a repeat purchase.

It is yet another offering from another old-fashioned traditional bakery (see what I mean about my taste-buds’ fixation with all things traditional this year?). This time from Yang Hua Cake House (the name is a little deceiving; in the past, bakeries selling traditional Chinese pastries would quite happily call themselves “cake houses”). This is a bakery I haven’t heard of prior to the Takashimaya Bazaar, and it’s one I’m glad I have found. [I showcased one of their Master Chefs at work in yesterday’s post.]

It’s a cute little thing; standing at under half the height of a regular mooncake, it has an interesting appeal – a mix of the demeanor of a traditional Chinese pastry (and all the heart-strings-pulling attraction that has) and the appearance of a regular mooncake (with all the intendant joy and celebration that entails). I actually much prefer mooncakes of this size, if truth be told; I find them rather attractive.

This “wu ren” mooncake seems to take its inspiration from a combination of both the Hainanese- and Teochew-style lao po bing (“wife’s biscuit” – a very popular traditional Chinese pastry made up of a tender, flaky pastry crust surrounding a candied winter melon filling). There is a fair bit of the sweet melon in the filling, but not excessively so. In fact, I would say that it is not nearly as sweet as many of the other wu ren mooncakes I have tasted.

It is nuttier than a lao po bing filling - obviously; there is quite a generous amount of melon and sesame seeds and other nuts in the filling paste. And… it has no Western almonds! Allelujah! What a find! This in itself makes it a lot more like a “real” wu ren for me.

And what really raises the nut mixture up a notch is the nice sprinkling of finely diced Jin Hua ham; the aromas and flavors from the ham makes the filling a winner for me.

I like this mooncake quite a lot. Everything seems in fine balance – a crust that is well-made, evenly thin, smooth and soft; a filling that is a balanced mix of nuts, seeds, candied winter melon and ham. The flavors work together ; nothing out-competes everything else – it’s harmonious, it’s tasty, it works. The textures blend well together too; complementing and contrasting each other at the same time – crunchy, aromatic nuts and seeds; soft, slightly sticky candied winter melon; robust, meaty and richly flavorful ham.

What’s there not to like?

Another Mid-Autumn offering from Yang Hua that I like is their version of the walnut moon-tart. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, this pastry is actually available year round. While it is known as a walnut moon-tart during the Lantern Festival, it is known simply as a walnut pastry tart the rest of the year. Personally, I have to admit to the quirky habit of eating it only when it is called a moon-tart and not when it is called a pastry-tart. Go figure!

I think the pastry crust is absolutely crucial – it makes or breaks the walnut tart. I’ve tasted versions where the pastry is any combination of the following: too thick, too dense, overly buttery, too soft and crumbly, too hard and dry, or overly moist that it sticks to the back of your teeth in one goopy lump.

This one is very nicely done I think. The crust is melt-in-the-mouth tender, with the right balance of flaky crispiness and soft, crumbly tenderness. It is nicely buttery without being overpowering. When eaten fresh out of the oven (as we had them the other day), these are gorgeous!

The fillings matter less in this tart – as long as they are average or above (as these are), it works fine. The crust is the key. Of course, that doesn’t stop me thinking that the tart will be even better if there are some chopped walnuts mixed into the lotus seed paste filling, instead of having just the three small pieces pressed into the surface of the crust. But that’s just me being impossibly demanding.

I think these are wonderful afternoon tea treats. With a cup of fragrant Chinese tea in one hand, a freshly baked walnut moon-tart in the other, and a stolen quiet, peaceful moment away from the bustle of the city, life feels good!

[Update 22/09/04: I went back to the bazaar today to pick up some more mooncakes, and was a little surprised (not to mention somewhat disoriented, as I rushed to pick up some mooncakes before dashing off to dinner) to discover that in the 13 days since my last visit, things seem to have been changed around a fair bit... there seems to be a couple of new stalls that I didn't see on the previous visit, and a couple of those that I did see the last time seem to have moved places!

Anyway, I suddenly realized today that the wu ren mooncake and the walnut moon-tarts that I have been raving about, and attributing to Yang Hua Cake House are in fact... NOT from Yang Hua Cake House! Though I could have sworn the last time I bought the mooncakes, I got them from Yang Hua (and my mum too is still quite certain that we got them from Yang Hua the last time). But today, lo and behold, they are at the booth set up by Amethyst instead. Or, at least the ones I got from Amethyst today look exactly like the ones I bought 2 weeks ago; I'm just hoping they will taste the same. Unfortunately, I won't know until the Festival itself when we serve up the mooncakes after the Reunion dinner.

My apologies for the unintentional misinformation... if you are looking to pick up some of these wu ren mooncakes, they're at the Amethyst booth. The Teochew style traditional flaky mooncakes are still at Yang Hua.]

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This is not the end of my mooncake eating adventures for the year. There are more mooncakes still to share, but I think we’ve all had enough of a sugar high for one day. So, more to come on another day.

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

Shall I Bring a Piglet Home With Me?

For me, an integral part of each Mid-Autumn Festival is the Takashimaya mooncake bazaar. This is the place to go to sample, under one roof, all the different mooncake offerings from most of the major food players in town – hotels, restaurants and bakeries both modern and traditional – plus, some foreign hotels and restaurants as well. Here, you get to discover what the “hottest” new tastes in mooncakes are for the year ; what the creative juices of the chefs have thrown up for the current festival. Deep in the labyrinth of its aisles, your spirit starts to soar with the infectious festive joy and excitement.

The fair is a heady, pulse-elevating, taste-buds-working-over-time experience. Stall after stall of mooncakes and more mooncakes! Tasting samples of all flavors, aromas and shapes are thrust at you from all directions. Your eyes work furiously to take in all the colors and textures. Your palate falls into a deep, swirling whirlpool of tastes and smells. It’s almost trance inducing. It’s intoxicating. It’s exhilarating. It’s pure gluttony - or gastronomy, if you prefer.

This year’s bazaar started on 9 September (and runs through to the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival itself, on 28 September). On the fair’s inaugural day, my mum was already anxious to go down and see what was on offer. She managed to convince me that, my incredibly jam-packed schedule not withstanding, I needed a break, and that I should go visit the bazaar with her during that said break. And so it was on that Thursday afternoon that we spent a hedonistic 1 hour at the fair, plunged headlong into an indulgent orgy of mooncake tasting.

The landscape of this year’s fair is dominated by a gold-colored, pagoda-topped pavilion, while red lanterns hang jauntily from each stall. It’s festive; it’s bustling; it’s exuberant.

Then there are the stretching aisles, lined on both sides with stalls.

Just row after row of stalls; almost 40 stalls - each offering a myriad of mooncake choices.

So, join me, as we take a whirlwind tour of mooncake fantasy-land…

Sitting regally and presiding over the festivities are the “traditional” (more on this later) mooncakes with a baked pastry crust. These come in all sorts of sizes, can be round or square and are filled with a plethora of different fillings - anything ranging from the traditional lotus seed paste and red bean paste, to things like green tea, pandan and red dates.

Actually, if truth be told, this year’s offerings in the baked mooncake category are rather tame, compared to years gone by. There are hardly any outlandish flavors to be found ; the most “cutting edge” one that I can see is Ritz-Carlton’s contribution to the innovation stakes…

Chocolate mooncake. Dark chocolate mooncake at that. Or, more specific still, Valrhona dark chocolate surrounded by a layer of white lotus seed paste before being wrapped in the pastry.

It’s an interesting idea – a marriage of East and West I suppose. But even for a dark chocolate lover like myself (who simply cannot resist all things dark chocolatey), I’m not sure the combination of tastes work all that well. The aggressive nature of the dark chocolate flavor completely overwhelms the rather delicate nuances of the white lotus seed paste. It feels simply like eating dark chocolate really. And I’m not sure I want that when I’m eating a mooncake; I want to be able to feel that I’m eating a mooncake, and not a chunk of Valrhona chocolate (as divine an experience as that always is).

Other than this, almost all the baked crust mooncakes are “safe” and well-known incarnations. And of all the ones I managed to taste, the one version of white lotus seed paste that had my eyes opening wide in pleasant surprise was the one that came out of the kitchens of Royal China at the Raffles Hotel. I have to say, their home-made lotus paste is quite quite exquisite – smooth, silky with an understated sweetness. The aromas and flavors are wonderful! It’s been a long time since a white lotus seed paste mooncake has made me sit up; this one did. I must have tried several dozens of mooncakes by the time I got to their stall, and their offering immediately woke my starting-to-feel-overloaded taste buds up.

While most restaurants and hotels seem content to stay with the tried-and-tested where fillings are concerned, some choose to innovate in the area of presentation.

The Mandarin Hotel takes gift-giving to a new royal level, with six mini mooncakes embossed with the design of a dragon. (I know, lousy picture; but I think you can sort of see an outline of the dragon from the drawing attached to the box.) In a society where gift-giving symbolisms can count for a lot, this is obviously a profitable marketing idea.

I suspect one of the reasons (and probably the main one) why there seems to be very little “push the envelope” activity in the baked mooncakes arena this year is that most (or at least a lot of) Singaporeans seem to like the snow skin crust more than the baked crust. I guess people like me, who simply will not touch anything snow skin, are decidedly in the minority.

What are snow skin mooncakes?

They are mooncakes with a non-bake crust made from flour and lots of shortening. These snow skin mooncakes have to be kept refrigerated.

Originally only available in white (and thus its name), they now come in all sorts of pastel (and even some not so pastel) shades.

They also come highly domed or in the regular mooncake shape.

There is a surfeit of snow skin mooncakes at the bazaar this year – all sorts of spandangled flavors (anything from peanut butter to ginseng, from pomelo to cranberry) in all hues of skin. But perhaps the one flavor that many of the merchants seem to have expended much energy on is the durian. This year, everyone seems to have gotten the same idea as to how to take this particularly South-East Asian (maybe even, peculiarly Singaporean) filling up several notches - by using pure durian paste, instead of mixing durian with lotus seed paste as was the case previously.

I like durian; but I’m not into durian mooncakes. Or snow skin mooncakes for that matter. So unfortunately, I’m not able to tell you how these taste.

Now, the one new snow skin innovation that has me breaking my “no snow skin” rule, and taking a taste, is this: black sesame snow skin.

It is intriguing. Actually, I think it is quite, quite inspired. It sounds obvious, yet no one seems to have thought of it before. This year, several stalls have this on offer. The toasted black sesame, worked into the snow skin, while not the prettiest of sights, gives the crust the kind of incredible aroma and fragrance that only toasted sesame can. Quite lovely.

Oh, and a quick aside: I think the above picture tells a succinct story… the more traditional mooncake juxtaposed with the more modern version. It shows how the Mid-Autumn Festival has evolved with the times, and yet has remained true to its roots in many ways. Okay, enough of the sentimental metaphors already. There are more mooncakes to talk about…

Another mooncake that Singaporeans seem to love is the Teochew crispy yam mooncake. It used to be that this could only be bought at the Crown Prince Hotel. Nowadays, many, many other hotels, restaurants and bakeries have jumped on the bandwagon.

While these crispy yam mooncakes can come in small, cute domes

…or large, handsome rounds… they are not all created equal.

The crust makes or breaks this mooncake; the filling is pretty standard. For a lip-smacking, ooh-and-aah-evoking crispy yam mooncake experience, the pastry has to be (in my opinion at least) crispy and flaky, yet melt-in-the-mouth tender, with hardly any sense of solidity or denseness to it. And… with a minimal amount of greasy mouth feel. The crust really has to be near perfect for this mooncake to be worth the eating.

And Eater Palace still seems to have one of the best ones around; surpassing even Crown Prince’s, in my eyes. I love the lightness of their crust.

Here are some fresh out of the deep fryer and left to drain (don’t remember which stall these were from).

Ugly picture… but I just want to show you the insides of the crispy yam mooncake. A smooth, rich paste of yam surrounds a salted duck egg yolk, and is in turn itself enveloped in a thin layer of delicate, flaky, crispy pastry.

