Steamed Peach Buns 寿桃 II

Recently, I just started college!!  It's definitely a new, exciting experience to go through.  College is somewhere that people have to become more independent.  The teachers now don't remind you to do your homework and things like that.  They now expect you to do everything and if you don't do it, a bad result on a test is what you get.  So after starting school back in September 22, I was "busy" with other things like getting used to college, dorm life, and making friends.  School isn't that hard, at least not as hard as I expected.  I'm enjoying school life I guess.  I'm dorming and I have two other roommates.  We get along really well. :)  I'm have lots of fun with them; they always make me laugh.  Also, my hall activities are pretty fun too.  Since I'm in an all-girls hall, the only all-girls hall in my school, my whole hall is pretty close.  We even had a hair and nail polish night where we just had fun.  Oh!  I also got a new job, at the Student Center.  Yesterday was the first day I worked and it was pretty interesting.  I think I like my new job. :D  Anyway, that's basically what has been happening recently, just wanted to keep my readers updated.  Now....on to the recipe. This is the one that is a continuation from my red bean paste post.

On September 9, I decided to make steamed peach buns, aka 寿桃, again because it was going to be my boss' and grandma's birthday.  Last time I made them, I messed up because it was too cold, so I didn't let the buns rise for a sufficient amount of time.  However, this time they were successful!  Both recipes are for sure very reliable.  Feel free to try both of them out.

Steamed Peach Buns 寿桃 II
Recipe from Vivian Pang's Kitchen.
 
 

Steamed Buns 饅頭 (Mantou)

I wanted to share this the day I made it, which was some time this past week. I've made it several times since then and even tried the wheat version. I'll share those tips in a separate post. The post below is what I wrote a few days ago. If I don't post this post now, I don't know when I'll get around to posting it. So here it is! I'll continue adding pictures until there is the usual step-by-step pictures. I highly recommend this recipe!

I've always wanted to try making the mantou my dad made. It was always a treat whenever he made them. When he hasn't made them for a long time, I would request for them, dropping hints. :D One day I tried learning from him. Except, my family usually cooks without measuring. So I tried the best that I could to get the recipe and below is my sad attempt of remembering his recipe...

Well before that, I decided to try out Angie's recipe in the meantime because I was craving mantou. I feel like I would be able to eat mantou for breakfast, lunch and dinner, without getting sick of it. As I mentioned many times before, I love eating carbs! :D I really would eat that much mantou if it was healthy for you, but it isn't....too much processed flour. Ok, anyway, I found her recipe a long time ago, before I even started blogging. Back then, I did not know much about breads. If you asked me to make mantou last year, I would be confounded.

The bread turned out sooo soft! And it had skin! You can tell how excited I was. lol That type of mantou is my favorite. Now, next step is to make this wheat mantou, but still keep this nice texture. The only downfall was my baking soda not being mixed well enough....leading to these brown splotches. I also learned that adding sugar and yeast creates alcohol and mixing baking soda with this alcohol may cause brown spots. In my case it was brown swirls. Maybe next time I won't add sugar to my starter to see if the brown splotches still happen.

Chinese Steamed Buns with Starter
Adapted from Angie's Recipes



Uploaded with ImageShack.us Photobucket is maintaining their website now, so I'll just use imageshack for the time being.

Purple Yam Mochi

My aunt made some more mochi one day and brought some over to my house and shared a few with my family. There's a twist, instead of using red bean paste, she used mashed purple yam for the filling. Because making red bean paste is very time consuming, she tried out this new method recommended by her friend. I think this new flavor tastes really good. It doesn't have the "feel" of red bean mochi, but if you are in a bind and crave mochi with sweet fillings, go ahead and try this out. So here is the mochi she made, along with the simple recipe.

For the quick and easy mochi recipe with a video tutorial, click here. Continue reading for the yam filling's recipe.

Purple Yam Mochi

The second one is yam too, but the lighting was a bit off. This one was rolled in dessicated coconut instead of potato starch.


Red Bean Mochi

Red Bean Nian Gao Pancake 紅豆年糕餅

Whenever my mom makes red bean nian gao, she also makes a pancake sandwich with them. The pancake uses a very simple batter that takes a minute or two to prepare. Depending on your own preference, you can choose to make the pancake thick or thin. The pancake surrounds the rectangular slice of nian gao while it's being cooked, allowing the nian gao to slightly soften, resulting in a perfect balance of texture between the pancake and the nian gao.

Red Bean Nian Gao Pancake 紅豆年糕餅

Daikon Nian Gao 蘿蔔糕

It's a Chinese New Year tradition for my mom to make nian gao every year. She will always make 3 different flavors and give them out to relatives and friends. As a child I really liked the red bean nian gao, but I would never eat daikon nian gao or taro because I was really picky back then. Now, I like eating all three flavors. For the savory nian gao, it is best paired with a soy sauce with minced garlic.

Daikon Nian Gao 蘿蔔糕 is also better known as turnip cake or radish cake. They aren't made out of turnips, but daikons, so the name isn't as accurate. You can find these "cakes", fried, at dim sums. They have a solid texture. When pan fried, they have a nice, crispy outer layer and a warm, semi-soft inner layer.

