Dessert By Candy

Announcing Dessert By Candy Chinese Homestyle Dishes 思房菜

Happy Chinese New Year! I wish you a year filled with health, fortune, prosperity, and endless deliciousness! I’ve been kept busy with a secret project the last little while and I am excited to share the news with you at last. I compiled a small collection of family favourite Chinese recipes and the cookbook is now available at my store! Dessert By Candy Chinese Homestyle Dishes 思房菜 contains previously unpublished recipes as well as favourites from this blog. The softcover cookbook is filled with colour photos of the dishes. The recipes are written for North American kitchen and contain Chinese translation for key ingredients to make shopping easier. Cooking authentic Chinese dishes at home does not need to be an exotic experience and I will show you how.

Baked Tapioca Pudding with Azuki Swirl 西米豆沙焗布甸

Here is a dessert I learned to make as a kid and updated with adult sensibility. Native Hong Kong cuisine has a lot of fusion dishes with equal parts Cantonese and colonial British influence. Dim sum restaurant is a wonderful breeding ground for such innovation with its small plate dining concept. Sunday dim sum brunch with my grandparents always included classic stalwarts like har gow 蝦餃 shrimp dumplings and shumai 燒賣 pork dumplings. But there would be treats for the kids and baked tapioca pudding was my top favourite. The very western baked vanilla pudding is given an Asian twist with tapioca pearls and swirls of sweetened lotus seed paste 蓮蓉 or azuki bean paste 豆沙. I burned my lips many times because the hot pudding was just too tempting.

It did not take long before I learned to make my own under my mother’s supervision. The ubiquitous recipe came printed on the iconic yellow box of cornstarch that was found in every household. Actually, it still comes with every box. See the 80s magazine clipping on the left (that perm!) and my fresh box of cornstarch on the right? It’s reassuring to know that something doesn’t change.

The problem is, it did not taste very good now that I think about it. Much too rubbery! I should not be surprise since the cornstarch-heavy recipe came from the cornstarch company. Actually, even the ones I ate at dim sum restaurants were like that. I much prefer my pudding on the softer side.

A Decade In The Making

Family dinner on Lunar New Year’s Eve holds a special meaning to Chinese. It signifies the unity of family and kicks off days of celebration. Growing up in Hong Kong, the dinner required extensive scheduling effort between all my extended family members but the occasion held such high priority that I don’t recall anyone missing out even once. Unfortunately, it is also a tradition that I neglected in over a decade despite my very small immediate family.

My decision to host the new year’s eve dinner was spontaneous. Last week, I casually mentioned the idea to Dad and Little Brother. To my great surprise, everyone agreed to sit down together for dinner on Sunday. I immediately started planning out my menu. Obviously I could not incorporate all the traditional courses. After all, there would only be three of us. No need to drop by John’s Chinese BBQ for whole chicken. No room in our stomachs for steamed whole fish which symbolizes surplus. Here is my minimalist menu for three.

Minimalist Lunar New Year’s Eve Dinner

Chicken Soup In A Pot with Homemade Wontons and Baby Bokchoi

砂鍋雲吞雞湯

Braised Black Moss with Dried Oysters, Shiitake Mushrooms, Dried Scallops over Gailan

蠔豉髮菜炆冬菇

Soy Sauce Marinated Platter

鹵水拼盆

Glutinous Fried Rice with Cured Meat

生炒糯米飯

Coconut Pudding with Azuki Beans

椰汁紅豆糕

Steamed Barbecue Pork Buns 叉燒包

I had my heart set on making steamed buns for weeks. I was drawn to the ubiquitous dim sum item because it seemed like such a huge departure from my skill set. A true baker to the core, the oven in my kitchen gets lots of love. The bamboo steamer? It makes one appearance every year for steamed turnip cake because it doesn’t feel like Chinese New Year without a taste of this homemade treat. I really ought to learn more about steaming, one of the eight key cooking skills in Chinese cuisine.

There is much to love about traditional bamboo steamer aside from its rustic good looks (oh isn’t it photogenic?). It’s lightweight, cheap, and durable. Most importantly, it traps enough steam to create the perfect cooking environment and absorbs excess evaporation so your food don’t get soggy. Pretty amazing, really.

Most steamed bun recipes begin with the direction

Make a well with your pile of flour, pour water into the well, and gradually draw flour with your hands to the centre until dough is formed.

Okay, confession time. I run the other way as soon as I read this. No matter if your recipe promises me the world, I just cannot deal with such a tactile way of working. And the inevitable clean up! I shudder at the thought. Give me confines of mixing bowl and spatula please. Better yet, a stand mixer.

Soy Sauce Marinated Assortment 鹵水拼盆

Last week I introduced you to an array of spices for making soy sauce marinade 鹵水. I would be a tease if I don’t follow up with a recipe for making the marinating broth and how to use it. I always wanted my own heirloom broth. After a bit of work last weekend, I am off to a great start with a fledging broth which gave me plenty of delicious marinated goodness.