Unlike the other mooncakes which usually do well with a few days (or even a week) of rest after being made – giving time for the flavors to deepen and the crust to mellow a little – the crispy yam is best eaten on the day it is fried. By the second day, the crust will have lost a lot of its crispy aromatic appeal.

This is another type of mooncake that I quite enjoy – the Shanghai-style mooncake. Unfortunately, it’s not a common sight in Singapore (and is more readily available in Malaysia instead). Wandering through the fair, I spotted an appearance at only one stall – Bengawan Solo. I guess their version is passable; I’m not terribly enthusiastic about their crust.

The key to a sublime taste experience is once again in the texture of the pastry – the lightness and tenderness of the crumb are critical factors. It should be crumbly with a light touch of crispiness and a meltingly tender mouth feel as it hits the palate. The amount of butter used also plays an important part ; too buttery and it overwhelms everything else.

These are another very popular variation. I think (though I could be very wrong in this) they are based on the Shanghainese mooncake, but given a Cantonese (or is it Teochew) twist.

Actually, I would put the point that they’re not really mooncakes; although they are treated as such – but only during the Mid-Autumn Festival at that! The rest of the year, they are available quite easily, and are known simply as “walnut tarts”, or sometimes “walnut pastries”. But come mid-autumn, they are “walnut moontarts”. Go figure.

Either way, I like these a lot.

I was particularly taken with the ones from this stall. I ended up taking quite a few home with me. A taste review will be in tomorrow’s post, so look out for that.

They were wonderfully fresh – just out of the oven, and placed into their cheery, auspiciously mandarin-colored paper cradles.

Oh, look at those mini piglets (bottom right hand corner). Aren’t they just the cutest?

Now, I’ve talked about my love of custard mooncakes before; of how I first fell in love with them in Hong Kong more than a decade ago.

In recent years, I’ve managed to get my yearly fix closer to home – from East Ocean Restaurant. So it was with great anticipation that I visited their stall at the bazaar. But oh dear! I felt a little let down. I had a taste of their custard mooncake. It was still as fragrant and aromatic as I remembered it. The custard was still as rich and flavorful. But what was this thick, somewhat gooey stickiness against the back of my teeth? I looked over at my mum, and she verbalized my exact thoughts. The stall attendant confirmed that it was still the same chef as per previous years making the mooncakes. My mum suggested to me that maybe it was because the mooncakes were still very fresh, and would settle down after a few days of storage. I was in two minds about getting a box and letting it rest at home. In the end, I decided I really wasn’t keen on that sticky feeling, and didn’t want to take the “risk” of bringing some home, and then finding that they stayed sticky. What was I going to do with a whole box of custard mooncakes then?

As we walked a little further on, I spotted the Peninsula Hotel stand. This is the grand-dame of Hong Kong Peninsula, and not our local Peninsula. Wow! This is a first. They have not participated in the bazaar before.

My heart leapt a little when I noticed that the only mooncake variety they were offering at the stall was the custard one. Ooh! Maybe theirs would be even better than the Zen one that I liked so much.

In appearance, theirs is rather different. Instead of the regular brown colored baked pastry crust, theirs is a bright eggy yellow with only a touch of browning along the edges. Hmmm…

The custard filling inside is an even brighter orangey yellow. Hmmm… again. It doesn’t seem quite natural for a custard, if you know what I mean. Taste-wise, the flavors are rich and full-bodied – very deeply eggy, with a certain crumbliness. Interesting…

I’ll leave it at that.

These ones I’m quite excited about – from Yang Hua Cake House (the same stall I got the walnut mooncakes from). The display name tag calls them “Hainanese Fusion Mooncakes”, although I’m not quite sure what makes them Hainanese, as opposed to another Chinese dialect group. In appearance, they are rather distinctive – at merely ½ inch or so in height, they are half as tall as regular mooncakes. This is the first time I’ve seen mooncakes shaped more like round discs rather than tall “cakes”.

I rather like their wu ren (mixed nuts) mooncake. It’s different from the “normal” wu ren filling, in that it is the candied winter melon that takes a more central role. In fact, the filling is somewhat reminiscent of lao po bing (wife’s biscuit), only with more nuts and sesame seeds mixed in. And I’m totally glad they have not put in any “Western” almonds – the most common ploy in wu ren mooncakes, to bulk up the nut filling at a much lower cost. While like everyone else, they do not use the much more expensive Chinese almond (lan ren - Mandarin; nam yan - Cantonese), I am quite happy with their mix of nuts. Flavor and texture-wise, almost everything seems in good balance. Of all the commercially-made wu ren mooncakes I’ve tasted so far this year, theirs have come closest to hitting the spot. Not quite like mum’s, but quite satisfying all the same. (Taste review with photos will be in tomorrow’s post.)

Isn’t this a sight for sore eyes? I think this is one of the most tempting sights… tray after tray of fresh-from-the-oven mooncakes sitting there in their full golden brown glory, awaiting new homes and new owners.

Interestingly, Yang Hua also has on offer a wu ren variant that has a flaky crust – but baked, and not deep fried. A unique idea; although the pastry tastes rather floury and bland I feel. I still much prefer the aroma of the regular baked crust

Now, these I want to share with you, not so much for their taste (I’ve never tasted them, so I’m not sure what they taste like), but for their value in nostalgia and sense of tradition.

You see, these are probably pretty close to what the “true” and original mooncakes looked and tasted like. Back in Ancient China, things like lotus seed paste and red bean paste were rare (perhaps even non-existent) luxuries for the peasantry. In those days, mooncakes were made of a simple flour and lard dough, wrapped around a little bit of filling made from more lard and some candied winter melon (which was cheap and accessible) for a touch of sweetness. There were also no pretty moulds with which to shape the mooncakes; instead they were rather rough-hewn, rustic creations with little thought for aesthetics or presentation. The most elaborate decoration was probably just the stamping of the mooncake with some red food dye to mark the auspiciousness of the food item. The concept of mooncakes then was obviously completely different from what it is today.

These ones in the picture (again offered by Yang Hua) probably rank highly on the true-to-tradition scale. I’m told that the filling is made from lard, candied winter melon and something else (I forget what). The dough is almost bread-like and is made simply from flour and more lard. The mooncakes are shaped into simple discs and baked until a deep, rich brown, and stamped with the traditional auspicious character.

Here’s an interesting bit of trivia: it is only in the last couple of decades that the mooncake, as we know it, has made its way back into China and mainland Chinese society. Sounds strange? Well, after the Communists came to power, all traditional Chinese festivals and celebrations were frowned upon. These came to be celebrated only by the overseas Chinese communities, particularly in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South East Asia. In these places, many of the traditional festival foods evolved and changed with the times. Chefs, exposed to new ideas and cultures, created new “modern” versions of the traditional festive foods. While such foods became the accepted festival traditions in these overseas Chinese communities, they were in fact quite foreign to the China Chinese themselves! Festivals were probably still celebrated quietly, in private, and the food made in conjunction with these celebrations continued to be those of the ancient forebears. It is only with the reopening of China to outside influences that there has come a “reverse flow” of culture, if you like, back from these overseas Chinese communities to the mainland Chinese.

So, the baked mooncakes, all perfectly moulded into all sorts of designs with all sorts of “modern” fillings, and which we in this part of the world term as “traditional mooncakes”, are in actual fact a “modern” invention. So modern that the Chinese in China have only recently jumped on the bandwagon and started enjoying these versions, while abandoning the more rustic, truly traditional variants behind.

Here’s another truly traditional mooncake – this time Teochew style. There is that same simple, casual, rustic shape; but the pastry is flakier and lighter than the previous Hainanese one – the same sort of crust that is found in other traditional Chinese pastries like lao po bing (wife’s biscuit) and so on. I have to confess that this pastry entices me a lot more than the Hainan-style one.

These Teochew mooncakes come in huge “family size” versions or in smaller mini sizes.

Another great picture of the juxtaposition of the past with the present : the simple, clean, unpretentious lines of the traditional mooncake with its low-key tan color and just a splash of red for a bit of excitement, against the bright, “look at me” hue of the modern bing pi (snow skin) version, with its intricate design and detailing. Interesting, no?

While salivating over the various mooncakes at Yang Hua Cake House’s stall, I spot their Master hard at work, shaping and making the traditional Teochew mooncakes with nary a pause. With practiced ease, his hands move quickly and elegantly in a smooth, continuous rhythm, rolling, filling and shaping the mooncakes.

All the ingredients are neatly laid out in front of him – the dough, some already portioned out, whimsically shaped and waiting to be rolled out, and the fillings: lotus seed paste, red bean paste and candied winter melon. He even has bowls of the different types of nuts that are used in the wu ren mooncake on display in the corner.

Here’s a closer look.

But what really catches my eye are these, sitting on a tray tucked away in the back corner of the stall. These are balls of candied winter melon filling jauntily wearing a cap of red bean paste. What an interesting combination of tastes and textures! This is the filling that goes into their special traditional Teochew large la bing.

I watch fascinated as the Master continues to churn out a fully completed mooncake every few seconds.

First, a piece of well kneaded, artistically shaped dough is taken.

And quickly rolled out into a thin circle.

With smooth, graceful sweeps of his hand, and in a blink of an eye (too quick for me to capture on camera even!), he places a large ball of filling in the center of the dough. Then, cupping it in both hands, he gently and smoothly wraps the dough around the filling. His hands move eloquently around the dough, gently massaging and stretching it so that it spreads out to a consistent thickness around the filling. His experience ensures that the dough neither tears from being too thin, nor clumps up in unappetizing thickness. (And yes, I’m quite sure those are traces of red bean paste on his nails! )

Within seconds (definitely under 30 seconds) he has a smooth, round ball sitting in his palm.

A square of parchment paper is placed under the mooncake ball before it is gently flattened to create the characteristic disc-like shape.

Next, he dips four fingers into the bowls of black and white sesame seeds, then very carefully imprints the sesame seeds onto the surface of the mooncake.

The final touch: the auspicious red stamp.

I ask if he will hold the finished masterpiece up and let me take a photo of him. He almost blushes in embarrassment at the attention; then holds up the mooncake with a fair degree of pride and looks into the camera. But he was too shy to smile.

The newly shaped mooncake goes onto a tray, awaiting its turn in the oven. Above it sits its fresh-out-of-the-oven cousins, smelling gorgeous.

A round-up of mooncakes cannot be complete without talking about piglets. I’ve mentioned them before in my earlier post. These were traditionally made from scraps of mooncake pastry. Unwilling to waste the leftover dough, bakers gathered the scraps together and shaped them into small piglets. These were baked and sold as cheap Festival cookies for the children.

The traditional “packaging” for these pastry piglets is a small plastic basket. Why baskets in this context I’m not too sure. I do know that in the olden days in China, adulterous men and women (or was it just the women?) were each locked into separate bamboo pig cages (zhu long) and then drowned at sea. Why this tragic imagery should be evoked at a time of happy festivities, and in connection with an innocent snack for children, I do not know. Perhaps someone can enlighten on this?

Anyway, here’s a closer look at the piglets in a basket. Of course, these modern versions come hygienically wrapped in a layer of plastic before being placed in the basket, unlike in the days of my childhood when the piglets would oftentimes sit for a couple of days in the bakery shop, gathering a healthy layer of dust, before they are taken home and eaten.

These even more modern versions had me sighing with delight. They are so very, very cute! All chubby and adorable! They even have black, shiny eyes! And I just love that ribbon around their necks! I suspect that these are probably filled piglets – most likely filled with lotus seed paste. These piglets seem too round and big to be made up of only pastry and nothing else. They would be way too dense and hard to be palatable. And at the price that these are going for, and given that they come sitting so elegantly and demurely in a classy plum-colored gift-box, I’m sure they must be filled. So there you have it. Even the humble piglet has gone up-market – no longer just a hunk of plain, not-terribly-tasty pastry dough, and no longer simply residing in cheap plastic baskets. Instead they are now tasty full-fledged mooncakes, nestling luxuriously in tissue and living out of a new, swanky, high-class gift-box condo. Not bad for a small piglet!

