Adventures with Kake

[Image: Three small, round, crispy deep-fried croquettes sitting in red paper cups on a white plate. The exterior of the croquettes is honeycombed with small holes.]

As promised earlier this week, here's more on taro croquettes! These are small, round croquettes formed primarily of mashed taro, filled with minced pork and prawns. The exterior is wispy and crispy; this gives way to the smooth mashed taro and then the filling in the centre.

The most common Chinese name I've seen these under on Chinese menus is 蜂巢炸芋角 (fēng cháo zhà yù jiǎo). I won't attempt to transliterate the Cantonese pronunciation of the whole thing, but the essential part is 芋角, which in Cantonese is wu gok. 芋 is taro, and 角 means horn-shaped; the latter is a common descriptor for deep-fried dumplings and croquettes, though do note that it also appears on menus in another significant context, as 豆角 (dòu jiǎo), or green beans.

The rest of the name varies between restaurants. The 蜂巢 (fēng cháo) in 蜂巢炸芋角 means "honeycomb", and is a reference to the texture of the crispy exterior of the croquette. 炸 (zhà) simply means "deep-fried". I've also seen a variation of this name, 蜂巢荔芋角, in which 炸 is replaced by 荔 (lì). I have no idea what this is about, since as far as I know 荔 means "lychee", but I've seen it on at least three different menus. Top Of The Town in London Chinatown uses an even more perplexing name: 荔甫炸芋角 (lì fǔ zhà yù jiǎo).

In English, they're usually just called "taro croquettes", or, confusingly, "yam croquettes" — they're definitely made from taro rather than yam (see my post on 芋 for more on this). Some restaurants expand on this, for example "crispy taro croquettes with pork" or "deep-fried yam croquettes", but since they're always deep-fried and they always contain pork (unless marked as vegetarian: 齋芋角/zhāi yù jiǎo), this doesn't indicate a difference from those described simply as "taro croquettes".

There seem to be two schools of thought for making these at home. One, exemplified by a recipe posted on the about.com forums, mixes everything together — taro, filling, and all — before deep-frying. The other, which is more like the versions I've seen in restaurants, mixes the filling and the taro dough separately, and then stuffs the one inside the other; see for example taro dumplings from Edibly Asian. I decided to try the all-in-one method, which unfortunately didn't work out too well — details below. Next time I'll try it the other way.

It started well. I bought my taro frozen from Wing Yip — conveniently, it was already peeled, and in chunks of roughly 300g (the amount I needed for the recipe). I defrosted a chunk, sliced it around 1/2 cm thick, and steamed it for 20 minutes. It was easy to mash then.

The rest of the carbohydrate component comes from a dough made by mixing boiling water into wheat starch. I wasn't really sure what texture I was aiming for here, and I also found it a bit tricky to combine this dough with the mashed taro.

After mixing in the fillings, the dough really was very sticky — I found that unless I kept my hands wet while shaping the croquettes, it would stick to them and make a mess. I'd read different opinions on whether to just fry them straight away or not, so I tried a few experiments.

A few I tried coating with cornflour before frying; these sucked up loads of cornflour and after frying the texture was completely wrong on the outside. I also tried frying some with no coating, immediately after shaping them. The texture was much better and I even got something approaching the characteristic laciness on the outside. They had a tendency to stick to my fryer basket though, and bits still came off to the point where I stopped halfway through to strain the bits out of the oil.

Finally, I tried chilling some in the fridge for an hour before frying — this was a bit of a disaster, as putting them in cold cooled the oil down to the point where they simply disintegrated. (The about.com thread linked above warns that this will happen if your oil's not hot enough.)

So I think I must conclude that these aren't particularly easy to make! (Though I'm not that experienced with deep-frying — maybe others will find it easier.) All the more reason to order them in restaurants...

[Image: Four dumplings arranged in a bamboo steamer basket. The skins of the dumplings are translucent, showing the orange-pink colour of the prawns inside. Each dumpling is sealed with several pleats.]

Har gao (蝦餃) are perhaps one of the most iconic dim sum items, so they seem a fitting thing to start off my month of dim sum. The Chinese characters simply mean "prawn dumpling" — 蝦 is "prawn", while 餃 is "dumpling". However, it's understood that this is a particular type of prawn dumpling, with a translucent wrapper made from wheat starch, sealed with several neat pleats and thin enough to show off the colour of the prawns inside.