A platter of assorted marinated meat is a great appetizer for parties or casual family dinner. Everything is conveniently made ahead of time and can be served hot or cold depending on personal preference. Having a stash of cold meat and eggs in the fridge also means busy weeknight dinners are taken care of. Just add noodles or rice and I have a complete meal!

Chinese Spices For Soy Sauce Marinade 鹵水包

In French cuisine there is bouquet garni, a bundle of dried herbs and spices to flavour stocks and broths. Today I’ll show you its Chinese counterpart, a complex potpourri which is the backbone of soy sauce marinade 鹵水. Calling it a marinade is a bit misleading. It is closer in spirit to an extremely flavourful poaching liquid. In Chinese restaurants, you often find cold appetizer assortment of various protein cooked and marinated in this broth. It is said that the broth gets better with age since the essence of everything you previously made is released into the liquid. It is not unheard of that restaurants build its name on an heirloom broth dating back decades.

Lunar New Year is soon upon us and I set out to start my own heirloom before the year wraps up. Under the guidance of famed Taiwan cookbook authors 程安琪 (Angela Cheng) and 林慧懿 (Theresa Lin), I assembled my bouquet garni. My Western cooking background means even though I am fluent in Chinese, much of the Chinese ingredients read like foreign language to me. A few days of sleuthing and a visit to traditional herbs & dried goods store later, I think I have the mystery figured out. Here is a pictorial to save you some legwork.

Recipes That Work: Slow Cooker Cheesecake

When faced with an unconventional way of making a familiar classic, do you jump with excitement or do you narrow your eyes with suspicion? I do a bit of both with added hesitation that can lasts for months. I made plenty of cheesecake in my baking days. In fact, it was the treat that started it all when I decided to take up baking in the last decade. The quest of tall creamy baked cheesecake with an unmarred top (no cracks!) was an elusive pursuit. I followed every trick in the book yet results were inconsistent at best.

Since I bought my slow cooker, it occupies an esteemed place in my kitchen. Sure it has no permanent home on the kitchen counter but I bring it upstairs from the basement so often that the trip is considered part of my weekly exercises. Obviously it excels in keeping my family well-fed with soups and stews. The occasional barbecue pulled pork and beans are most welcomed by my skating buddies. But dessert? Not exactly the first thing that comes to mind.

Slow cooker cheesecake beeped in my culinary radar last summer. Made in mason jar individual servings or a whole cake, the emphasis lies in the gentle steaming that slow cooker easily achieves. It makes a lot of sense. When I bake a cheesecake in the oven, I use a water bath to moderate the baking temperature and create a moist environment to prevent cracking. I was intrigued by these recipes but kept hesitating. Finally, it was America’s Test Kitchen that convinced me to take a leap of faith.

Grateful

I invited Dad to my home last Friday for classic roast beef dinner. It had been a few months since I last saw him and I secretly felt guilty about putting off any get-together every time we chatted on the phone. First it was my trip Down Under. Next I went under the knife. Then it was an emotional rough patch that I rather not make him worry. Although things are still in flux at my end, I decided a casual family dinner was long overdue.

Coming up with a menu was tricky. I wanted something not fussy, requiring minimal last minute cooking. At the same time, I took great consideration of healthy dietary requirement for Dad’s sake. Thanks to scheduling limitation, I had one chance to do all my shopping and it was a trip to Costco. This is what I served:

Classic Roast Beef Dinner

Slow Roasted Eye of Round

Mushroom Gravy

Horseradish Sour Cream

Pan Seared Brussels Sprouts

Chives Duck Fat Yorkshire Pudding

Mulled Wine Poached Pear with Palmier

Baba

I meant to make baba au rhum for New Year’s Eve. What can be better than getting drunk on rum and cake in the same bite? Well, obviously, that did not happen and the missed opportunity hung over my head long after we ringed in the new year. Last weekend Mother Nature brought us more snow and more cold temperature. All I wanted to do was hibernate. So rather than listening to the instinctive call for comfort food, I made a batch of boozy baba au rhum. It was much less fussy than I initially anticipated.

If you made brioche or challah, you’ll be glad to know that baba is very similar, only easier. Plenty of enrichment from eggs and butter meaning you’re better off using a mixer. Unlike bread dough which requires kneading, baba resembles a yeast-raised batter. I followed Dan Lepard’s recipe from his book Short & Sweet (also available online).

Welcome 2014

I am running on autopilot today. I so desperately want to begin a new year on a new page . My wish has been granted even though the circumstances leave much to be desired. The time has come for me to move on.

A natural born busy body, I rarely find myself short on things to do. Yet today, I fear the hours, minutes, seconds that seem to stretch to eternity. I do not want to be left alone with my own thoughts. Cooking may not be the top of my priority list today but the calm of cutting, boiling, kneading, and washing help me get through the day.

As per the last few years, Little Brother and I welcome the new year with our loose interpretation of traditional Japanese feast. Despite my effort to shop for specialty ingredients last week, most of the key items could not be found (all sold out!). No big deal, I bought enough to make a simple savoury ozoni soup and sweet azuki bean soup, both served with grilled mochi rice cakes.