Madeleines

The obsession started when I spied some yummy looking shell-shaped cakes at Victoire. Giving in to temptation, I bought a pack of 6 (for $6!) and tucked in. One bite was all it took to make this one of my favourite treats.

Yet, for some strange reason, I never contemplated making my own. Having had previous disasters with things being stuck on trays or tins, the ridges of the madeleine trays put them in the "too hard" category. That is, until now.

Inspired by the first episode of The Little Paris Kitchen that aired on SBS a couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to buy a tray and make my own. The timing was perfect with mid-year sales on right now, and picked up a tray for around $10.

The tray has certainly been put to good use. Four batches of madeleines in one week - a baking record. The first and second batches I took to work, and were snapped up within minutes. The third and fourth were more attempts to refine a recipe I've adapted based on the Guillame Brahimi version from French Food Safari on the SBS website. Ultra easy, using ingredients that most kitchens will have, I highly encourage you to give it a go.

Lemon Madeleines
Makes 12 large or 24 mini madeleines

40g melted butter
100g flour
75g castor sugar (up to 100g if you prefer it sweeter)
A pinch of good quality sea salt
1 egg
40ml milk
3/4 teaspoon baking powder

Zest of half a lemon
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste or vanilla extract

Extra butter and flour to prepare the tray.

1. Melt the butter in the microwave (30 seconds is enough). Allow to cool to room temperature.
2. In a bowl, sift in the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and lemon zest, and combine.
3. Whisk together the milk and egg, and add to the dry mix. Whisk this until just combined.
4. Add the lemon juice and vanilla paste to the batter mix and combine.
5. Gently fold in the butter until combined.
6. Cover and rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour. The mix can be stored in the fridge for up to 2 days.
7. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celcius.
8. Grease the madeleine tray with butter and lightly flour (this is especially important if using a traditional madeleine tray; I recommend greasing the tray even if a non-stick tray is used).
9. Spoon or pipe in the batter evenly - it should be just enough for 12 large or 24 mini madeleines. Bake at 170C for 10 minutes, or until lightly golden and tops spring back to touch.

These little darlings can be enjoyed warm or cold, with a cup of good quality tea.

Quick treats

Uber quick post with recipe.

Having bought too much pumpkin for 2 a couple of days earlier, I turned the surplus pumpkin puree into pumpkin ice cream. It was good, but there's room for improvement (a tad icy due to the high water content, methinks). Then ended up with 4 surplus egg whites. There was a quick twitter convo with Gastronomous Anonymous about what to do with them (macarons were mentioned, but given my 50/50 track record I wasn't ready to tackle them again... yet); conclusion somehow came to steamed milk custard, Hong Kong style.

What the heck. Super easy, kinda quick. As long as the steaming time is right it's pretty much fail safe.

Here goes.

For 1 egg white: 2 1/2 slightly heaped teaspoons sugar (I used raw castor, but you can use white), 150ml milk.

Beat the eggs with the sugar until all the sugar has dissolved and the mix is frothy, but not stiff. Beat in the milk until combined well. Sieve to remove the froth.


Pour into desired bowl, cover (with foil, baking paper, or an upside down plate) and steam on a medium heat for 8-10 minutes or until just set - the centre should have a nice panna cotta like wobble.

Serve piping hot or chilled from the fridge. Up to you.

Obviously for a firmer custard, use less milk. For a more decadent one, add more milk or substitute part of the milk for pouring cream - make sure the cream hasn't got any gums or thickeners though. And adjust the sugar to taste.

Post done, just as my last custard is ready from the steamer. Told you it'd be quick!

Healthy desserts?

It probably doesn't look like much, but this is one of the best winter dessert in my repertoire.

Sweet potato in brown sugar ginger tea.

Ginger, according to doctrines of Chinese medicine, warms up the body. Brown sugar helps with blood circulation, which in turn improves the flow of chi in the body. Sweet potato helps with reducing water retention in the body, and being high in fiber, helps also with digestion.

The ginger tea featured here is one I brought back from Taiwan. Sold in bags, it resembles nothing like the sugar we are familiar with in Australia. 

Sold in 5cm blocks, this is basically enough to make 2 large mugs of sweet ginger tea. The perfect balance of sugar, the spiciness of ginger, with the aroma of dried dates and longan (both improve circulation and warm the body), the perfect winter drink.

With all the rich and fatty food we tend to consume in winter, and general colder weather, this is a delicious way to restore a balance of health.