I was so very tempted to bring a few piglets home with me. But I knew better. Every year, I am lured and seduced by their cuteness. Yet once home, I find them rather uninspiring in the taste department. While I adore the pastry crust of mooncakes, I like them in small amounts, and not in one hefty chunk. So this year, I resisted. I gazed longingly at these well-fattened piglets for a while, then turned and walked away, not daring to look back in case I caved in to their forlorn looks of rejection.

Instead, I went and picked up some traditional Chinese snacks.

Finally, what is the Mid-Autumn Festival without lanterns. Lanterns of all shapes, colors and designs.

I have so many fond childhood memories of choosing and playing with lanterns at each Mooncake Festival. In those days, all the lanterns were carefully crafted by hand, using pieces of fragile translucent colored paper stuck over a wooden frame. And when a candle was placed and lit inside it, gorgeous plays of color and of shadow and light mesmerized my young eyes. Nowadays, sadly, a lot of the lanterns come made of hard, unromantic plastic and worse still, are battery operated! No candles required! But, but… that’s what lanterns are all about, surely.

These ones catche my eye – lotus shaped lanterns that are still made from paper. A rather uncommon design I have to say. The more common ones are like the fishes hanging in the background (I can’t tell you how many of that design I had in my childhood!).

Unfortunately, for every paper lantern, there are several more gaudy plastic, battery-operated ones hanging near by.

Just looking at the lanterns… just being at the bazaar… tasting and sampling all the mooncakes… one can’t help but be caught up by and uplifted with a big, happy sense of festive exuberance. Yes, the Mid-Autumn Festival is definitely around the corner. In the meantime, I have eight more days to indulge and stuff myself silly with mooncakes!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

IMBB 8 – Part II: Boozy Potatoes

Yes, I know. I served up dessert (IMBB 8 – Part I) before the savory course. But that’s not too unusual, given how much I love desserts and how, when dining out, that is the section of the menu I always peruse first, before making any decisions about what I will order for the rest of my meal!

This dish wasn’t a planned IMBB entry; it just sort of happened. On Friday evening, I was flipping through my newest gem of a cookbook find, “The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen” by Eric Gower. [This is a very interesting and lovely cookbook ; almost all the recipes sound and look tempting, and also seem incredibly simple to execute. The fusion food angle is very subtle and fine-tuned; nothing ridiculous – no wild and unrestrained dumping together of any and every ingredient into a frenzied marriage of East and West. It’s not fusion for the sake of fusion; Gower seems to have an innate understanding and sensibility about Japanese cooking which comes through. And he does a good job of coupling this with his Western culinary background. I’m really enjoying this book – especially now, after I’ve tasted the results of this potato recipe.]

Anyway, as I was saying - I was flipping through the book, looking for general food ideas and inspiration, when I came across this page. The title leapt out at me: Boozy Japanese Potatoes. Now, how could anyone not stop and give their undivided attention to a heading like that. The picture was gorgeous. The recipe sounded wonderfully easy, simple and incredibly tasty. I just had to try this. I decided this was what I was going to serve up for Sunday brunch. It was only as I was cooking the potatoes that it occurred to me that this was absolutely perfect for this month’s IMBB. And thus, this bonus post - on top of my original IMBB entry of the “spirited” chiffon cakes.

These potatoes are sooooo incredibly tasty. Really lip-smackingly good. They taste even better than they look in the photos. They’re also truly very boozy! A substantial quantity of sake is used for not very many potatoes; and that’s what makes this dish a stunner. The delightful burst of sake flavors that comes with each bite is powerful yet delicate, dominant yet restrained and subtle; the balance is fine-tuned and… just perfect.

This recipe is so easy and simple to prepare, and the end flavors belie that ease and simplicity. I can definitely see myself making this time and again – not just for brunch, but as a wonderful accompaniment for all sorts of meat and fish dishes.

Boozy Japanese Potatoes
[adapted from The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen – Eric Gower]

Serves 2

2 medium-large potatoes *
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil **
1 cup sake ***
2 to 2½ tablespoons light soy sauce
1 tablespoon butter

* The firmer, yellow-fleshed potatoes work best (I used Dutch yellow potatoes), as they hold their shapes better and do not break apart so easily.

** Or any other vegetable cooking oil, if preferred.

*** I don’t think this has to be top notch, expensive sake; any drinkable sake will do.

• Bring a large pot of water to a boil.

• Scrub and peel the potatoes, and cut them into 10 or 12 pieces each (depending on size of potatoes).

• Add them to the boiling water and cook for about 10 minutes. [Do not overcook; they should be somewhat tender and yet still have some firmness and bite to them. They will be cooked for a further 15-20 minutes later, and you don’t want them disintegrating on you and becoming a mushy mess.]

• Drain well.

• Heat a large nonstick skillet. Add the oil, then the potato pieces. Move them around so that they are all nicely coated with the oil. Cook on high heat for about 5 minutes, sautéing occasionally, until they are lightly browned.

• Pour in the sake (this will create a right noisy sizzle; it’s okay – there’s no real danger here). Continue to cook on high heat for about 5 minutes, tossing and stirring the potatoes frequently, until the sake almost disappears. [When you first add the sake, it will look excessive – as if the potatoes are swimming in the stuff, and you’re boiling or simmering the potatoes rather than frying them. Not to worry; it’s fine. The sake will slowly absorb and evaporate, and things will dry up again. Just be sure you aren’t overly enthusiastic with the tossing and stirring and start breaking up the potatoes.]

• Season with the soy sauce. Mix well, so that the potatoes are evenly coated with the thick brown sauce that has formed. Turn the heat down to low. Taste and add more soy sauce if necessary.

• Add the butter, stir and cook for another 5 minutes or so; until a crust has formed on the potatoes and each chunk is nicely brown and crispy on the outside.

• Serve immediately.

The play of flavors and textures is just wonderful. The aroma and taste of the sake is highlighted and lifted, yet mellowed and rounded out by the soy sauce. The neutral taste canvas of the potato provides a wonderful playground for this union of flavors.

And the icing on the potato must be the juxtaposition of the aromatic, crispy crust on the outside, and the tender, soft and fluffy flesh on the inside. Gorgeous!

There are only a few points that I have made a mental note of, for the next time I make these:

• It’s really important not to over-cook the potatoes at the boiling stage. Mine were a little overdone – we were busy poring over an article in the Sunday papers, and I momentarily forgot about the pot on the stove; the potatoes came out just a tad on the wrong side of soft. This meant that the surfaces started fluffing up and breaking down a little bit during the sautéing process, and impeded the crisping up of the crust.

• I would cut the potatoes into smaller pieces, to get more crispy crust to every bite.

• I’m also thinking that it might perhaps be more effective to use a non-stick wok, instead of a skillet. The former will probably give a better and more even distribution of heat, and help produce an even more delectable crust on the potatoes.

For brunch, I served these with some smoked salmon that were drizzled over with a light wasabi dressing, but I would have most happily eaten the potatoes on their own. They were seriously good.

It was a very spirited, warm, tingly and satisfying start to a relaxed and leisurely Sunday.

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

IMBB 8 – Part I: Two “Spirited” Chiffon Sisters

Random food ideas sometimes have a funny way of creeping – unannounced and most often uninvited – into my consciousness. And very often, once there, they refuse to leave until I get off my derriere and do something active about them – in the kitchen; creating whatever entity it is that has been preoccupying my mind. Occasionally, these ad hoc “inspirations” (if you can call them that) feel like insidious invasions; they can be triggered by the most innocent of stimuli, and yet, once happily ensconced within the recesses of my mind, they simply will not budge until I bring them to life in the physical dimension.

Take for instance my recent bout of “preoccupation” with chiffon cakes. It started with a grocery buying trip to Carrefour hypermarket. I happened to stroll past the rack displaying rows and rows of pandan chiffon cakes. The huge sign above them screamed their special offer price of only $2.99 (US$1.75) for one whole cake. Sub-consciously, I mused: why is it that chiffon cakes in this part of the world are almost invariably pandan-flavored? I mean, they are ubiquitous in all the supermarkets and bakeries. They all look the same, taste pretty much the same, and in all likelihood all come from the same one (or maybe two) factories. The most exciting that life gets for a chiffon cake here is perhaps to be flavored in chocolate rather than pandan!

And that was the simple trigger that set off a whole chain of baking activity. Once started, the thoughts on chiffon cakes could not be stemmed. Even as I continued to place items into my shopping cart, my mind stayed resolutely on chiffon cakes. I’ve never made a chiffon cake before. Would you believe? Decades ago, in the time before commercially available chiffon cakes, my mum used to bake them quite regularly – also in the pandan flavor. But it has been literally decades since I’ve last eaten a home-made chiffon cake (I mean, at only a few dollars for a whole cake in the shops, few can be bothered to heat up the oven and make one from scratch). I’ve even forgotten what a “true” chiffon cake tastes like – my only active memories are of not-terribly-exciting, hardly-very-tasty commercial ones. Hmmmm… maybe… maybe I should try my hand at making a chiffon cake. Maybe I can jazz it up a little, and give it a more exciting spin…

The thought would not go away. The only way to appease it and put it to rest was to get into the kitchen and make that chiffon cake.

So out came my mum’s treasured 30-year-old recipe notebook. As I flipped through the carefully handwritten pages, I came across several chiffon cake recipes. On the whole, there were little differences between them – some called for a couple more eggs, while others had slight variations to the method for mixing the batter. I kind of picked several ideas from here, a couple more from there, and settled on a recipe that I felt I wanted to try.

After the basic recipe had been decided upon, I became quite taken with the idea of using nuts or at least the flavor of nuts in the cake. I wondered why chiffon cakes were never (not that I’ve seen at least) made with nuts. I would have thought nuts would add a delicious fragrance to the cake. Yep. That was it. I was going to try to make an almond flavored chiffon cake. However, in order to keep the texture light, I didn’t want to add nuts (ground or otherwise) into the cake batter itself. Almond essence as flavoring didn’t seem ideal either ; I sometimes found it to be too obvious and jarring. Then it struck me: why not liven things up a bit at the same time, and push the envelope even further - I could use amaretto in the batter (and maybe only sprinkle almond slices on the top of the cake). Now, I had never seen a boozy chiffon cake before, so I wasn’t sure what effect, if any, the alcohol would have on the texture of the batter. But it sounded exciting enough to give it a shot.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Before we get to the cake though, let’s talk about the chiffon cake pan (which, if I’m not wrong is identical to what is known as the angel food pan in the US).

This is a very deep (oh, maybe about 6 to 8 inches tall) cake pan, with a removable bottom that has a tall, hollow tube – or “chimney” as I called it when I was a little girl! – extending from the center.

Now, the traditionalists will tell you that chiffon cakes cannot be baked in anything other than a chiffon cake pan. I guess it’s similar to traditionalists in the West saying that angel food cakes can only be baked in an angel food pan. [Here’s a stray thought : the angel food cake and the chiffon cakes are close cousins, in my belief. But while the angel food cake is ubiquitous in the US, it’s rarely found or used here. And if I’m not wrong, the chiffon cake is not that common in the US. Or, perhaps more accurately, what is known as “chiffon cake” in the US and Europe seems, to me, to be quite different from what we know as “chiffon cake” here in Asia. I guess the “Asian chiffon cake”, if you will, is our version of the angel food cake – albeit with egg yolks and a touch of oil in it; whereas, the chiffon cake that is more common in the West seems to be an enriched sponge cake (maybe someone can confirm or correct me on this), which is almost always used in layer cakes and such like, and is hardly ever eaten on its own; unlike the Asian chiffon which is almost always eaten as is. Okay, sorry… miscreant, long-winded thoughts are now back under control… let’s move on.]

