We, of course, wished him to say only pleasant things about us to the emperor, so on the twenty-fourth day of the last month, a week before the New Year celebration, we would take his image down from the wall, smear his mouth with honey and then burn the image. We would see him rising Heavenward in the smoke and know only sweet tales would be coming from his lips.
In other households his mouth would be coated with sugar, with sweet pastries, often with wine for his journey up. But we thought honey was sufficient. Still other houses, not as trusting of the Kitchen God as we, would coat his lips with sweet sticky rice so he would not be able to even open them to make a report. This was rejected in our family, and I believed as a girl that good behavior would be rewarded with a happy report by Tsao Chun.
All of these confections took considerable time to make. Although they were usually available premade in the town market, Ah Paw would have none of that. “Ho hoi sum,” she would say, which indicated that there was joy to be found in the making. It is her message: enjoy the work, and learn, that I preach when teaching my students how to prepare dishes that require more than a little effort.
My grandmother insisted that these gifts of food be a family affair, with the servants, my number-two aunt and myself, sharing the effort. Here are some other gifts of food that we made in her kitchen in those exciting days leading to the New Year.
A CHINESE NEW YEAR FAMILY PORTRAIT TAKEN IN 1958. STANDING LEFT TO RIGHT ARE MY COUSIN JOSEPHINE; MY NUMBER-SIX AUNT, WITH WHOM I LIVED UNTIL I LEFT HONG KONG; ME; AND MY COUSIN CHRISTINA. KNEELING IN FRONT ARE MY COUSINS SHIRLEY AND DAVID.
Turnip Cake
(LOR BOK GOH)
As with many foods at the New Year, this cake is at once nourishment and symbol. The cake, the goh, represents one’s job, business, or fortune, and as the cake rises during cooking, one’s position is said to improve. Noticeable in this recipe is the use of liquefied pork fat. This is traditional, but peanut oil can also be used.
1½ pounds (4½ cups, tightly packed) fresh Chinese turnips, peeled and
coarsely grated
3¼ cups cold water
1 slice ginger, 1 inch thick, lightly smashed
3 tablespoons Chinese white rice wine, or gin
2 large cloves garlic, large, peeled and left whole
Pinch white pepper
10 ounces (2⅓ cups) rice flour
6 ounces (1½ cups) glutinous rice flour
2 cups plus 1 tablespoon cold water
⅓ cup liquefied pork fat, or peanut oil
2 tablespoons dried shrimp, soaked in water to soften, drained and cut
into ¼-inch dice
3 Chinese sausages (lop cheung), cut into ¼-inch dice
½ cup Chinese bacon, cut into ¼-inch dice
⅛ teaspoon white pepper
3¾ teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons scallions, finely sliced (optional)
3 tablespoons coriander, finely sliced (optional)
Grease a 9-inch round, 3-inch-deep cake pan; set aside.
In a large pot, place the turnips, the 3¼ cups cold water, ginger, wine, garlic and white pepper. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat. Lower heat and simmer, with lid left open a little, for 10 minutes. Turn off heat, remove pot from stove, allow to cool, then discard ginger and garlic.
In large bowl mix rice flours with 2 cups and 1 tablespoon water. Add liquefied pork fat and mix well to combine. Add dried shrimp, sausages, bacon, white pepper and salt, and mix well to combine thoroughly. Add turnip mixture, including cooking liquid, to the bowl, and mix well to combine thoroughly.
Place the mixture in a greased 9-inch round cake pan. Place cake pan on a rack, add 8 cups boiling water in wok, cover, steam for 1 hour, 15 minutes. During the steaming process, add boiling water to the wok every 15 minutes. Test cake by inserting a chopstick. If the mixture does not stick to chopstick, it is done. Turn off heat. Allow to set 5 to 7 minutes. Remove cake pan from steamer, cut into portions and serve, sprinkled with finely sliced scallions and coriander, if desired.
NOTE This cake was kept on hand for guests. It was always served hot. To heat, resteam for 5 to 7 minutes until hot. Slice and serve.