Sweet potato in brown sugar ginger tea

Serves 2-3

1 small sweet potato, cut into bite sized chunks

4 heaped tablespoons brown sugar (adjust to taste)

1 knob of old ginger, sliced thinly

3 dried red dates or 2 dried black dates

4 dried longan

1 litre water

1. Wash the sweet potato thoroughly, scrub the skin with steel wool to ensure most of the surface dirt has been removed. Cut into bite sized chunks, then place into a pot with the cold water, and set to the boil.

2. After the sweet potatoes have come to the boil, add the sugar, ginger, dates and longan, and simmer until the sweet potatoes are soft (10-20 minutes). Serve immediately.

Notes:

1. Dried red dates, dried black dates, and dried longan should be available from all good Asian grocers. You should be able to find them at the Chinese or Korean ones.

2. Old ginger should be used for this recipe rather than young ginger. Look for large knobs, golden skin, with wide stripes on the skin. Adjust the amount of ginger to your preference by adding the ginger little by little, keeping in mind the more you cook the ginger, the spicier the tea will become.

3. If you can find Okinawa brown sugar (沖縄黒糖) for cooking (and not as candy), that can be used as well. Otherwise, normal brown sugar from CSR is ok.

quick meals

There is always a batch of wontons in my freezer. Always.

While most of my friends stock up on Mee Goreng or Nissin noodles when they're on special, chances are I'd be sitting at my desk endlessly wrapping wontons, freezing them one tray at a time.

Why?

I don't know.

Growing up in a family that ate predominantly Shanghainese food even though we lived in Hong Kong, the difference between Chinese cuisine styles have occasionally stumped my 2-and-a-half year old self. Like why are the wonton wrappers we use white instead of yellow? Why do we not put prawn mince in the filling? And why do we have veges in the filling? And why are wonton wrappers square while dumpling (jiao zi) wrappers are round?

Why? Why? Why?

...and that's how my nickname, yygall, came into existence.

And also signified how much interest I had in food since a young age.

I remember on one occasion insisting on stir-frying my own fried rice, while mum held me in her arms. And on another cool spring day watching mum wrap wontons at amazing speed. I tried to learn, but honestly can't remember how mine turned out. It probably wasn't until age 7 or so that I could finally do it and the resulting wontons (at least, cooked ones) were indistinguishable from Mum's. To this day our uncooked wontons still look different: most of the time hers would have 2 or 3 dimples, while mine would have 1 or 2. But I've gotten much better at making the filling: one taste, and the difference is there.



Celery, carrot, waterchestnut, shiitake mushroom and pork wontons

Wonton fillings are various, and occasionally unexpected. In Shanghai, a lot of "fast food" stores would have a small collection of fillings, from the 三鮮(San Xian, with pork, dried freshwater prawn or kai yang and preserved vegetable; another popular combination is freshwater fish, prawn and pork mince) to various 菜肉 (vegetable and meat) combinations, depending on what's in season. Most vegetables can be used in the filling, though traditionally leafy greens that aren't bitter, are fresh and fragrant are preferred.

One of my favourites is 薺菜肉餛飩. Shepard's purse is quite popular in Shanghai-style home cooking, for its fragrance and texture. Only the youngest of shoots are used, though; and it's almost never served to pregnant or breastfeeding women, or those with heart disorders (Chinese medicine principles). Another favourite is water celery and pork: water celery is like a smaller, condensed version of normal supermarket variety celery, with most stalks not longer than 30cm and as thick as a pencil. It's refreshing, light, crunchy and oh-so-fragrant; something I can eat every day and not get sick of. Ever.




But, having not yet found water celery yet, this combination of water chestnuts and celery is almost as good. It's crunchy, refreshing, colourful, and fragrant; the combination of flavours and aromas from the pork and shiitake is almost perfect. And the carrot...it does little in terms of taste and texture, but adds that extra little something visually: after all, we eat with the eyes as well as with our sense of taste and smell.

Why have instant noodles, when you can have this instead?


Celery and Pork Wontons
Makes 80
2 packets of Double Merino Shanghai Wonton wrappers
500g pork mince
1 egg
1/4 celery, finely chopped
10-12 water chestnuts*, smashed then chopped
1/3 carrot, finely diced
4 medium-sized dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked overnight, finely diced

1 Tbsp Shaoxing cooking wine
2 tspn salt
large pinch of finely ground white pepper
2 tspn sugar
1 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp sesame oil

*Frozen water chestnuts are available in the freezer section of some, if not most Asian groceries. They're white, round, almost pebble like in appearance. To thaw, just pop a few in a freezer bag, tie it up, then submerge in a bowl of cold water - this prevents them from being overly waterlogged. Pare off any of the skin that may be on (it's dark brown and woody and inedible), smash with the back of a knife (preferably a cleaver of sorts), then roughly chop.