As for which cake pans to use or not use, my personal stand is that I think chiffon (and angel food cakes for that matter) can be baked in regular pans – only that the texture of the cake may be somewhat different, for the simple reason of the difference in heat distribution (and also the cooking time). My choice of pan will really depend on what I intend to do with the chiffon cake. If I am using the chiffon as a cake base for a filled or layered cake, or for a roulade, the regular cake pans are the natural choice. But if I want to eat the chiffon cake as is, and really want to savor that cloud-like fluffy lightness that is unique to the chiffon, I think it will have to be the chiffon cake pan.

Here’s an important tip for using the chiffon cake pan: do not line, grease or flour the pan – the cake batter should be poured into a completely dry pan. Why? Well, apparently, the chiffon cake has to be cooled in a very specific way as soon as it comes out of the oven. All my mum’s recipes have this instruction highlighted and marked for special attention. And in past conversations with aunts and friends of my mum’s, they have all mentioned this “required” cake-cooling quirk.

The cake pan, fresh out of the oven, has to be immediately inverted over a bottle, and left there, sitting upside-down, until the cake has completely cooled. My mum even jotted in the margin of one of her recipes : ideally, there should be about 4-5 inches of space between the cake pan and the counter top, to allow for maximum circulation of air!

Cooling the cake in this manner prevents the cake from sinking back onto itself as it sits in the pan. “Hanging” it upside-down ensures a truly fluffy, melt-in-the-mouth, tender crumb.

And if a totally ungreased, unfloured and unlined pan is used, the cake will stay in the pan until it has cooled completely, and will not decide to make a premature exit and do a belly flop onto the table!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For the amaretto chiffon, I simply tweaked the basic recipe (which follows at the end of the post) a little:

• Half the amount of water was replaced with an equal volume of amaretto (almond flavored liqueur).

• Instead of using cooking oil, I decided to use melted reduced fat margarine instead.

• The sugar was reduced from the stipulated 8oz (225g or 1c) in the recipe to 5oz. [For some reason, on the spur of the moment, I – uncharacteristically – decided to drastically cut the amount of sugar. While I’m not one for throat-scratchingly sweet cakes and desserts, I’m also not one to hastily cut the sugar quantities in recipes; I do believe a degree of sweetness is required for cakes and desserts to be palatable. Anyway, to cut a long story short, on impulse, I decided 1 cup of sugar was a little excessive and cut it to just 5/8 cup. This was a mistake, as you will see later.]

• Finally, about 30g of sliced blanched almonds were sprinkled over the batter just before it went into the oven.

The results pleased me in many ways, but were also a little disappointing in a couple of respects.

What I found quite stunning was the wonderfully fine-crumbed texture of the cake…

It was pillowy soft ; fluffy with an almost melt-in-the-mouth feel to it. The weave of the crumb was delicate and finely meshed, with no major holes. Really quite gorgeous. I had forgotten what a “real” chiffon cake felt like on the palate; so used was I to the somewhat coarser and drier textures of the store-bought versions.

While the texture was absolutely pleasurable, there were, however, a couple of let-downs in the taste department.

It was a major mistake to have cut the sugar at all, let alone by so much. The cake had almost no sweetness to it, and as such left a rather nasty, almost metallic-like bland after-taste in the mouth, which lingered long after the cake had been eaten and digested. Not pleasant at all. Everyone complained about the lack of sweetness and that awful aftertaste. Lesson learnt – do not willfully wield the knife, so to speak, where sugar amounts are concerned. As my mum is forever telling me: it’s a cake; it’s meant to have some degree of sweetness to it. Well, consider me sufficiently chastised.

I ended up plonking the cake into the fridge, knowing that, if eaten chilled, what little sweetness that was there would be somewhat highlighted and enhanced. So we ended up eating the cake like bread really – spread with some fruit preserves, or for me, with some Nutella.

What thrilled me though was how well the texture held up even after the cake had been chilled. I ate many pieces (often several pieces at one go) straight out of the fridge (I didn’t even bother to pop them into the toaster), and the texture, even when cold, was still dreamily soft, tender and fluffy. Amazing!

The other let-down in taste was the amaretto. It was too subtle; barely discernible after the baking. Although the flavors were slightly intensified with refrigeration, the liqueur was still too much of an indistinct background note, as opposed to being the central flavor anchor, as I had originally intended. I should have replaced all the liquids with amaretto instead.

I had also forgotten to add the vanilla (I only realized the omission just as I was putting the cake into the oven). I think the vanilla, had I remembered to include it, would have helped pull the almond flavors and the sweetness together a little better.

So, overall, the cake was a little hit-and-miss: stupendously good in some ways, and quite a dismal let-down in others.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now, coincidentally enough, on the very day I made this amaretto chiffon cake - some two weeks ago - I found out that the theme for this month’s IMBB was food with wine or spirits in them. How uncanny, I thought. And what a perfect excuse to make another liqueur-infused chiffon cake, and to further fine-tune my chiffon recipe.

So, a few days later, in spite of protestations from the family, wary as they were of another bland chiffon outing, I was back in the kitchen, baking my second chiffon cake.

I’m not one for repetition and monotony in the kitchen; nothing bores me more than having to make the exact same recipe again, especially so soon after the last time I made it. I can never resist the urge to tweak, to play with the flavors, to experiment and to just have some fun with the food.

I just couldn’t bring myself to make another amaretto chiffon cake. A quick rummage through the liqueur cabinet revealed a forgotten and neglected half bottle of kahlua. Who knows how long it had been sitting there, abandoned after some dinner party, no longer desired or wanted. And that brought on the proverbial “light bulb blinking furiously” moment. A kahlua chiffon cake! Now, wouldn’t that be something?

Still using the same basic recipe but with the following adjustments:

• The full volume of liquids in the recipe was replaced with kahlua. I also dissolved about 2 teaspoons of instant coffee powder into the liqueur, just to intensify the coffee flavors a little more.

• I remembered to add the vanilla!

• Just out of curiosity, this time I used cooking oil, as per my mum’s original recipe, instead of melted margarine/butter – I wanted to see if this would affect the cake in any way.

• The sugar levels were restored to 1 cup or 225g.

• I decided to fold in some finely grated unsweetened 75% dark chocolate, with two purposes in mind : to help bring out, lift and round out the coffee flavors even more, and also to create a nice speckled effect in the cake.

• Oh, and one more thing. I was slightly unhappy with the few cracks that had surfaced in the amaretto cake (see top picture). They were nothing major, but I was feeling finicky. So, I thought I would try the good old “towel trick” on the chiffon cake. Would it work as well with a tube pan as it did with loaf pans?

Everything went well – up until it came time to cool the cake. As I turned the cake pan onto the bottle, I suddenly felt a lot less secure and confident than I had done with the amaretto cake. I thought to myself silently: please don’t fall out. And barely had the thought crossed my mind, the cake did the unthinkable… it made a majestic flop, out of the cake pan, onto the counter top! My jaw followed suit just as quickly.

Picking my chin off the counter and remembering to breathe again, I hastily attempted to turn the still steaming hot cake onto a wire rack, all the time muttering in exasperation to the cake: “you really didn’t have to listen to me and do exactly as I said this time, you know - I would have been quite happy for you to disobey just this once”. Fortunately for me, it seemed that I was the only one who suffered a horrific sinking feeling ; whilst my heart sank to the pit of my stomach, the cake, on the other hand, remained proudly tall and firm. Thank goodness!

The only tell-tale sign of its quick escape from the confines of the cake pan was the two deep imprints left by the spatulas I used to lift the finger-burningly hot cake off the counter top and onto the wire rack. Well, at least there were no cracks in the surface of the cake. That was what I wanted, wasn’t it? Ah! The joy in seeking the little blessings in life!

This kahlua chiffon was an improvement on the amaretto in several ways, but lost out a touch to the latter in other ways.

I really liked the crust on this one – gorgeously golden brown with just the right amount of thickness and crustiness to it; I had found the amaretto crust a little “under-developed”.

The flavors were also wonderfully well-developed; highly redolent of the kahlua, which was nicely rounded out by the chocolate. The aromas were quite hypnotizing. Even as the cake was baking, it smelt like I had freshly brewed coffee in the oven!

And this time, the sweetness was just right.

The speckled effect created by the chocolate was as pretty as I had imagined it would be – especially against the soothing café latte colored backdrop of the cake. (I of course had to choose one of the least speckled piece of cake to take a shot of!)

There were two things I was less enthusiastic about. First, the texture of the cake. Don’t get me wrong – the cake still had a wonderfully refined crumb, with a soft, fluffy bite. But I just couldn’t help noticing that the texture was just a touch rougher than the exquisitely smooth amaretto cake. The rest of the family didn’t notice it, but it seemed distinctly different to me. Perhaps you can see it too – comparing the above picture with the ones of the amaretto chiffon. And I think this variation was due entirely to the use of cooking oil rather than melted butter (or even melted low fat margarine).

I was truly surprised at the distinct difference such a small change in the recipe would bring to the texture. Who would have thought. A quick check with one of my baking cookbooks confirmed that the choice of fat (between oil and melted butter) did indeed impact the resultant texture. This made me wonder why all the chiffon cake recipes that I have ever seen called for cooking oil to be used. Perhaps it just seemed a lot more convenient to measure out 2 tablespoons of oil rather than to have to melt and cool the butter.

Whether this difference in texture applies to all sorts of cakes, or just to chiffon cakes I do not know.

Finally, the second revelation I got from this cake was that the “towel trick” was a definite no-no where chiffon cakes were concerned. Not only did it prevent the cake from obediently staying in the pan until it was cooled, but it also produced a very nasty tacky, pappy feel to the outer rim of the cake – the side of the cake that was in contact with the towel-wrapped side of the cake pan. It was quite awful, and we had to trim off all the sides to make the cake feel good both in the hand and mouth.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So, two “spirited” chiffon cakes later, I have had mixed results – I adored the texture of the amaretto one, but loved the flavors of the kahlua sister. Hopefully, it’ll be third time lucky for me, where chiffon cakes are concerned at least… maybe, just maybe, by then, I’ll have an all-round winner on my hands.

And now, finally, we’ve come to the recipe. Thank you for your patience in staying with me and reading this far!

Without much further ado, here it is…

Basic Chiffon Cake

6 oz (170g or a scant 1½ cups) Softasilk cake flour *
1½ teaspoons baking powder
6 large egg yolks
8 oz (225g or 1 cup) caster sugar – divided
4 oz (120ml or ½ cup) water **
2 tablespoons (30g) butter – melted and cooled ***
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 large egg whites
½ teaspoon cream of tartar

* I used Top Flour (a superfine cake flour) instead, as that was what I had on hand, and it worked fine.

** Can be replaced with equal volume of liqueur or other forms of flavored liquids.

*** Reduced fat margarine also works well.

• Preheat oven to 175C.

• Combine the flour and baking powder. Sift three times. (I know, that is a heck of a lot of sifting; but the reward is really in the final texture of the cake – never mind what other cookbooks may say. Okay, if truly feeling lazy, you can get away with sifting twice.)

• With an electric mixer, beat together, at low speed, the egg yolks and half (it doesn’t have to be exact – an approximation will do) the sugar, until light and creamy (approximately 5 minutes or so).

• On low speed, mix in half the sifted flour.

• Add the liquids – the water/liqueur and the melted butter – and beat to combine.

• Add the rest of the flour, and mix in on low speed. The batter will be rather thick; almost like a stretchy, sticky dough. Set aside.

• Whisk the egg whites and the cream of tartar on medium-high speed until foamy. Slowly dribble in the reserved half cup of sugar and continue to whisk until the whites form glossy, firm but non-dry peaks.

• Fold the egg whites into the yolk batter. (It’s okay if you have to beat the first couple of batches of the meringue into the batter fairly vigorously – no harm will be done. Just be sure to gently fold in the rest, once the batter has lightened sufficiently.)

• Pour batter into an ungreased, unfloured and unlined chiffon cake pan. Smartly but gently tap the cake pan on the surface of the table, to release any trapped air bubbles.

• Bake in 175C oven for 40-45 minutes. Do not open the oven door during the cooking time (at least until the last few minutes or so). Immediately invert the cake pan over a bottle, and leave to cool completely before unmoulding.