The pronunciations of 蝦 and 餃 in Mandarin are "xiā" and "jiǎo" respectively, but as I've mentioned before, dim sum is a Cantonese tradition and so in English-speaking countries the dishes are usually referred to by their Cantonese names. Hence: har gao (or har gow, har gau, har kau, ha gao, ha gow, etc, depending on your preferred transliteration). I will be giving the pinyin for all the characters I mention this month, though, for consistency with the rest of my posts.

I've seen har gao listed on menus both simply as 蝦餃 and with more elaborate names. 鮮蝦餃 (xiān xiā jiǎo) is one; 鮮 (xiān) means "fresh", a characteristic you definitely want to find in connection with the prawns inside these dumplings.

晶 (jīng), which means "crystal" or "clear", is another salient characteristic, in this case associated with the translucency of the dumpling skins. It often appears in combination with 瑩 (yìng), meaning "bright" or "lustrous", giving names such as 晶瑩鮮蝦餃 (jīng yìng xiān xiā jiǎo) or 晶瑩蝦餃 (jīng yìng xiā jiǎo).

Finally, you may see reference to the bamboo shoots (筍尖/sǔn jiān) which often form part of the filling: 筍尖鮮蝦餃 (sǔn jiān xiān xiā jiǎo) or 筍尖蝦餃 (sǔn jiān xiā jiǎo).

There are basically two types of har gao that I've come across — the proper type, pictured above, which are wrapped and pleated by hand, and the other type, which are made in some kind of dumpling press with wobbly lines to suggest the folds (see the bottom left hand corner of this photo). This latter type tend to turn up in restaurants that have a small dim sum section on the menu but don't actually specialise in dim sum, and are best avoided — see my dim sum overview for more on this.

Although har gao are perhaps the epitome of dim sum — according to the Discover China documentary Dim Sum Odyssey, there's a saying in the trade that translates as "See how good a chef is, watch how he makes har gao" — I was very pleased to find that it's actually possible to make a decent rendition at home. The ones I made the other week were at least as good as the frozen ones I've bought before, even though it was my first time of making them.

I followed Sunflower's recipe and it was pretty straightforward — much easier than I'd been expecting! The dough for the wrappers held together very well while I was making them; it was easy to knead, and very easy to flatten out into circles (possibly too easy — it got thinner than I was comfortable with at some points). It's worth noting that I found it easier to use the heel of my hand for the flattening out than to use a rolling pin, though it might have been better with a small Chinese rolling pin than with my gigantic British one.

The only thing I was unsure of was the steaming time. Sunflower said to steam them for 4 minutes, while other sources give times of up to 15 minutes. I experimented a bit, and 7-8 minutes seemed to be the sweet spot for me. I suspect the thickness of the wrappers has an effect here; I'll try for thinner wrappers next time as my filling got a little overcooked in the time it took to cook the wrappers through. The filling was also a bit fally-aparty — I'll try marinading the prawns with a little egg white next time.

One thing I learned during this is that it's not a good idea to try to lift the har gao directly after the steaming is finished — the skins will be fragile. They firm up after a minute or so. Serve them in the basket like the restaurants do :)

I also froze some uncooked ones and steamed them a couple of days later for 14 minutes from frozen — this worked fine.

Here are a couple of alternative recipes, using slightly different flavourings and proportions: one from iLearn Culture and one from Rasa Malaysia. Both worth a look.

(Edit, January 2012: See also eatlovenoodles' informative post on har gau.)

[Image: Thin, translucent, shiny noodles in a light brown sauce, threaded through with slivers of kelp and carrot; all piled in a cone shape on a white plate.]

A fairly simple cold dish today — 涼拌三絲 (liáng bàn sān sī). Literally "cold [涼] mixed [拌] three [三] shreds [絲]", this is a tasty noodle salad made with 粉絲 (fěn sī/bean thread noodles) along with two types of vegetable cut into long slivers to mimic the shape of the noodles. Kelp, carrot, wood ear fungus, and lightly blanched spinach are among the vegetable ingredients commonly used for this.

I've also seen this dish listed on menus under other names. 麻辣三絲 (má là sān sī) is literally "numbing-spicy three shreds", with Sichuan peppercorns providing the numbing component. 三絲木耳 (sān sī mù ěr) makes it explicit that wood ear fungus (木耳/mù ěr) is one of the ingredients. 紅油三絲 (hóng yóu sān sī) makes a different ingredient explicit; the chilli oil (紅油/hóng yóu/"red oil") in the dressing. Or you may see it simply as 拌三絲 (bàn sān sī).