In a large mixing bowl, place the pork mince, cooking wine, salt, pepper, sugar, and mix through. Beat in the egg and water, mix vigorously until the mince is reminiscent of a sticky dough. Add the sesame oil and mix through til well dispersed. Add the chopped vegetables and mix thoroughly.
For more even distribution of filling, divide the mix into 16 lots (halve the mix 4 times), each lot should have enough filling for 5 wontons.
To wrap, the easiest way is to fold diagonally, then press the 2 corners on the hypotenuse (longest side) together in the middle.
To cook, place the wontons in a large pot of boiling water (no more than 20 at a time), stirring gently but constantly during the first few minutes on medium to high heat. Once it returns to the boil, add 1/2 cup of cold tap water for every 10 wontons. Once it comes to boil again, turn off the heat and serve immediately.
The traditional base for wontons is pork bone soup, but it chicken soup, or even watered down soy sauce with a smidgeon of sesame oil can be used. No dipping sauce required.

Gyoza! Gyoza! Read all about it!

It started a couple of days ago. I was depressed for various reasons, and when I'm depressed, I get food cravings. The cravings were so massive I had dreams about it for two nights straight. (And another one involving a rather cute doctor and a large black grizzly being injured then left on the side of the road, but that's a story for another time/blog.) This time it wasn't chocolate or peanut butter, but dumplings. The pan-steam-fried potstickers or gyoza bursting with pork juice and loaded with veges.

But life being life, there was no time to go out and gather up ingredients. As for the pre-made frozen type... there's no way I'd buy that out of my own volition, when dumpling and wonton making is like a culinary reflex.

Then yesterday, I got a question about gyozas. A recipe for gyoza fillings, actually. I was stumped, for a moment.

While I can name the ingredients in a filling, I couldn't do the same for the actual quantities. It's always been just meat (minced from the store or hand minced), then a slurp of cooking wine, sprinkle of salt, sugar, and pepper, an egg (or two, if it's a big batch), water, and sesame oil. It was the same for the vegetables: my mother never told me exactly how much was needed, it was always this much meat=that much vegetables chopped up. There was no recipe. And it turned out perfect every time.

Gyoza with Pork and Cabbage Filling

Makes about 40

200g pork mince

1/6 small cabbage, finely shredded

40 dumpling/gyoza skins, approx 8-9cm in diameter

1 egg

1 tablespoon Shaoxing cooking wine

2 teaspoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

large pinch of pepper

4-5 tablespoons chicken stock/water

2 teaspoon sesame oil

2 tablespoon cooking oil

1. In a large bowl (preferably deep rather than overly wide), mix the pork mince, cooking wine, sugar, salt and pepper well.

2. Make a small well in the middle of the mince, and place the egg in the well. Beat slightly before mixing it into the pork mince, until well incorporated. Continue stirring the mince in one direction, until the mix feels slightly "elastic" and offers slight resistance when pushed with a wooden spoon/chopsticks.

3. Add stock or water to the mince, 1 tablespoon at a time, mixing until the liquid has been completely incorporated into the mince before adding the next. Once all the stock or water has been added, mix in the sesame oil. It should look similar to the second picture above.

4. Add the shredded cabbage. The cabbage should not be too long (no more than 5cm in length), and very finely shredded (no more than 2mm wide). Mix through the mince well, until evenly distributed.

5. To wrap the dumplings (this is by no means definitive; merely what I believe works the best.)

Place the wrapper in your hand, so that the small well between your fingers and palms is covered by the centre of the wrapper. Put a heaped teaspoon of filling slightly off the middle, towards the bottom.

Fold the bottom over to the top, place your thumb and second finger to secure only the middle of the arc by a fingertip.

With your other hand, make a small fold about a quarter of the way on the arc of the semicircle. 

Follow the natural fold to "pleat" by pushing the skin down.

And it should end up like this:

Then repeat on the other side. The dumplings should sit on its own quite well.

6. For potstickers, heat some cooking oil in a pan until almost smoking hot. Place the dumplings in the pan as it sits naturally. Allow it to pan-fry until the bottoms are crispy and golden, then add 1/2 to 1 cup of water (depending on the size of the pan and number of dumplings) over the dumplings and cover. Cook over medium to high heat until all the water has evaporated, and bottoms are well crisped. Serve immediately with vinegar and chili oil dipping sauce, if preferred.

By all means, these babies can be steamed or boiled.