Daikon Nian Gao 蘿蔔糕
Recipe from my mom

Coconut Red Bean Jello

As a child, whenever I went to eat dim sum with my family I couldn't wait for the dessert. I loved the cute little umbrellas that they would stick in the jellos. In fact, sometimes I would get a jello just for the umbrella. That was the point in my life where I was obsessed with those little umbrellas; my dad even made an origami one for me. To this day I still have that umbrella. Anyway, today I'm going to share this jello recipe with you. My mom's friend told her how to make this recipe. Her daughter also happens to be a good friend of mine. :)

This type of jellos is common in Dim Sum places. If you have never went to eat dim sum, you should try it. When you go eat dim sum, you find people pushing carts with food. They give you a piece of paper that they stamp when you order a dish. It will be around 1 or more dollars each "dish", but I think it's worth it.


Coconut Red Bean Jello
*4 Packets Gelatin
*1 Can Coconut Milk
*1 Can of Red Beans
*3 Cups Water
*Sugar (optional because the canned red beans that I buy has a LOT of sugar)




Directions
Pour one cup of lukewarm water into the measuring cup.
Pour all 4 packets of gelatin into the cup of water. Stir it around and let it sit for a while, around 1-2 minutes, to dissolve the gelatin. It should look a bit frothy and the water should become thicker.


Open the can of coconut milk and can of red beans.
Pour two cups of hot water into a pan.


Add the coconut milk and the cup of water with the gelatin, mix.

Add the can of red beans and mix.

Pour it into another pan in which the jello can set.

Now there are two different choices:
1) a layered jello




2) a uniform jello




For a layered jello in which the red beans sink to the bottom, and the coconut milk rises to the top with the water in between both layers, just pour the mixture into the pan and let it sit at room temperature, after the jello has been given time for the mixture to separate, refrigerate it.

For a uniform jello, just pour the mixture in a pan and immediately put it in the refrigerator.

Mix the ingredients together.

Refrigerate.

Almond Jello

Recipe from my piano teacher. She made it for me one day. I really liked it, so she gave me the recipe. Thank you, Teacher Melody. :)

Almond Jello

Ingredients

Unflavored gelatin
Water
Milk
Sugar
Almond extract 1 teaspoon per portion*

1 envelope of unflavored gelatin 1 cup of water 1 cup of milk
Or 3 envelopes of unflavored gelatin 2 cups of water 4 cups of milk
Or 2 envelopes of unflavored gelatin 1 cup of water 3 cups of milk


Basically the proportion of the gelatin to liquid is 1:2. If you want the jello to be whiter add more milk than water. Also, remember; if you put 3 envelopes of gelatin put 3 teaspoons of almond extract.

Direction:
Sprinkle gelatin over a pot of cold water to soften, turn on the fire to low, stir until dissolved, add sugar (no definite amount, adjust to taste), stir again, turn off heat, add the mild and almond extract, let it cool, then refrigerate until firm.

Optional: mix with fruit cocktail; also if there isn’t enough juice in the fruit cocktail you can add more water and sugar.

*Buying imitation almond extract is cheaper and taste is not affected.

Egg Tarts

Egg tarts are delicious. I especially love the ones they have at dim-sum. Their crispy, flaky crusts with a sweet egg filling always leave me craving for another one. I made egg tarts for my first time a few years back and I had to substitute some ingredients. That resulted in a plain crust that did not taste good. The filling was also ok. I do remember the difficulty I had in prying out the tarts from the tart cups, one by one, pledging to never make them again. A few years later, I changed my mind because I had discovered Christine's Recipes, a great blog to refer to for Asian recipes; there I found this egg tart recipe. However, the crust of this egg tart is the cookie type, kind of like shortbread, not those flaky types.

Here is the recipe. Christine's Recipes is a well organized blog that makes it easy to locate recipes I might be interested in. Also, as a beginner level cook, the recipes are simple enough for me to be able to make them. I haven't had a chance to actually cook some things, as you can tell from my long list of "things to cook", but I hope to hone my cooking skills during the summer. Anyway, back to egg tarts.


Butter and confectioner's sugar ready to be creamed.



Sifting in the flour.


In the process of mixing the crust.


What the texture of the crust should look like after it is uniformly mixed.



Evaporated Milk


The whisked eggs.

Whisk in the evaporated milk.



Now, roll out the dough so that it is around 1/2 cm thick.




I cut out the crust with the tart tins because I do have biscuit cutters. Anyway, the only hard part was getting the "circles" out because of their frilly edges.
I poured the filling into a measuring cup.

That way I can easily pour it into the separate tins.


The messy kitchen. So many things to clean up!





I first baked a tart in the toaster to see if it would stick to the tart tin. It didn't. I did this to see if I would need to butter the tins. It turns out perfectly. I guess it's because there is already a lot of butter in the crust.



The baking process of egg tarts require you to open the oven door a few inches during the last few minutes so that the eggs won't puff up.



Here's what I learned:
Make your crust taller or pour less filling into the tart tins unless you want to have a hard time getting the tarts out. If too much filling is poured in, then when it's baking it will bubble out and caramelize. (I think that's how you describe it) This leads to egg tarts that are stuck to the tin. I had to use a toothpick to loosen the sides to get the tarts out.

Don't make your tart's crust so tall that it goes over the rims of the tins. Why? Because if you make it too tall, you will have a hard time getting the tart out. The cause of this is that if the tart is not loose, you will need to "pry" it out, but in doing so you might break some of the tarts' edges.

Good luck. :)