Variations
Amaretto Chiffon – Replace water with equal volume of amaretto (almond-flavored liqueur). Sprinkle about 30g of sliced almonds on the surface of the batter before putting the cake into the oven.

Kahlua Chiffon – Replace water with equal volume of Kahlua (or Tia Maria – or any other coffee-flavored liqueur), and dissolve 2 teaspoons of dry instant coffee powder into the liqueur. Finely grate about 1½ oz (about 45g) of dark bitter or bittersweet chocolate, and fold into batter just before pouring into the cake pan.

Hazelnut Chiffon – Replace water with 3 oz (90ml) of a hazelnut-flavored liqueur, mixed with 2 tablespoons of Nutella. Some chopped hazelnuts can also be sprinkled over the batter before it goes into the oven.

Lemon / Lime / Orange Chiffon – Replace water with equal volume of the desired citrus juice. Alternatively, used a lemon or orange flavored liqueur. Fold in 2-3 tablespoons of the grated zest of the fruit.

Postscript
I’m still looking for a knock-me-down, drop-dead gorgeous chiffon cake recipe, so if you have a tried-and-tested one that you do not mind sharing, I would love to hear from you.
Thank you!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

Matrimony is Good for Your Eyes

That title probably caught your attention!

But no, I’m not talking about marriage, but rather the “vegetable” Matrimony Vine. This is actually the branch and leaves of the same plant from which the Chinese wolfberry (gou qi) comes. In Chinese, the vine is (naturally) referred to as “gou qi cai” (in Mandarin) or “kou kay choi” (in Cantonese). [In other parts of South East Asia, it takes on the names “daun koki” (Indonesia) and “phon kao ki” (Thailand).]

Just as the dried fruit (gou qi) is very often used in Chinese cooking – most commonly in soups, both sweet and savory – so too are the leaves of the Lycium Chinensis plant cooked and eaten.

While the Chinese wolfberry is commonly accepted to have wonderful beneficial qualities for eyes, given its high beta carotene content, its leaves are less often associated with the same health benefits. However, a lot of Chinese families hold the belief, as passed down from generation to generation, that this vegetable also has amazing restorative powers for the eyes.

My uncle (mum’s older brother) for one is a firm believer. He used to often tell the story of how as a young lad, he suddenly suffered a loss of vision – not totally, but enough that he had the barest and the fuzziest of sight only. In those days (1950s), in this part of the world, top-notch specialist eye care was rare. Doctors simply told him he was going to lose his sight, and there was nothing they could do for him. In a panic, my grandmother cooked and fed him this gou qi cai, boiled into soup with the wolfberries, every day. And after a period of time, his sight was fully restored. He is now a professor of biology and he still stands by the curative powers of this vegetable!

Less dramatically, I remember as kids, all my cousins and I found, especially around the time of our exams (when we were - supposedly – mugging away at our books), that this vegetable appeared with alarming alacrity at our dinner tables. I guess our mothers fed us on the basis of the motto “bright eyes, clear eyesight… all the better to study with”!

To this day, we still cook this vegetable very regularly – either in soup or sautéed. I tend to eat it now more for the taste – which I really enjoy; the health benefits are just bonuses on the side. I like the ‘unique’ texture of this vegetable; it is not crunchy or crisp like most other vegetables. Instead, once cooked, it has a very soft, smooth tenderness to it, with a tiny touch of bite.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Soup is probably the most common way of cooking the gou qi cai. It’s a mighty simple thing to cook. The only “troublesome” bit is the prepping of the matrimony vine leaves – not difficult, just highly time-consuming.

The stems and branches are not eaten; only the leaves are used. So, each leaf has to be painstakingly snipped from the vine. For us, we like to remove the stem completely (as seen in the picture above), so that there is no trace of any “tough”, chewy bits in the vegetable. This makes for incredibly tender leaves that almost melt in the mouth after cooking.

This is a painless (and almost enjoyable) activity to do when you’re just sitting around the kitchen table in the afternoon having a chat and a cup of tea; half an hour passes a lot quicker when you have company and interesting conversation!

Once trimmed, the leaves are thoroughly washed and drained, ready to be cooked. The branches are not discarded just yet though… they still have one final use before they go into the trash can.

Gou Qi Cai Soup

• Bring a pot of water (with enough liquid to make up the amount of soup you want) to a rolling boil. Pop in the bald branches (folded, so that they fit into the pot), and leave to simmer for about 20 minutes or so. [This is just to flavor the soup and extract the nutrition and vitamins from the branches before they are discarded.]

• Remove and discard the gou qi cai sticks.

• Put one chicken breast (skin removed) into the soup and simmer for about 20 minutes. [Feel free to use chicken bones or pork bones if those are preferred.]

• Add the gou qi cai leaves and about 1-2 generously heaped tablespoons of Chinese wolfberries (gou qi). On low heat, simmer, uncovered, for about 10 minutes or until the leaves are nicely tender.

• In the meantime, lightly beat several eggs (we usually use around three; more if serving a larger group of people), and season with a dash of light soy sauce, a pinch of sugar and a sprinkling of ground white pepper.

• Bring the soup back to a rolling boil, and pour in the lightly beaten eggs. Stir gently to break up the eggs. Remove the pot from the flame and allow the eggs to finish cooking in the residual heat ; do not overcook the eggs. [For this particular soup, I tend to prefer the eggs chunky. You may choose to swirl the eggs to form thin, elongated strands instead.]

* If a more full-bodied flavor is desired, the soup can also be seasoned with salt to taste or half a square of MSG-free, low sodium bouillon cube.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Another way that we very often cook this gou qi cai is to stir-fry it with eggs – almost like an omelette or even an egg pancake. I’m not sure if other families cook it this way; I haven’t seen it outside of my extended family. But this is rather tasty, I find – and great for those who don’t like soups, or don’t like their soups chunky and filled with lots of vegetables.

This omelette is hardly classy, elegant food – not by a long shot. However, what it doesn’t have going for it in the looks department, it does compensate for in the satiation department. This is essentially another one of those homey, down-to-earth, comforting soul foods that never fail to tug at the heartstrings.

Gou Qi Cai Omelette

• Cut some carrots into very fine juliennes.

• Add a little bit of oil to a hot wok, and sauté some minced garlic until fragrant but not colored. Drop in the carrots and fry until almost tender.

• Put in the washed and well-drained gou qi cai leaves and toss briefly. Cover the wok and allow to steam-cook for about 5 minutes or until leaves are tender. Do not add any water. [The leaves will leech some liquids, but that’s okay. These will be “absorbed” once the eggs go in.]

• Uncover, season with some salt to taste. Mix well.

• Lightly beat three eggs (or however many you would like to put in), and season them with a dash of light soy sauce, a pinch of sugar and a sprinkling of ground pepper.

• Slowly dribble the eggs into the wok. Let the eggs to set a little; resist the urge to ‘stir-fry’ the eggs at this point – this will produce mushy clumps of eggs.

• Once the eggs have set a little, flip the vegetable/egg mixture over (like flipping a pancake) and cook the other side.

• When the eggs are fully set, remove from the heat.

The eggs and vegetables take on a pancake-like form. The eggs will have a slightly subdued coloring due to the juices from the gou qi cai; the taste is not affected. [I’ve never tried this, as it’s way too fiddly for me, but if the duller coloring bothers you too much, simply drain the juices that are released by the gou qi cai before adding the eggs. This will ensure the colors of the eggs stay bright and cheery.]

What is it that they say about eyes being windows to the soul? So, maybe the matrimony vine can also have some knock-on effects in the marriage sphere after all.

Here’s to bright, sparkling and captivating eyes!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

A Light Caress Upon My Palate

After yesterday’s meaty post, I thought today I would write about something light and delicate, and yet very sustaining, soothing and restorative.

Chinese soups can be terribly involved, elaborate and time-consuming things to cook up; all that business of double-boiling or even just long, patient slow-cooking. But they don’t have to be. There are days when you just want something warm and soupy; something to calm and comfort tired and frazzled nerves - and yet, you just don’t have the energy, time or inclination to fiddle in the kitchen. On days like those, a soup like this fits the bill perfectly.

This is one of the simplest, least fussy soups I know. It looks and sounds deceptively plain; but it has an appealing light, refreshing quality to it. The flavors are very delicate – a very light body with a subtle natural sweetness.

I like my soups very chunky – the ingredients usually far outweigh the soup itself. For me, it’s more a case of “eating” soup than drinking it. But it’s all highly amenable to adaptation to suit personal preferences; simply adjust the quantities and the ingredients to your desires. As such, there aren’t any fixed measurements in the recipe.

Wong Bok Soup

Chinese cabbage (“wong bok”) *, cut into chunky pieces
1 chicken breast, skin removed
1 big piece fresh ginger, smashed
½ piece bouillon cube **

* I like using the Chinese cabbage with the slightly greener, crinkier leaves (from Australia); I find them to be sweeter, crisper and also more tender than the yellow leaves variety (from China).

** Instead of using salt, I prefer to add a small amount of MSG-free, low-sodium bouillon cube to give the soup an enhanced depth of flavor. It’s pretty much up to you what you would prefer to do.

• In a thermal or standard soup pot, bring some water (however much is needed to serve everyone) to a boil.

• Add the skinned chicken breast and the ginger, and leave to simmer on a low flame for about 20-30 minutes. [In this particular instance, my “poultry guy” had, that morning, given me a bunch of chicken gizzards – something I absolutely adored as a child; simply boiled and dipped into dark soy sauce – so those went in too, together with the chicken breast.] ^

• Return the soup to a boil, add the vegetables and the bouillon cube, and allow to simmer for a mere 10 minutes or so, or until the cabbage is at the desired tenderness. [If seasoning the soup with salt, you may wait until the end to do so.]

• Serve hot.

I tend to cook the cabbage until it is very soft and tender; I find it helps to bring out the wonderful, delicate natural sweetness of the vegetable, which I enjoy very much. Some may prefer a cabbage that still has a slight crunchy bite to it; simply adjust the cooking time accordingly.

For me, this is just another (very light, healthy) way to eat my veggies! Plus, I get to drink some warm, soothing soup as a bonus.

^ In case Singaporean readers are wondering, this soup was cooked many weeks back, in the days pre-fresh chicken ban; I’ve only just today managed to dig out the photo from under a pile of unposted photos. So, no, I do not have some top-secret, even-the-Government-doesn’t-know-about-it source for fresh chicken gizzards!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

Two Ways to a Ribbin’ Good Time

I love ribs. I don’t eat them that often - simply because they aren’t the leanest part of the pig. But they are easily one of the most enjoyable parts to eat. And there are times when I like (and want) nothing more than to sink my teeth into some juicy, succulent ribs. Ah! The indescribable and intense pleasure that can be derived from a piece of deeply flavorful, meaty yet meltingly tender piece of pork rib!

I happen to find eating ribs to be an incredibly sensual - and sensuous - experience. It’s all tied in with the whole notion of eating foods with your fingers; foods that are moist and oozing with juices; foods that are slightly messy… and thus fun… and sexy. I really think the tactile aspect of eating is too often missing, when, really, it should be an integral part of the experience. It’s amazing how much richer, more intense and profoundly satisfying a meal can feel when eaten with our fingers.

Ever since I came up with my little char siew recipe, I’ve had this little niggling thought playing in my head. It simply refuses to go away. No matter how much I “shoo” and wave it away, it always comes back. It’s quite determined that it will not be ignored. So in the end, I have given in to it.

I am very pleasantly surprised by the very positive responses that the char siew recipe has been receiving, not only from my own family and friends, who’ve been clamoring for the dish with alarming frequency, but also from so many readers who have tried the recipe and enjoyed it tremendously. Several readers have come back to tell me about how they have cooked the char siew on a grill and how wonderful that added layer of smokiness tastes. That has been the spark that triggered that little niggling thought : I really, really want to make some char siew ribs. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. I just feel the char siew marinade will make for some wonderfully sumptuous ribs.

