![]() Take a dough ball and, with a rolling pin, flatten it into an elongated oval, about 6 inches long. Cover with plastic wrap and repeat with all the remaining water dough and oil paste balls. Place an oil paste ball at the center of the disc and wrap the disc around the oil paste, pinching it closed and rolling it in your hands so it’s smooth, larger ball. Take a water dough ball and flatten it with your palm into a 3-inch disc. Keep the balls covered with plastic wrap. If the mung bean paste is too crumbly and dry and does not hold together, mix a bit of water into it. ![]() Repeat with the remaining mung bean paste and pork filling. Stuff 1 scant tablespoon of the pork filling inside the indent, and seal it up into a smooth ball. Take a ball of mung bean paste and gently create an indent in the middle with your thumb. ![]() In a medium bowl, mix the cake flour and lard, and combine with your hands until it forms a cohesive mass. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for at least 20 minutes. (Alternatively, knead in a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment on low speed until smooth, about 2 minutes.) Divide into 15 even pieces, about 30 g each, and roll them into individual balls. Knead with your hands until it’s smooth and cohesive, about 5 minutes. Stream in the water and mix to form a shaggy dough. In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, mix the all-purpose flour, lard, sugar, and salt. Stir in the fried shallots, sesame seeds, white pepper, and five-spice powder (if using). Cook, stirring continuously, until the sauce has completely been absorbed and the ground pork is slightly dried out, 8 to 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to low, and add the soy sauce, rice wine, and sugar. When it’s hot and shimmering, add the ground pork and cook, stirring, until the edges are opaque, about 1 minute. In a wok set over medium heat, heat the lard. Cover with plastic wrap so it doesn’t dry out and set aside at room temperature. When it’s cool enough to handle, shape into 15 balls, about 43 g each. The paste will start to firm up as it cools down. Turn off the heat, and transfer to a plate. Heat the lard in a wok set over low heat, add the sweet mung bean paste, and stir with a silicone spatula until the lard has melted into the paste and the paste begins to resemble the texture of mashed potatoes, about 2 minutes. It should look crumbly and soft, like wet sand. Do not over process it will become rubbery and inedible. Add the sugar, and pulse on medium speed until it turns into a paste, about 3 to 5 times. When cool enough to handle, transfer the steamed spilt mung beans with any remaining reserved water in its steaming bowl to a food processor. Steam until the split mung beans are soft and can be smashed easily with the back of a spoon, about 35 minutes. Put the bowl on top of the steamer rack and cover. Drain the soaked spilt mung beans through a fine-mesh sieve and transfer them to a heatproof bowl for steaming. Bring the water to a rolling boil over high heat. Partially fill a large wok with water and place a steamer rack in the middle. Soak for 4 hours at room temperature or up to overnight in the refrigerator. ![]() In a medium bowl, cover the spilt mung beans with water. This recipe was excerpted from 'Made in Taiwan' by Clarissa Wei, one of our top cookbooks of 2023. As they cook, they’ll start to slowly expand in the oven, which is a delightful and charming feature special to this pastry. The mooncakes are also meant to puff up, which is achieved by gently pressing on the pastries with the heel of your palm right before you bake them. Designed to be relatively shelf-stable, the ground pork is sautéed until it’s quite dry, wrapped in a sweet mung bean shell, and then enclosed in a flaky, layered, lard-infused bun. This mung bean and pork rendition is perhaps the most classic and unique to the island. Today, there are dozens of glitzy mooncake styles in Taiwan-some stuffed with pineapple jam and others with taro or a salted egg yolk. “When the economy got better, you started to see fillings like pork.” They would stuff them with sugar, sweet potatoes, or beans,” says Chang Tsun-Chen (張尊禎), a writer and researcher who has authored several books on traditional Taiwanese pastries. “The earliest mooncakes were very simple. A celebration of the harvest moon, mooncakes are consumed exclusively during the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival in the fall, and in Taiwan, the early Chinese immigrants who brought over the tradition of the lunar pastry were forced to make do with whatever was available. ![]() While mooncakes originated in China, they radiated all throughout East and Southeast Asia with time and the diaspora. ![]()
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