Pan-Fried Turnip Cake
(JIN LOR BOK GOH)
This most traditional preparation is a must for New Year visitors. Because my grandmother was a total vegetarian for the first fifteen days of the New Year, she did not eat this cake, but she insisted that it be on hand for visitors to her house. This pan-fried cake is quite different from the steamed version it is based on. Before pan-frying, the cake should be at room temperature. Whatever portion is to be used, the entire cake should be sliced into portions first, then pan-fried. Before pan-frying, slices should be cut from whole cake as needed. For the best taste, I recommend slices ½ inch thick by 2½ inches long.
Peanut oil, as needed, to cover bottom of pan
1 steamed Turnip Cake (page 111), cut into portions
2 tablespoons scallions, finely sliced (optional)
2 tablespoons coriander, finely sliced (optional)
Pour sufficient oil to cover bottom of cast iron fry pan. Heat over high heat until a wisp of white smoke appears. Add turnip cake slices, lower heat. Pan-fry until light brown, about 3 minutes, turn over, fry for another 3 minutes. If oil is absorbed, add 1 to 2 tablespoons additional.
Drain slices on paper towels, serve immediately with sliced scallions and coriander, as desired.
Leftover turnip cake cannot be frozen. It should be refrigerated, but before pan-frying should be allowed to come to room temperature.
Taro Root Cake
(WU TAU GOH)
This is another of those special New Year cakes. Essentially it’s quite similar to turnip cake but made with the favored taro root, known for its purple-threaded texture. I remember asking Ah Paw about this cake before making it for the first time, and noting that its ingredients were similar. What is the difference, I asked her? “Ah Fei,” she answered, “Ah Fei. I thought your name was Ah Fei. Perhaps it should be Chun Choi. One is made with turnips. One is made with taro.” Chun choi, simply translated, means “dunderhead.”
¾ pound taro root, skin and hard ends removed, cut into ½-inch dice, to
yield 2 cups tightly packed
1¾ cups cold water
1 cup, 3 tablespoons rice flour
⅔ cup glutinous rice flour
1⅔ cups cold water
¼ cup liquefied pork fat, or peanut oil
2 Chinese sausages (lop cheung), cut into ¼-inch dice
¼ cup Chinese bacon, cut into ¼-inch dice
1½ tablespoons dried shrimp, soaked in water to soften, cut into ¼-inch
dice
8 cups boiling water
3 tablespoons scallions, finely sliced
3 tablespoons coriander, finely sliced
Place taro and 1¾ cups cold water in a large pot, bring to a boil over high heat. Lower heat to simmer and cover, leaving a small opening and simmer 15 to 20 minutes, until taro is very tender. Turn off heat, allow to cool. As taro cools, grease an 8-inch-round cake pan and set aside.
In a large bowl mix rice flours and 1⅔ cups cold water. Add liquefied pork fat until well combined. Add sausage, bacon, shrimp and salt, and combine well. Add taro and its cooking liquid to the bowl, stir and mix to combine thoroughly. Pour into prepared cake pan. Place 8 cups boiling water in wok and turn heat to high. Place cake pan on a rack in wok over boiling water, cover and steam, 1¼ hours. During steaming process, add boiling water to wok every 15 minutes. Insert a chopstick into the cake. If it comes out clean, cake is done. If not, steam for 15 minutes longer, then test again.
Turn off heat, allow cake to set 10 to 15 minutes in wok. Remove pan from wok. Leave cake in pan and cut into slices, serve, sprinkled with scallions and coriander, if desired.
To pan fry, follow instructions for pan-frying turnip cake (page 113).
Water Chestnut Cake
(SANG MAW MAH TAI GOH)
This simple dish is a New Year prize. Its sweet flavor is one of the recurring themes of the New Year. It was special to my grandmother, and it is to me as well. I make it not only every New Year, along with Turnip Cake, but also at other times throughout the year when I fancy it. The water chestnut powder at this recipe’s base is cereal-like, and can be eaten as a breakfast porridge, when cooked with water and dark brown sugar. Among traditional Chinese it is considered a substitute for mothers’ milk when cooked with water. My granddaughter, Siu Siu, loves it.
