Lantern Festival

Lantern Festival falls exactly 15 days after the Chinese New Year and it ends the celebration of the new year. Lanterns are hung all over the city and sticky rice dumplings (yuanxiao) served in sweet (or savoury) soup are eaten.
The sweet soup is usually made with rock sugar and ginger, but I used slab sugar and kumquat, so if you want to impress your Chinese friends don't do as I did, although the soup was very delicious.

Slab sugar is a Chinese type of sugar that is made of white sugar, brown sugar and honey. It gives a bit of brownish color but it doesn't have a strong flavor.

Yuanxiao-sticky rice dumplings
1 dl sticky rice flour
1 tsp oil
1/2 dl hot water
1 dl red bean paste for the filling

4 dl water
100 gr slab sugar (1 stick)
10 kumquats, sliced and seeded

Mix flour, oil and water with a spoon until the dough comes together. Let rest for 15 minutes. The sticky rice flour lives up to its name when you mix it with water, the dough is incredibly sticky. To be able to work with it you need to sprinkle the dough with sticky rice flour so that it doesn't stick to your hands. Divide the dough in 10 pieces, flatten each piece with a slightly thicker center and put a bit of red bean paste in the middle, close carefully.

Put water and sugar in a sauce pan and simmer until sugar melts. Add kumquats and simmer for 10 minutes. Set aside.

In another pan boil 1 liter of water and boil dumplings until they float on the surface. Put couple of dumplings in a small bowl together with the kumquat soup. Serves 2-3.

A perfect Valentine's Day cake

This is a cake that has it all: chocolate, hazelnuts and meringue! To share it with the one you love is all you need for a perfect Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's!

Chinese New Year

Happy New 4706, the year of the Rat! Chinese New Year is the most important holiday in China. The year of the Rat started on February 7th and it was a real pleasure to see how it is celebrated here in China. Not surprisingly food is quite central in the celebration, it is all about cured meats, dried fruits and Reunion Dinner. The dinner on the New Years Eve is called "Reunion Dinner" and as the name implies it is a dinner when family reunites.

Some of the traditional dishes served at Reunion Dinner are: dried goose, clay pot, dumplings, boiled chicken, stewed pork leg, jellyfish, bamboo shots with meat, 8 treasure sticky rice, new year cake, red dates in honey, etc...

One dish that is particularly popular here in Shanghai is the "New year cake with Shanghai pak choy". New year cake it self is not a sweet cake as you might think, it is made of glutinous rice flour and it can be used in both sweet and savoury dishes. Before coming to China I was not familiar with the new year cake, but here it is sold vacuum-packed all year round. New year cake symbolizes "a prosperous new year".

Shanghai pak choy looks a bit different than the regular pak choy. It is light green and leaves are bit wider, but the taste is quite the same. Its meaning in Shanghainese dialect is " getting rid of all worries". A double serving please.

So here comes a recipe for a prosperous new year where all worries will be out of the way.

New Year Cake with Shanghai Pak Choy
450 gr new year cake (1 pack)
200 gr pork, cut in small stripes
300 gr pak choy

pinch of salt and sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tbsp shaoxing wine (Chinese cooking wine)
piece of ginger, chopped

some oil
salt and pepper
1 tsp sesame oil

Marinate pork and let stand for 30 minutes. Stir fry until almost done, 3-4 min, remove and set aside. Add some oil to the wok and stir fry new year cake for couple of minutes until soft. Add pak choy, salt and pepper, stir fry for a 1-2 min, add pork and heat through. Drizzle with sesame oil and serve.

Kumquat

It is kumquat season and is raining kumquats here. I love it, am totally obsessed. Kumquat is native to China and it is a very much appreciate fruit, especially during the Chinese New Year as it symbolizes "prosperity". Small kumquat plants are sold on the markets and are used as decoration during the New Year celebration.

The fresh kumquat it self is delicious, but it can do magic when used in cooking. In this recipe I mixed candied kumquat with amaranth (another obsession of mine) and white chocolate. So simple but so fantastic! First you need to candied kumquats, which is very simple but takes time as the kumquats need to dry for about 2 days after they have been cooked. I did not use lots of sugar as the white chocolate is quite sweet.

Candied kumquats
10 kumquats
2 dl water
0,5 dl sugar

Wash and then slice kumquat. Discard the seeds. Heat the water and sugar, add sliced kumquat and simmer 20 - 30 minutes. Spread kumquat over baking paper and let it air-dry for a day or two.

Candied kumquat and amaranth
Melt some white chocolate (be careful as white chocolate does not like it too hot), add candied kumquat and popped amaranth. Shape it nicely, decorate with some more candied kumquat and let cool.

Fresh water chestnut

This is how fresh water chestnut looks like. Before coming to China I have never seen or eaten fresh water chestnut, only canned one. But here in China you can find the fresh one everywhere, as it is a Chinese/ South East Asian vegetable.

The skin is very thin and soft and it is easily peeled off. The white inside has a bit different crunchiness then the canned water chestnut has. The fresh ones reminds a lot of eating green apple. And the colour is also more milk-white, it looks wonderful in dishes.

Red-bean paste

Being introduced to sweet red beans you can find the recipe for the wonderful red-bean paste here . I used white granulated sugar but a bit less of it and it worked fine.

On the picture you can see what the beans look like. They are very tiny and obviously there is a Chinese (hong-dou) and Japanese (adzuki) version but I think they are the same beans as Japanese use them in sweets as well. The paste it self is wonderful, it does have a hint of beans but is not like it reminds of chili con carne. Here I used it in crepes but I can see so much more potential here!