But I am a lazy cook. I’m not about to lug out the grill, set it up, start the fire, blah, blah, blah… So I’m thinking : ribs can be done in the oven – to equally good results, I’m sure. And so with a light-hearted, eager spring to my step, I’m in the kitchen in a jiffy, doing what I love: playing with my food! This is going to be fun!

First Attempt: Oven Roasted Char Siew Ribs

My initial instinct is to simply cook the ribs in a similar way to the char siew – that is, pop them onto a rack in a roasting pan and cook them in the oven whilst basting them periodically – but probably at a lower temperature and for a longer period of time than the char siew. I want ribs with fall-of-the-bone tenderness and yet are supremely moist and juicy.

For the marinade, I use the exact same char siew recipe, but without the food coloring, and doubled the quantity; I want enough marinade to cover the full rack of ribs.

The cleaned ribs are placed into the prepared marinade and left to macerate in the fridge for about 30 hours or so (this is arbitrary; overnight will do).

30-45 minutes before the ribs are to be cooked, they are removed from the fridge and allowed to come back to room temperature. Meanwhile, the oven is preheated to 180C.

The roasting pan is lined with foil (to make for easier clean-up later) and a rack placed in it. Onto the rack goes the ribs, after which they are given a good brushing of the marinade, tented with foil and popped into the oven.

And that is basically it. I simply come back every half hour or so to baste the ribs with more of the marinade (which I, in the meantime, pop onto the stove-top to cook through). Oh, and the temperature is reduced to about 150C after the first half hour.

The ribs smell incredible as they are cooking; the whole house fills with the glorious smell of roasting meat overlayed with the special aroma of char siew flavors.

The ribs are cooked for about 3 hours in total. And the final result? They are very good indeed, but still not 100% what I am looking for.

Even though the ribs are kept tented with the foil throughout the cooking process, they still get a little too charred for my liking (much as I love crispy, charred bits on meat) – due to the large quantity of maltose and sugar in the marinade. (See top picture).

While the ribs in the middle of the slab are gorgeously tender, moist, succulent and juicy, the meat on either end of the slab is a tad dry. Not inedibly so; but enough that I notice. And enough that I want to continue to tweak the recipe and create the ribs that my mind has pictured.

On that particular night, I served the ribs over mee sua (or mian sian) (thin white noodles), and it went down stupendously well with the family.

Everyone loved the combination of noodles with the char siew gravy poured over. And it was indeed delicious!

However, scrumptious as it was, I feel it still needs a little bit of adjustment… the gravy is just a tad too sweet, I think. Maybe I shouldn’t do a straightforward doubling of the marinade ingredients.

Another thing that I want to change: this method just seems a little too fiddly for my comfort. Sure, there isn’t any major work involved, by any stretch of the imagination; the meat just sits in the oven for 3 hours. But I have to keep coming back to baste the meat ; that is already too much fiddling for me! I want something that requires even less effort than that ; something that will pretty much cook itself, without me needing to give it a second thought. (Yes, I know, I do make high demands of my food!)

So, a week later, it is back in the kitchen, and a second attempt at my char siew ribs…

Second Attempt: Oven Braised Char Siew Ribs

This time, I adjust the marinade slightly from the original recipe. (This is again for a double portion of the sauce.)

• 11 tablespoons light soy sauce
• 4 tablespoons dark soy sauce
• 9 tablespoons rice wine
• 8 tablespoons hoisin sauce
• 5 tablespoons sugar
• 8 generous tablespoons maltose
• 8 pieces ginger, peeled and smashed
• 8 cloves garlic, whole, peeled and smashed

Again, the ribs are left to marinate in the fridge for a good 30 hours or so.

For the cooking method, I decide to “borrow” an idea from Alton Brown. Some time ago, while aimlessly surfing around foodtv.com, I came across a recipe for baby back ribs that Alton Brown featured on his show. The method that he used intrigued me. (Sorry, I can’t for the world of me remember the exact recipe that I read, nor can I seem to find it again. I don’t even remember what style of ribs it was; I only remember thinking that the method used to cook the ribs was interesting and I made a mental note to try it out at some point.)

In practical terms, Alton’s method calls for the ribs to be oven-braised. The meat is laid inside a “pocket” of aluminium foil; sauce is poured into the “pocket”, which is then sealed, slid onto a baking sheet and put into the oven for 2½ hours. I don’t remember the exact temperature that Alton cooked the ribs at; I do recall thinking at the time that it was a surprisingly low temperature for a relatively short cooking time. No matter. I just want to use the idea of his method, and to see how well it will work with my char siew ribs.

I simplify the “foil-pocket-making” a little: I place a double layer of foil in a roasting pan, leaving generous amount of foil on all four sides. The ribs are placed onto the foil, meat side down, and the marinade* poured over it (the meat should be nearly covered by the marinade). Another sheet of foil is placed on top, and sealed on all four sides.

* After taking the meat out of the marinade, and removing the garlic and ginger pieces, I add about ½ cup of hot water to the sauce. One simple reason for this: I want plenty of gravy leftover at the end (everyone seems to want copious amounts of the stuff to pour over rice, noodles or whatever it is that they seem to love doing with the gravy. There is no worry about diluting the gravy, as all the flavors intensify anyway during the cooking process. However, if creating lots and lots of gravy is not your priority, then it is enough to simply pour the marinade over the ribs, without adding any water, so long as the ribs are at least half covered with the marinade, so as to ensure they don’t dry out as they cook – the ribs will also release some juices during the cooking.

So, into the oven goes the packet of foil-covered ribs, and they are cooked for the first 30 minutes at 180C and the subsequent 2 hours at 150C.

Once cooked, the ribs are taken out of the gravy (there are a lot of it left in the pan – just as I want), and the gravy is poured out. The ribs are returned to the roasting pan, meat side up, given a coat of the sauce and placed under the broiler for about 4-5 minutes – just to crisp up the outside and give it the requisite slightly charred, crispy bits.

The sauce is put into a pot, placed on the stove and left to simmer on the lowest flame for about 15-20 minutes or so, or until it has reduced a little to the right gravy consistency. (The sauce does not simmer quietly; but rather, it bubbles and gurgles – sometimes fairly noisily and aggressively – away to itself. Leave it be. It is happy enough doing that; simply give it a stir every few minutes or so to keep it under control.)

After the ribs come out from under the broiler, leave them to rest for about 10-15 minutes before serving.

And what can I say? The ribs look absolutely gorgeous! The meat is a glossy, shiny sheen of succulence, with just the right amount of slightly charred crispy bits around the edges.

The meat. Oh, the meat! Oh my! It is lip-smackingly good! It truly is. The ribs are cooked to tender perfection; fall-of-the-bone tender perfection. Indeed, one of the bones did literally fall off even as I transferred the meat from the roasting pan to the plate! It is that tender. And yet, there is still the right amount of toothsome meatiness. Just perfect. If I do say so myself.

The outside is nicely crisp, the inside meltingly soft, moist and oozing with juiciness. And this time, the flavorings are all spot on.

Wow, even I am stunned at how good the ribs are.

The difference in the tenderness and texture of the meat between this cooking method and the previous one is fairly stark. I definitely like this braising method a lot better.

I am quite satisfied and happy with the recipe as it stands. And I think this is one great party dish. It can be cooked in large batches (subject to oven size of course). Plus, it is so un-needy of attention. It’s something I can bung into the oven and pretty much forget about ; it quite happily cooks away in the background, leaving time to mingle with guests or just to sit back and relax. And of course, the final bonus: the char siew flavor is a delectable winner.

This is something I will quite happily make over and over again.

Note:
• The cooking times above are for baby backs. If using spare ribs, the cooking time will need to be lengthened accordingly.

• For those who may not want such melt-in-the-mouth, tender-textured meat (and there are a couple in my family who prefer a slightly meatier bite), the cooking time can be reduced to 2 to 2¼ hours in total – 20 to 30 minutes at 180C, and 1½ to 1¾ hours at 150C.

• Although I haven’t tried it, but I’m thinking that this will also probably work in a wok, if an oven is not easily available. That is, using a straightforward traditional braising method, without the foil wrapping. Timings may need to be adjusted slightly though. And the ribs can still be finished off under the broiler for a few minutes at the end, to give a slightly crispier outside.

Happy ribbin’!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

Secrets Rediscovered

Several weeks back, Angela and I were discussing, at some length, low-fat baking. (Wait, don’t click on that mouse just yet; read on, it won’t be boring – at least, not in my opinion anyways .) Both of us seem to have a fondness for baking and indulging in (everyday, if we had our way) all things sweet and dessert-y, and yet both of us have, of late, started on an “eat healthier” drive, which, unfortunately, doesn’t leave much room for “sinful” cakes and other baked goodies. So, we have an ongoing quest to find good, delicious and easy-to-make recipes that are healthy and yummy at the same time.

In one of her emails, Angela mentioned Sandra Woodruff’s “Secrets of Fat-Free Baking” and “Secrets of Fat-Free Desserts”. From the latter book, she had made a scrummy-looking apple-topped cheesecake, which not only looked good, but which she said also had the “wow” taste factor. At the time, I was in the midst of a business trip (this was way back in August sometime). “Secrets of Fat-Free Baking” sounded very familiar; I was quite sure I too had a copy of the book. As soon as I got home, I rummaged through my sagging and over-bulging (I guess it needed to go on a diet too) bookshelf; and yes! I did have a copy. I must have purchased it, oh, maybe 7-8 years ago, but I have probably used it only once in all that time! I don’t even remember what it was I made from the book, but I do have some vague, obscure memory that the results of that baking expedition were less than stellar. That was the one and only time I made anything from that book. Since then it had lain forlornly forgotten and neglected in a dusty corner of my bookshelf.

As I had yet to be disappointed by any of the cookbooks Angela had recommended to me, I figured it was time to give this book and its recipes a re-look. Besides, 7-8 years ago, my baking skills were, let’s just politely say, negligible at best! The dismal results I had experienced then were probably more to do with the baker than the recipe!

I gently took the book down from its hiding place on the shelf; I could almost hear it heave a sigh of relief and gratitude. I could have sworn it gave me a huge grin of welcome; it would have probably given me a hug too, if it could. It was just so glad that it had now been remembered and “rescued” from a lifetime of obscurity – that it was about to have purpose in life again; to be made useful once more. It even knew what it would take to get me to use one of its recipes…

As I opened up the book, it fell open on a page with a picture of oatmeal fudge squares. These looked good. They sounded good (and healthy too). I liked all things chocolatey. I liked oatmeal. I liked walnuts. I also liked easy as 1-2-3 recipes. And this recipe had it all. Okay, that did it. These fudgey squares would be my “return outing” with Secrets of Fat-Free Baking. Now, could there be a simpler way of picking out a recipe, I ask?

And you know what? These turned out pretty good. The squares were richly chocolatey (as the whole family proclaimed), moist and dense. These were not “fudge” as such; they were almost brownie-like – dark, rich, dense, moist, fudgey brownie-esque squares of yummy sweetness.

The texture was very interesting – there was a light nubbliness from the oatmeal which gave the squares a nice toothsome bite, and which, I thought, set off the rich, moist, smoothness of the dough rather nicely. Added to this: a sprinkling of crunchy, aromatic walnuts; it made for a rather more-ish combination. Just how more-ish? Well, almost as soon as they came out of the oven, I had four pieces of the stuff in one sitting! And we didn’t have any leftovers for the next day.

This is something I would quite happily make for regular eating – a daily treat sort of thing; when it is not a drop-dead, jaw-hanging, weak-in-the-knees dessert that you are looking for, but rather when you just want a tasty, wholesome, sweet indulgence.

The recipe is so simple and fuss-free that you could even make it for breakfast if you are so inclined, and have something warm and indulgent to start the day with. This takes all of 10-15 minutes to put together, and another 20 or so minutes in the oven. It really doesn’t get any easier than this. Plus, almost all the ingredients are readily at hand in most kitchens (I would assume).