Photo © avlxyz, used under cc-by-sa.

[Image: Wrapped 粽子; three tetrahedral and two cuboid packages wrapped in bamboo leaves and tied with red and white twine.]

As I hinted on Monday, the most obvious Chinese dish for me to cover at this time of year is 粽子 (zòngzi); glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves, strongly associated with 端午 (Duānwǔ), the fifth day of the fifth lunar month.

Today's post is a fairly brief one, I'm afraid; I had intended to say quite a bit more, and also to provide my own photo, but I've been both overwhelmed and under the weather for the past couple of weeks, so I'll just give you a couple of photos from my newest Flickr acquaintance, avlxyz, along with a few links to recipes and blog posts:

• Chinese bamboo leaf-wrapped dumplings 糉子: my grandma’s recipe (Winkypedia)
• Secret of the zongzi (Red Cook)
• Hong Kong part II: zongzi/bakchang (粽子/肉粽) (Life Is Great)

And finally several posts from the ever-informative Sunflower:

• Savoury zhongzi (五香鹹肉糭)
• Lye zhongzi 鹼水粽
• Five spice, peanut and pork zhongzi 五香花生豬肉粽
• Hakka mochi zhongzi 客家粄粽
• Crystal zhongzi 水晶粽子

(Note that some of these sources use a different word, 糉子; this is pronounced the same as 粽子, i.e. zòngzi.)

Photo © avlxyz, used under cc-by-sa.

[Image: Unwrapped 粽子; glutinous rice formed into shapes and stuffed with cooked pork, peanuts, and other delicious items. They rest on top of the bamboo leaves that were used to wrap them before cooking.]

[Image: Crisply-fried bite-size pieces of chicken piled on a fluted white plate, intermingled with a large quantity of fried dried red chillies.]

I am not, in general, a big fan of chicken dishes — too often, they're just bland and boring. However, 辣子雞 (là zi jī), or chicken with chillies, is a notable exception. This dish consists of bite-size pieces of chicken — often left on the bone for extra flavour — which are first deep-fried and then briefly stirfried with a terrifying quantity of dried chillies.

The chillies are not intended to be eaten, but are used simply to impart their flavour to the chicken; the dish is quite fragrant, and not necessarily as overwhelmingly spicy as it may at first appear. (Having said that, I have eaten some fairly hot versions which I suspect may have included chilli oil among their ingredients.)

As well as plain old 辣子雞 (là zi jī), the Chinese names I've seen this listed as include:

I've chosen the last of these names to describe today's dish, linking up to Wednesday's post about 香/xiāng/fragrant. According to the member of staff I interrogated about this at Red & Hot restaurant, the "drifting fragrance" part of the name is a reference to the way the fragrance of the chillies drifts out during cooking. "Floating fragrance chicken" might be another plausible translation, and I've also seen "drifting-fragrant chicken", which confused me for ages until I realised that it's the fragrance that's drifting, and not the chicken.

I suspect from the English translations I've seen in my menu collection that when 飄香 is used in the name of the dish, cumin is used in the cooking. I'm not entirely certain about this, though; it may just be a coincidence. In any case, some versions of 辣子雞 include cumin, while others don't.

When I made this earlier this week, I adapted Fuchsia Dunlop's recipe. The first change I made was that I used chicken thighs instead of breasts — they're more hassle to prepare, but I prefer the flavour. Since I'm not an expert butcher, I took the bones out before dicing them (four chicken thighs gave me 325g of meat once bones and skin were removed).

The other change I made was that I added half a tablespoon of cornflour (cornstarch) to the marinade. When I've had this dish in restaurants, the chicken pieces have had a crispy coating, while the photos I've seen of versions made to Ms Dunlop's recipe have lacked this. Cornflour helps to create a crispy coating, which is what I wanted. It didn't work out, though; I think I should have added quite a bit more cornflour, and possibly also had my oil hotter. But it was still tasty! The flavour was there, and although the texture wasn't what I was aiming for, it was just fine in itself and I'm already looking forward to making this again.

For more photos and discussion of different ways of making 辣子雞, see CNNGo's search for the best la zi ji in Shanghai — note that of course Shanghai is not in Chongqing, but I figure it's as least as valid as me learning about the dish by eating it in London!

[Image: Three cha siu bao in a steamer basket — soft, white, fluffy, slightly sweet steamed buns filled with barbecued pork. The tops of the buns are "smiling" to show the filling.]