3¾ cups boiling water
1⅔ cups dark brown sugar
1¼ pounds (4½ cups) canned water chestnuts, drained and coarsely
chopped
8 ounces water chestnut powder mixed with 1 cup cold water
Grease a 9-inch-square cake pan.
Pour boiling water into a wok over high heat, add sugar and stir to dissolve. Add chopped water chestnuts and mix well. Add water chestnut powder mixture. Turn heat under wok to low. Stir mixture continually in one direction for 5 to 7 minutes, until mix is very thick and pasty.
Pour water chestnut mixture into greased pan. Place pan on a rack in wok. Add 8 cups boiling water, cover and steam for 40 minutes until it sets firmly and becomes translucent. (See steaming directions, page 30.) Replenish boiling water after 20 minutes. Turn off heat, remove cake pan from steamer. Allow to set 4 minutes. Slice immediately and serve.
This is a most unusual cake. When freshly steamed, and sliced, it has the consistency of a firm jelly. As it cools, it becomes very much like an aspic. It can be frozen either whole, or in slices. To reheat, allow cake to return to room temperature, then steam for 10 minutes or until heated through. It will become more jellylike again. Eat it just as if it had been made fresh.
It can be pan-fried as well, but it must be cooled and refrigerated overnight preferably (not frozen) before doing so. To pan-fry, cut cooled cake into slices 2 inches square, ½ inch thick, and pan-fry in the same manner as turnip cake (page 113).
Scallion Pancakes
(SAHNG CHUNG BOK BANG)
These thin scallion pancakes were usually served by my grandmother with afternoon tea—black, fermented bo lei tea, which she insisted was good for digestion. During the New Year time, these cakes were offered to guests, either with tea or with a small cup of pungent Chinese rice wine. The scallion pancakes themselves, I believe, were creations of her kitchen and are markedly different from those with which most people are familiar. I have never seen them in any restaurant. They are thin, crepelike, made from a bleached wheat flour batter and fried in an iron pan. I make them every New Year in my kitchen, in Ah Paw’s memory.
1¼ cups bleached wheat flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1 medium egg, beaten
1½ cups, plus 2 to 4 tablespoons cold water
¾ teaspoon salt
Pinch white pepper
2 tablespoons dried shrimp, soaked in hot water to soften, then finely
diced
⅓ cup Chinese bacon, finely diced
½ cup Chinese sausage (lop cheung), finely diced
7 scallions, trimmed, finely sliced
1½ tablespoons peanut oil, plus additional oil for pan, as needed
Mix flour and baking powder. Add egg and 1½ cups cold water and mix in one direction until smooth. Add salt and pepper, mix well. Add shrimp, bacon, sausages, scallions and peanut oil, blend thoroughly. The batter should be thin. If not, add 2 to 4 tablespoons of water.
Heat a crepe pan or a nonstick fry pan, add sufficient peanut oil to coat bottom. Pour about 3 tablespoons of batter into pan, cook 2 minutes, or until pancake sets. Turn over with spatula and cook until light brown. Remove from pan and place in a heated dish in an oven set at Warm. Repeat the process until 12 pancakes are cooked. You may need to add about 1 to 2 teaspoons oil to pan between pancakes. Keep regulating heat to avoid either overcooking or undercooking.
Serve with tea, as a snack or as a course of a larger meal.
MAKES 12 PANCAKES
ALL OF THESE FESTIVE CAKES WERE augmented with foods from the market. We bought salted watermelon seeds and sweet lotus seeds, candied watermelon rind and lotus roots, and preserved dates to be set out for guests in a partitioned tray called bat sin hop, the “eight fairy basket,” or “the tray of togetherness.” We cut small stalks of sugarcane and peeled them down to their sweet cores. We picked, and bought, tangerines for good luck, oranges for sweetness and grapefruit and pomelos for abundance. A container of rice stood at the door with a scripted message attached: Seong Moon, meaning “Always Full,” for visitors to see and thus share in our family’s good fortune.