Oatmeal Fudge Squares
[adapted from Secrets of Fat-Free Baking by Sandra Woodruff]

½ cup plus 2 tablespoons quick-cooking oats
¼ cup unsweetened applesauce or mashed ripe banana
½ cup sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoons unbleached flour
¼ teaspoon salt (optional)
¼ cup honey
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup chopped walnuts (optional)

• Combine the oats and applesauce or banana, and let sit for 5 minutes.

• In the meantime, measure out and have ready the rest of the ingredients. (I sifted the cocoa powder and flour together. The book doesn’t call for that; so I guess you don’t have to, if you’d rather not.)

• Add the sugar, honey, egg whites and vanilla to the oats mixture. Mix well. Then dump in the cocoa powder mixture together with the walnuts and stir to combine. (The book says simply to throw all the ingredients in at the same time; I prefer doing it this way. But it’s a personal quirk, so feel free to do as the book suggests.)

• Coat an 8-inch square pan with nonstick cooking spray. Spread the batter evenly in the pan, and bake at 160C (325F) for about 22 minutes (and don’t ask me why she gave such a precise timing for this recipe), or until the edges are firm and the center is almost set.

• Cool to room temperature and cut into 16 squares.

Notes:
• I actually “over-baked” mine by a few minutes, to little ill-effect. I was otherwise occupied and only made it back to the kitchen about 3-4 minutes after the timer had gone off (22 minutes zipped by in such a jiffy). My squares were thus probably less fudgey than the recipe had intended; yet they were still very good. So, I think the baking time can be adjusted slightly to suit the level of fudginess (is there such a word?) that you desire.

• I would also recommend lining the bottom of the cake pan with parchment paper before coating it with cooking spray. While the dough pulls away from the sides as it cools, it is a lot harder to get it off the bottom of the pan without it breaking up somewhat. A piece of parchment paper will simplify life a great deal.

• And oh, as I was cutting the squares, I remembered one of the “complaints” I had about my previous experience with a recipe from this book. Both that and this recipe seemed to give a quantity of batter that produced very “flat” or “shallow” cakes. In this instance, it was fine – I quite liked the squares flat and slab-like. But for a more traditional look of “square” or “slice” baked goods, a double batch of the recipe is probably needed.

• I used banana instead of applesauce, simply because that was what I had at hand. This gave the fudge squares a subtle but distinct banana flavor. So, for those who do not like anything banana-y (like my brother), the applesauce would be the more subtle choice.

• There was also a fairly distinct, though not overly strong or overpowering taste of honey. Some people like this, some don’t. I’m thinking it may be nice to substitute honey with maple syrup or similar for a different twist to the flavors.

• I found the squares just a tad too sweet. I think I would be quite happy reducing the amount of sugar to ¼ cup the next time round. This will not only make it less sweet, but healthier too (with less refined sugar). You’re probably thinking: why not use just the honey and forget the sugar altogether. I’m suspecting that that will make it overly fudgey and probably too “wet”. But, having said that, I guess if you want something super fudgey, that could be an option.

• The walnuts are listed as “optional”; but I would highly recommend putting them in. I think they do make a world of difference, and do add much to the taste-experience of these fudge squares. Although they do raise the fat content somewhat, walnuts are incredibly nutritious, and I think that more than makes up it.

• These squares were great eaten as is. But I also had a couple with “lite” peanut butter spread over the top, and that lifted them up another notch. It worked really well! The light saltiness of the peanut butter was a perfect foil to the sweetness of the squares. And this had me thinking: I think it would make a lovely dessert to sandwich two pieces of these fudge squares together with peanut butter and then top it with a dark, bitter-sweet chocolate frosting.

• And as I’m typing this, it has just occurred to me that these fudge squares would be great crumbled over vanilla frozen yogurt or ice cream, for another simple, quick to prepare, healthy and great tasting dessert.

Okay, enough of me and my bossy suggestions; I’ll just leave you to it…

Enjoy!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

Wham!burger

This will be a slight departure from the norm for this blog: I’m going to talk about a food outlet that’s already closed down. Well, I suppose, if I have had more time and have been more conscientious about staying on top of my blogging “duties”, I would be writing this in the present tense. But life does have a way of getting busy like that. So here I am, writing after the fact.

Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t make much sense – to talk about some place that no longer exists; in this instance, this joint is merely taking a hiatus (or so the owner says). The lease on its original premise has expired, and the owner has decided to take a short break before making a comeback, with renewed vigor, in some new location. As such, I feel it still appropriate to write about it all the same; I do hope this outlet will reappear soon, in some spanking new outfit.

Wham!burger was a very small, one-outlet, independent burger joint. That in itself was a rarity in Singapore, a land of many globalized fast food chains. The fact that it had built up quite a fair following of fiercely loyal, die-hard fans made it an even greater rarity still. Some swore that it had one of the best burgers in town. Others were willing to drive across half the country (well, okay, so we live on a tiny island that you can cross from coast to coast in less than an hour ) just to chomp into one of its large 1/3 pounders.

I had heard and read much about this little burger joint ; so before it pulled down the shutters on its old premises, I just had to make a visit to see what all the hype was about.

I invited my mum to join me; I dangled a carrot : after the lunch, she could pop into the Giant Hypermarket that was next door – a good enough incentive for her to be willing to drive out to Turf City just for a burger.

It was a weekday; and when we got there just before 1pm, there were 2-3 other tables of 3-4 persons waiting for their food. The set-up was a small, hole-in-the-wall fast food take-out joint: utilitarian, with just a small service counter, a tiny food prepping area and outside, in the passageway in front of the shop, about 6 small foldable tables for those who chose to “dine-in”. However, the service modus operandi was more a semi-restaurant style, if you can call it that. You placed your orders at the counter, paid up, and took your seat; the food was brought to you when it was ready. And you had to be prepared to wait. This was not “fast food”. We waited a good 15 minutes or more for ours to arrive. Each burger was cooked only after the order had been placed; and that was a good thing – nothing quite beats a freshly cooked burger. But with only a single small griddle from which all the cooking was done, it meant a wait was inevitable if you had several people ahead of you.

Another distinguishing feature of the outlet? Because of the shop’s tiny size, the griddle was placed right next to the cash register and order-taking station, and faced the customers directly. With seemingly minimal grease and odor extraction facilities in place, it meant that if you had to stand in line for more than a few minutes, you ended up feeling and smelling like you just spent some time in a grease sauna! Not pleasant! You ended up walking around for the rest of the day with hair and clothes that reeked heavily of oil and burgers. Yum! Or euwww! I guess, depending on your inclinations.

The menu was kept deliberately sparse; obviously specializing only in what the owners were good at. This to me was usually a good sign. They weren’t trying to do all things or be all things to all people. I’ve always believed in the business principle that if what you served up, no matter how limited the choice, was good enough, the customers would just keep coming back. There were about 8 main items, with the 1/3 pound beef burger and the chicken burger headlining the list, and supported by things like fish and chips, chilli con carne, hot dogs and chilli dogs. Then there were the side options of things like crinkle cut fries, macaroni salad, potato salad and so on.

We opted to try their famous 1/3-pounder, the chicken burger and with some fries on the side.

The fries were the first to arrive; some five minutes or so before the burgers. The fries were pretty much devoured by the time the burgers arrived.

These were pretty good as far as fries go: nicely crisp on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside. They weren’t over-salted, and most importantly, had barely any greasy feel to them (a sharp contrast to the burgers, as we later found out). These were good fries; definitely above average.

Next to arrive was the chicken burger. It was a good thing we had decided to share the burgers so that we could each have a taste of both. Otherwise, one of us would have had to sit for a few minutes more and watch the other person eat, before their food was delivered to the table.

The burger was made up of a whole piece of boneless, skinless chicken thigh meat, with shredded lettuce and mayonnaise as garnishes. The chicken filet was extremely tasty. Wow! It really tasted very good! The star of the show was the marinade. It was hard to describe – rather peppery from a generous amount of ground black pepper, with a tiniest hint of sweetness and an overtone of savoriness. The closest I could think of was a sort of not-so-sweet, slightly savory teriyaki sauce, mixed with some sort of BBQ-type sauce, and with some spices like turmeric and maybe a touch of cumin thrown in for good measure. There was also some indefinable Chinese sauce (or maybe sauces) which I couldn’t quite put my taste buds on. Whatever their secret recipe was for the marinade, it was a winner! Both my mum and I loved how the chicken tasted. It was pretty awesome, taste-wise.

The meat was incredibly moist, juicy and succulent; and oh so tender. The patty was cooked to perfection. Just lovely!

However, there were several let-downs too (aren’t there always?), and these unfortunately detracted rather significantly from the over all chicken burger eating experience. First, the mayo. There was just so much of it… both under and on top of the chicken patty! That was a lot of mayo! I mean, I recognized that I was not much of a mayo person to begin with, and that there were probably people out there who liked lots of mayo with their burgers, but this was decidedly overkill. The sweetness of the mayo also tipped the sweet-savory taste balance too much. I think just a little mayo with maybe a little mustard (which was provided at the tables) would have been a much more holistic blend of flavors.

This excess of mayonnaise was further compounded by the bun that was used. The bread used to create a burger is often a much neglected consideration, and yet it really does make or break a burger. And unfortunately, these buns were far from ideal. They didn’t have much texture to begin with, and were also thirstily absorbing all the mayonnaise. So you ended up with a bun that was soggy, mushy and simply very “wet” from all the mayo and the oil that was oozing out of the chicken. It just didn’t feel very good in the mouth. My mum must have uttered at least 5 times throughout our short meal that the buns at McDonald’s were way better than these buns, that these weren’t palatable at all. And I had to agree with her.

I ended up discarding the bottom half of the bun (which was soggy beyond redemption) and scraping off some of the mayonnaise from the top half. Still, all in, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the chicken filet. That was a hands-down winner.

The beef burger arrived just as we were finishing up the chicken burger. This was a 1/3 pound patty of pure minced beef, cooked well done and served up with the same mayonnaise and shredded lettuce as the chicken burger. Fans of Wham!burger always cited their freshly home-made beef patties as the trump card – they raved about how moist, juicy and tasty the burgers were. I really wanted to believe them; I really wanted to find another great burger place in Singapore that I could keep going back to. But alas, I just could not find anything I liked about this burger.

When I had requested for the burgers to be cut into half for us, the man behind the counter said that he didn’t recommend that for the beef burger, as the patty would fall apart. That had me a little suspicious. I asked him to go ahead and cut it anyway, as it would make sharing the burger a lot easier. And true enough, the burger had fallen apart into a messy pile of minced meat by the time it arrived at our table.

I laud the principle of using pure ground beef to make burgers; however, I really don’t think the use of some form of binder (in the form of eggs or egg whites, if you want to eschew breadcrumbs or other such like) would have detracted significantly from the integrity of the patty. Quite obviously, no binders were used in this patty… and thus the mess. I could not imagine biting into this burger whole without also showering your shirt with a good sprinkling of meat stains.

Then there was the case of the taste and texture of the beef itself. This seemed more like it was ground from thawed meat, rather than fresh. And it had a weird mushy texture (as you can see from the picture) that we really didn’t like. Good mince should have a certain distinctness to the grain of the meat, with a certain toothsome, meaty bite to it. This was almost like mashed meat rather than minced! Then, in the midst of all this mushiness there were numerous (and I mean numerous) bits of hard, crunchy tendon-like bits, which were non-chewable and non-swallowable. So, we ended up spending a lot of time trying, as discretely (and as lady-like) as possible, to remove these hard bits from our mouths with each bite that we took of the burger. This certainly did not make for elegant eating! Not a place to come on a first date that’s for sure!

Following as it did from the highly flavorful chicken burger, the beef burger was a pale cousin. There were barely any detectable seasonings in the patty. It just tasted of, well, beef – beef and just beef alone. It was, um… very beefy. Have you tried eating 1/3 pound of beef with minimal flavoring? It gets cloying, to say the least.