Cha siu bao (叉燒包/chā shāo bāo) are probably familiar to most people who've ever been out for dim sum. I'd been intending to cover them during this year's dim sum month (which will again be in August), but since this week's character post was on 包/bāo/bun, they were the obvious choice for today's post.

I didn't want to get too complicated for my first attempt at these, so I decided to buy the 叉燒 instead of making it myself[see footnote]. Many Cantonese restaurants will sell you a chunk of cha siu to take away, at a reasonable price; it's best to go around lunchtime, as it's fresher then. Look for somewhere that has roast meats hanging up in the window, and ask to have your cha siu whole rather than cut up, so it doesn't dry out on the way home. If you do want to make your own, check out sung's cha siu recipe.

To turn my purchased chunk of 叉燒 into 包 filling, I followed Sue-On's instructions to dice it and then stirfry it with hoisin sauce and oyster sauce, before adding chicken stock and thickening it with cornflour slurry (the Tigers & Strawberries post linked below has a more complex recipe). I have to confess that, not being the greatest fan of 叉燒包, I hadn't eaten one in recent memory, so I wasn't entirely sure what flavour I was going for here. Instead, I aimed to get a decent amount of sauce that was thick enough to be folded up in a dough wrapper without leaking everywhere, but that wasn't too stodgy. I did make one mistake, in that I didn't dice the meat quite finely enough. I left this filling to cool completely before filling my buns.

The other important component is the bread dough. There are two main schools of thought on this: yeast-raised, or non-yeast-raised, though many yeast-raised doughs, such as the one from Tigers & Strawberries, also incorporate some baking powder for extra lift. There's another yeast-raised dough posted by Tepee on eGullet; note though that I haven't tried either of these yet, since I decided to go for a non-yeast option.

Non-yeast-raised doughs might use baking powder or ammonium bicarbonate as the raising agent. Some are kneaded and then left for 20-30 minutes to relax the gluten, while others are used straight away. Some people use water for the liquid, others use milk.

In the end, I tried two ways of making the dough; the boxed mix described below, and the dough recipe from Sue-On's bao page linked above. Sadly the latter simply didn't work for me — I thought all along that the proportions looked off, so I measured carefully and followed the instructions to the letter, but even using the most generous conversion I could find (1 cup flour = 5 oz weight), I still ended up with a batter rather than a dough, so I chucked it in the bin and had toast instead.

The boxed mix was a serendipitous discovery. I read online that Vietnamese "banh bao flour" was a good flour to use, so I went to our local Vietnamese supermarket and asked for some. The owner pointed me at a box of Thai "salapao mix" (photo of salapao mix box), which contained flour, sugar, and raising agents. I thought this was worth a go, so I bought some. The dough turned out quite soft, which surprised me, since according to the Tigers & Strawberries recipe linked above, the dough should be stiff, but I figured this was probably just a difference between the yeast-raised and non-yeast-raised versions, and indeed it was fine in the end.

Most recipes ask you to form the dough into a roll and then cut it into however many pieces it's meant to make — I prefer to weigh it, work out how much each one should weigh, and then pull off pieces and check the weight, but then I like doing long division, so just use whatever method suits you :) Sue-On's post, linked above, mentions using a tortilla press to make the flat circles, but I just rolled them out with a rolling pin.

For steaming, it's best to use a steamer with a bamboo lid, since it absorbs the condensation better than a metal lid does, and you don't really want condensation dropping back onto your 包. Note that they do get quite a lot bigger when you steam them, so make sure to leave plenty of room between them when you put them in the steamer.

To stop the 包 sticking to the base of the steamer, I used these circles of parchment paper stuff that I bought from the Chinese supermarket; they're cut to a standard size, and they have holes in them to let the steam through. They worked very well, no sticking at all. I've read that you can also use lettuce leaves, though these can make the bases of the 包 a bit soggy; I've also read that if you don't mind having to peel the paper off the buns afterwards, waxed paper works OK.

A number of sources on the internet suggest that adding some white vinegar to the steaming water will eliminate any "off" colours or smells, but I have no idea if this is true, nor what the mechanism might be. Similarly, many sources state that the 包 should be steamed over as high as heat as possible to get them really fluffy and to get the characteristic "cracked" or "smiling" top — I certainly noticed that the ones in the lower tier of my steamer (i.e. closer to the fresh steam) were smiling more than the ones in the upper tier. Finally, according to Tepee on eGullet, you should avoid overcooking (12-15 minutes is a good time), and uncover your 包 as quickly as possible once they've finished steaming, making sure not to let any condensation fall on them.