Small, potted fruit-bearing kumquat trees and flowering peach trees were brought home from the flower market, as were the freshly cut chrysanthemums so loved by my grandmother for their golden color, all to be displayed about her house. Her house, now cleaned, decorated, stocked with enough foods, cakes and snacks to please any number of guests who might drop in, was ready for New Year’s Eve.
On this day before the great day, we always had a light breakfast of congee, then set up our New Year food displays. Out from storage came lacquered guor hop, or fruit baskets, to be polished until they gleamed, then crammed tight with standing sticks of sugarcane of varying lengths. Atop these we artfully arranged our sweet fruit, the oranges, tangerines, grapefruit and pomelos we had brought in earlier. Also out of storage came the partitioned tray that held our sweet snacks of melon seeds, nuts, sweet rinds and preserved dates.
From storage as well came three tall pewter ornaments, looking like bulbous vases, and called fook look sau, each standing for one of the great wishes of each New Year: good luck, long life and prosperity. A small table was brought out and put in front of the altar table in Ah Paw’s living room, covered in a red, gold-embroidered cloth, to hold the tray of snacks and one of the pewter vases. The other vases went on the two sides of the altar, one for our family’s ancestors, the other in front of Guan Gung, the god of protection.
Small fresh heads of lettuce, symbolizing prosperity, were bound together with scallions, for intelligence, and hung with red string from the doorjambs of my grandmother’s living room and the two bedrooms of the house. This was the last preparation before going to the market to shop for the New Year’s Eve banquet, the most important family meal of the Chinese year.
Throughout the day we cooked—the servants, my number-two aunt and myself—under Ah Paw’s direction. Yet even before we ate, observances had to be made. As each dish was cooked, it had to be presented first as an offering at Ah Paw’s altar, along with three cups of rice wine, three cups of tea, three bowls of rice and three pairs of chopsticks, so that our departed ancestors and the gods could dine with us. Drops of wine and tea would be drizzled on the floor in front of the altar for the gods to drink symbolically.
This offering of food completed, we would sit down to our annual Gau Dai Guai, the nine-course meal of New Year’s Eve. Contrary to popular belief, a New Year’s banquet is not a dinner of ten, twelve or more courses of exotic foods. Only nine courses were served; nine symbolizes never-ending infinity, and the foods served usually had to be gau dai guai, or “nine big dishes,” reminders of wishes for the New Year. Often, my mother and brother would come to Ah Paw’s house for this dinner, which made it happier for me. We would pull the table up to Ah Paw’s divan, set all of the other chairs around it and have our New Year’s Eve family meal.
Shrimp Balls
(HAR YUEN)
The round shape of shrimp balls indicate togetherness, that there is no ending. They can be made of fish as well, but that they are made from shrimp, har, which sounds like laughter, suggests a dish of happiness. It is similar to the shrimp filling used as a stuffing in earlier recipes, but is only of shrimp, and special to the New Year.
¾ pound shrimp, shelled, deveined, washed, dried and chopped into a
paste
3 tablespoons coriander, minced
2 tablespoons egg
white, beaten
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
Pinch white pepper
1 teaspoon light soy sauce
2 teaspoons oyster sauce
1½ teaspoons sesame oil
1½ teaspoons peanut oil
2 teaspoons Chinese white rice wine, or gin
8 cups cold water
1½ teaspoons salt
Place shrimp in a bowl, add all other ingredients except cold water and 1½ teaspoons salt and mix well to combine. I prefer mixing by hand. After it is well blended, pick up the shrimp mix and throw it with some force against a side of the bowl. Repeat about 10 times until mixture is firm. (If an electric mixer is used, mix 4 to 5 minutes, using flat paddle, until mixture is firm.)
My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen Page 10