The patty also came swimming in grease; the burger arrived at the table sitting in a big pool of oil. I think it would have done even the greasiest of greasy spoons in New York proud. Now, add to that the copious amount of sweet mayonnaise slathered on top, and you have an overkill of oiliness and richness. My taste buds were crying out for mercy. It was a two-note taste experience: beef and mayo. I think some herbs in the beef would have made for a flavorful highlight; some finely diced sweet onions in the patty itself would have been a decided “wow” bonus; a slice of fresh, ripe tomato in the burger would also have provided a much needed tangy reprieve from all that cloying richness. Add to that the same problem of the rather sickening mouth-feel of the soggy, mushy, oil-soaked, disintegrating bun, and well… it was quite a task to finish the burger – and we were only having half a burger each!

My mum couldn’t help commenting that she would have a Big Mac any time over this. And sadly, I was inclined to agree with her.

I spent the rest of the day with this awful, heavy-as-a-rock, greasy feeling sitting in the pit of my stomach. Even drinking one full pot of Chinese tea did nothing to elevate the queasiness and feeling of fullness and over-satiation; that lump of heaviness simply would not budge. Dinner time came and went, and I still could not bring myself to eat another morsel of food.

I’m sorry, I know there are a lot of Wham!burger fans out there, but try as I might, I can’t say I liked the beef burger at all. I had heard such wonderful things about the place; I had so wanted to fall in love with their burgers. But I guess, as the age-old adage go: one man’s poison is another’s meat.

Yet, having said all that, I still hope the owners will find a suitable new location soon, and reopen for business. I think they are on to a good thing. Their chicken patty alone is enough to make a repeat visit a must. And maybe with a change of bun supplier, I think they will have close to the best and tastiest chicken burger in town. I’ll just remember to ask to skip the mayo when I place my order, and then slather my patty with yummy mustard!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

From the Family Recipe Box

This is another one of those recipes that has been passed from grandmother to mother, and now on to me. As with a lot of simple, homey dishes, this doesn’t have much going for it in the looks department, but boy, does it pack a whallop when it comes to nutritional goodness. Plus, it is very tasty to boot; with wonderful textures and rich flavors.

This steamed chicken dish is a perfect example of how protein-rich and lip-smackingly delicious food can be prepared with hardly any fuss, within minutes and at very low cost.

The ingredients and the preparation process involved are deceptively simple – uninteresting even. Just looking at the items that go into this dish: chicken, ginger, glutinous rice (or rice) wine and a little salt (yes, that’s it – only four ingredients!), one may be hard put to imagine how it could possibly taste anything more than ordinary. But oh, it does. It truly does. The flavors of this dish are richly complex and yet incredibly clean and light on the palate at the same time. The key of course is to use good chicken; by that I mean preferably free-range – well-reared chicken that have meat brimming with taste and texture. Of course, the dish will still work with regular battery-bred chicken, but I won’t pretend the flavors will be the same. Also, fresh is best; frozen will not be as tasty, but if hard-pressed, will also do.

Steamed Ginger & Rice Wine Chicken

5 whole chicken legs
3-4” knob of fresh ginger
8 tablespoons glutinous rice wine (or rice wine)
2 to 2½ teaspoons salt

• Place some water in the bottom of a steamer and bring it to a boil on medium-high heat.

• Remove skin and all excess fat from the chicken and cut each leg into three pieces. (A whole chicken may be used; and similarly cut into medium serving pieces.)

• Peel and julienne ginger.

• Arrange chicken pieces in a single layer in a shallow dish. Add the wine, ginger and salt and mix well to coat evenly.

• Once the water in the steamer has come to a rolling boil, place the plate of chicken in the steamer, cover and steam over medium-high heat for about 25 minutes or until the chicken is tender and just cooked through.

• Serve hot.

You will notice that no water or any other liquids are added to the chicken, and yet when it comes out of the steamer, the platter is filled with a generous amount of rich amber “liquid” – and this is the “real” prize of this dish! This is liquid “gold” (if I may be so bold as to say); this is pure essence of chicken - packed to the brim with goodness! And further “enriched” by the fortifying benefits of the rice wine – all the alcohol has been cooked off, and what is left behind are the rich, mellow, sweet and smooth tones of the wine. The Chinese of course believe that rice wine can help build the blood and nourish the body. The ginger adds its warming properties to the body-rejuvenating mix, and gives a wonderfully zesty and refreshing fragrance and zip to the dish. The flavor notes are richly complex and yet incredible light, pure and clean.

I remember as a child (on both my maternal and paternal sides of the family) whenever I or any of my cousins refused to eat “proper food” for days on end (as kids are wont to do at various rebellious phases of their young lives), this was what we were fed. We were given plain rice with lots of this delicious chicken essence poured over it. (Of course, if serving the dish to children, it is usual to reduce the amount of wine and ginger used, to better suit their delicate palates.) For all the times when we were inordinately (and unreasonably) picky about food and were poutingly pushing away all meat, vegetables and anything that looked to us to be suspiciously nutritious and beneficial, this steamed chicken dish was our parents’ secret weapon to counterbalance our nutrient-devoid diet of choice, filled as it was with all things sweet and sugary.

The chicken, having been cooked in its own juices, is very tender and moist. And you know, all you really need are a few pieces of this juicy, succulent chicken, some red or brown rice, a side of lightly stir-fried vegetables, and lots of the nourishing amber essence, and you have one of the most gorgeous, homely, comforting meals ever.

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

Refresh!

You know what’s really good for hot, hot days when your body just seems completely zapped of all energy? When every fiber of your being seems infused with lethargy?

On days like those, what I enjoy is lots and lots of barley water. Yep. Barley water. Just barley cooked in lots of water, with a small bunch of knotted pandan (screwpine) leaves thrown in for added fragrance. It can either be sweetened with a piece of rock sugar dissolved into the mixture right at the end of the cooking, or with a side serving of a simple syrup made up of rock sugar and water – this allows everyone to sweeten the drink to their personal liking. I like mine thirst quenchingly unsweetened.

Another thing I enjoy about drinking barley water: right at the end, after the drink is gone… I find an almost child-like delight in using a spoon to dig up all that cooked-down, soft, very tender, somewhat fluffy yet slightly chewy barley sitting at the bottom of the glass. What simple pleasure!

Barley water, served hot or cold, is wondrously light, refreshing and cleansing; and one of the traditional favorite hot weather drinks of South East Asia.

Barley is said to have many health-giving properties; Traditional Chinese Medicine believes it to have great cooling properties for “heaty” bodies, to be a very efficacious detoxifier and cleanser of the intestinal tract, and to be a soothing balm on overworked and stressed digestive systems. Barley is also a natural diuretic.

But all that health and medical mambo-jumbo aside, nothing is quite as delicious - or reviving - as a tall glass of icy cold barley water on a muggy, stiflingly hot and dry summer’s afternoon.

Salut!

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.

Ugly But Comforting

This is one of my favorite comfort foods; whenever my spirit dips or my body feels in need of soulful, homely, reassuring sustenance, this comes to mind. As with a lot of comfort foods, this is not a pretty dish. In fact, when it first comes out of the pot – at least the way it is cooked in my kitchen – it is probably downright ugly.

Usually, red bean dessert soup is served either as a fairly watery sweet soup (Chinese/Cantonese style), or with a thicker consistency and topped with coconut cream (Peranakan style). My own preferred way is to cook the red beans down to a thick, almost mash-like consistency – with some of the beans tender to the point of being slightly mushy and the rest of the beans still whole and with some bite…

The beans are then topped with some cold, lightly sweetened soy milk (Sobe being my preferred brand)…

Mixed…

And enjoyed.

I know this way of serving and eating red bean sweet soup may sound a little weird, and some of you… okay, maybe many of you are wrinkling your nose in horror at this, but truly, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. This tastes pretty good; the whole family loves it like this. It tastes somewhat like the coconut cream version (don’t ask me how or why, but for some strange reason, it does), only lighter and healthier.

While red bean sweet soup is usually served piping hot, I like mine refreshingly cold, with beans that have been chilled in the fridge.

Another reason I like cooking the red beans to this consistency is that I find it to be a great topper for ice cream, especially green tea (Haagen Daz’s is good!) ice cream. Or, paired with grass jelly (chin chow; liang fen) or chendol (worm-shaped, soft, slightly chewy, pandan-flavored dough strips made from green bean flour), and spooned over vanilla ice cream. The beans are of course also great for making ice kacang (our popular South East Asian shaved ice dessert) with. Oh, there is also something from my childhood which I absolutely adored: red bean ice popsicles – my mum used to freeze either thick, sweetened red bean soup or soy milk enriched red bean soup into delicious, cool popsicles for a healthy afternoon sweet treat for my brother and I. That is something I haven’t done in a long time; and worth a re-visit soon I think.

There are also various permutations that I play around with, as the mood strikes. Sometimes I will add some dried Mandarin peel for an added aromatic fillip. If I happen to have some on hand, I would pop in some chopped up plain alkali water glutinous rice dumpling (kee chang; jian shui zhong), and let this cook down with the beans until completely dissolved into the soup. This really helps to give the beans a silken smooth texture. Occasionally, I would add some cooked sago to the beans before serving.

This is one food dish that takes up hardly any time or effort, and requires no supervision at all; it happily bubbles and gurgles away whilst you’re having your beauty sleep. The beans are plonked into the crock pot (slow-cooker) just before bedtime and left to do their thing through the night; and you then awake in the morning to freshly made red bean soup.

Hong Dou Tang Shui (Red Bean Sweet Soup)

2 bowlfuls dried red beans *
8 bowlfuls water **
white rock sugar to taste
¾ to 1 small plain alkali water glutinous rice dumpling, diced *** (optional)

[Sorry, I have no specific quantities for the ingredients; I always cook the beans by the guesstimation (agak-agak) method. And there really are no hard and fast rules; personal tastes dictate.]

* For a different textural experience, Japanese azuki beans may be used instead of the local variety. The amount of water and cooking time may have to be adjusted.

** Add more water depending on how you intend to serve the beans, or if a more watery consistency is desired.

*** Fresh, thawed or dried dumplings can be used, to equal results.

• Wash the beans under running water and drain well.

• Bring a pot of water to a boil. Once it reaches a rolling boil, add the beans. When the water returns to a boil, remove from the flame, drain the beans and rinse under running water. Drain.

• Repeat the process again with a pot of fresh water. [This helps to remove the traces of bitterness that are usually found in red beans. It is only necessary to do this with red beans; if making green bean sweet soup, this step can be skipped – green beans don’t seem to give the same bitter overtone.]

• Pop the drained beans into the crock pot, together with the 8 bowls of water and the diced glutinous rice dumpling (if using). Set the slow-cooker to “auto” and leave it for the night.

• The next morning, give the bean mixture a stir, drop in some rock sugar and cover (keeping the crock pot on “auto” mode). When the sugar has dissolved, give the beans another stir and serve. [It is important that the rock sugar goes in only after the beans are cooked and have softened to the tenderness that you want; once the sugar goes in, the beans will not tenderize any further, no matter how long you cook them for! This principle is true of almost all sweet soups (tang shui; tong shui) recipes: the rock sugar goes in last.]

If using sago: cook the sago separately in a pot of boiling water until the pearls turn clear. [It is best to add the raw sago to water that is at a rolling boil, rather than to bring the sago to a boil in a pot of cold water. This prevents them from disintegrating as they are being cooked.] Drain well, and add to the red bean mixture right at the end, after the rock sugar has dissolved. [I prefer to cook the sago separately from the beans, to prevent both the sago and the bean mixture from turning cloudy and gummy – they each seem to have this effect on the other. This way, the sago pearls will have a beautiful transparency, and the red bean soup will keep its silken smooth texture.]

If using dried Mandarin peel: add one medium piece (the fragrance can be too overpowering in excessive quantities) together with the raw beans right at the beginning. Remove the peel and stir to meld the flavors just before serving.

Copyright © 2004 Renee Kho. All Rights Reserved.
Please contact me for permission to copy, publish, distribute or display any of the images or text contained in this article.