The chocolate of China

Red-bean is Chinese chocolate. Not because red-bean tastes anything like cacao-bean, as we already know, but because red-bean is used the same way chocolate is used in the western countries. Yes red-beans are eaten sweet..and it tastes delicious! My first encounter with sweet red-bean was in the moon cakes and I knew immediately that I needed to find out more about it. And where do u start if not at bakeries :-).

Here below you can see some typical red-bean sweets that I found in different bakeries here in Shanghai. The most commonly red-beans are made into a sweet paste. They are boiled, mashed and mixed with sugar and some oil. But sometimes they are just boiled, mixed with sugar syrup and used in different pastries, soups, cakes, as you can see below.

 

Steamed bun with red-bean paste. This is the most common bun with red-bean paste and is sold all over Shanghai, from bakeries to small street vendors. I will write more just about steamed bread later on.

Red-bean paste is stuffed inside a bread slice and fried. Ends are dipped in white and black sesame.

 Sweet buns filled with red-bean paste and sprinkled with black sesame.






Red-bean paste is thinly spread between dough layers.







I thought this bun was with red-bean, it had a character for bean in its name, so you cannot blame me, but I guess the rest of the characters said "big black bean" :-). I have never before seen that big black beans, they were delicious too but are not that common.






Green-tea mousse with whole red-bean on top. The combination green-tea and red-beans is very common as well. Later on I will write more about it.










Yes, there is red-bean to drink...











... and to eat as sweet soup together with some kind of jelly.

Mooncakes

Mooncakes are traditional Chinese cakes eaten during the Mid-Autumn festival (also called Moon festival). This year Moon festival was celebrated on September 25th because it is believed that the moon is supposed to be fullest on this day.

And it is reason enough to celebrate it with you family and of course some mooncakes. This year I was lucky enough to experience Moon festival here in China.

Mooncakes are made in traditional molds and on the top of each one it says what they are filled with. Filling is surrounded by thin dough made of wheat flour. I bought a box of moon cakes that had 12 pieces with 6 different fillings.

Up from the left: coconut, red bean, mung bean
Down from the left: lotus, papaya, nuts and kernels

They are soft cakes, sweet but definitely not too sweet. One of the goals during my stay here in China is to find a good moon cake recipe and to buy moon cake-molds. Which is not quite simple as it sounds, as most Chinese people around here are buying moon cakes already done. My Chinese friend told me that today you can even buy a European version of the moon cake. I kindly asked her what was exactly a European version of the moon cake, and she said: Moon cake filled with chocolate!

As soon as she said it I got a picture and I loved it! But then a true European woke up in me and said: “Moon cakes with Nutella”. I do not know if you would be able to call them moon cakes anymore but I am sure they would do an excellent cake.

I general I think people should dare to mess with traditional cakes a bit more. I would prefer a re-invented traditional cake than a copy of a cake. The Sacher cake is probably the most copied one and at the same time the worst copied cake of them all. Probably because Austrians are not willing to share the recipe but in any case I am tired of seeing all Sacher-copies.

Here in Shanghai I have seen:”Tiramisu with Green Tea”. I have not tried it yet but I love the idea. It is Tiramisu but the name let you know that you should not expect the traditional one. More of that please and let the world know!

Guacamole with pomegranate

This is my favourite guacamole recipe: guacamole with pomegranate. The deliciously fresh taste of avocados and lime is accompanied by pomegranate and its wonderful crunchiness and sweetness, love it. Just make sure that the pomegranate you use is sweet, as a sour pomegranate and lime can make it too sour.

Guacamole can be varied with corn, different chili peppers, nuts, watermelon etc., but it always has the same base with avocados, lime, onion and cilantro. And it never ever, I repeat, never ever contains cream or any kind of diary product. That is, if you want the original Mexican version called Guacamole.

The chips, called “totopos” in Mexico, are made of tortillas that are dried in the oven or fried in the oil until crunchy.

Guacamole with pomegranate
3 avocados
1 smal onion
some chili serrano
3 tbsp pomegranate
1 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp chopped cilantro
some salt

Mash avocados and lime juice with a fork. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix. Done!

Almond paste "muffins"

These sweet little “muffins” are one of my favourite treats. But they are not really muffins, the shape reminds of muffins but that would be it. These are maid with almond paste and barely any flour. My favourite one is with orange flavour. It is also typical version from the west coast in Sweden where I live. Not that almonds or oranges grow on the west coast :-), or else where in Sweden.

I was actually planning to post this recipe for SHF-going local, but despite they are west-coast they are really not west-coast. In general there are not many sweet local-specialities in Sweden like in rest of the Europe. Here everything is kind of national and international, I guess a bit like IKEA. Anyway, here comes the recipe.


Almond paste "muffins"
10 pieces
200 g almond paste
100 g butter at room temperature
2 eggs
1,5 tbsp flour
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp freshly grated orange zest

1 dl icing sugar
1-2 tsp water
3 tbsp candid orange zest

Butter and flour the muffin moulds. You should use the smallest cups you have, mine hold 1 dl of liquid.

Grate the almond past and add the butter. Mix everything until smooth and fluffy. Add eggs one at the time. Stir in the flour mixed with baking powder and orange zest. Fill the cups, a bit more than half and bake at 180 C for about 15 minutes. Let cool for some minutes and take them out of the cups. Let cool completely. When cold frost them with the mixture of powder sugar, water and candid orange zest.