If you have leftover 包, let them cool down, then freeze them. Reheat by steaming from frozen for 10-15 minutes.

Footnote: [0] Since I was planning to be in central London anyway, I googled for where to buy cha siu in london chinatown and was amused to see a post by sung come up as the top hit. In his post, he recommended Hung's on Wardour Street, so I decided to go there, but was thwarted by an earlier appointment over-running; however, we met up for dinner the next evening so I got to wander along Gerrard Street with him afterwards peering in all the windows to select the best-looking cha siu for me!

[Image: Thick, flat, translucent noodles piled on a plate and topped with slivers of stirfried pork, dried red chillies, and fresh coriander. A fluid brown sauce coats the noodles and pools on the plate.][see footnote]

As well as letting myself off having a theme for this week, I'm also letting myself off the requirement to know exactly how today's dish is made. Which is handy, since I've only ever had it in one restaurant, and I can't find any recipes for it. (Edit, June 2011: Out To Lunch has a recipe for 雞絲拉皮/jī sī lā pí, which is similar but uses chicken.)

東北拉皮 (Dōngběi lā pí) is a cold dish of thick, flat, translucent mung bean noodles dressed with various tasty things and served mixed with shredded cucumber and stirfried pork slivers. I think it's delicious, though the heavy, slippery noodles can be somewhat tricky to eat without making a mess!

東北 (Dōngběi) means "northeast" (though it's the other way around from the English — 東 is "east" and 北 is "north"). In this context, it refers to a group of three provinces tucked up alongside Inner Mongolia in the far northeast of China: Liáoníng, Jílín, and Hēilóngjiāng.

拉皮 refers to the type of noodles; literally "pulled [拉] skin [皮]". They seem to sometimes also be called 大拉皮 (dà lā pí); 大 means "big". Another name for these noodles is 粉皮 (fěn pí), which translates as something like "starch [粉] skin [皮]". Like 粉絲 (fěn sī/bean thread noodles), 粉皮 are made from mung bean starch; however, 粉皮 are much thicker and more robust than 粉絲. (Londoners: I found 粉皮 in Loon Fung in Chinatown.)

There seem to be a few versions of this dish; for example I found one photo on Flickr that includes shredded ham, omelette, carrots, and cucumber, as well as prawns. Beijing Haochi has a post on Xian Lao Man restaurant that features a version closer to the one I'm familiar with; the sauce ingredients listed there are black vinegar and sesame paste (the internet tells me that Chinese sesame paste is similar to tahini but made with toasted rather than raw sesame seeds). Eating Asia also lists vinegar and sesame paste as ingredients, with the addition of "la jiao" (辣椒/chillies) and raw garlic. As Bejing Haochi mentions, the key to success in making 東北拉皮 is the texture of the noodles; they shouldn't be too hard, but neither should they be mushy.

I've also found reference to a dish called 西北拉皮 (xī běi lā pí) — 西北 means "northwest". This appears to be a different dish; it's the same noodles, but topped with a sweet and spicy sauce, served hot. I'm not sure what's in the sauce.

Footnote: [0] Due to a request, I'm now putting alt text for images in the main body of the post rather than within the alt attribute. Please let me know if this causes you any problems!

As regular readers will know, I am quite a fan of Chinese cold dishes. One that I order often is 涼拌木耳 (liáng bàn mù ěr), a dish of marinated black fungus, sometimes spicy, sometimes enlivened with a hint of Chinese black vinegar, sometimes both.

There are many variations of this dish, and many different names. I mentioned a few of the names I've seen on Wednesday, but others include 美味野生木耳 (měi wèi yě shēng mù ěr), literally "delicious wild wood ear fungus", and 爽口木耳 (shuǎng kǒu mù ěr), literally "tasty and refreshing wood ear fungus".

I couldn’t find a recipe in English for this, but I tried Google Translate on a few Chinese-language ones I found, and boiling the 木耳 seemed to be the way to go. I reconstituted the dried fungus by soaking in warm water for 30 minutes, then boiled it for 5 minutes (which was possibly a minute or two too long), then dressed it with black Chinese vinegar, a little bit of sugar to balance the vinegar, a splash of soy sauce, and some home-made chilli oil. I’d have added sesame oil too, but I'd run out.

It's worth noting that this fungus expands enormously when soaked, so even a smallish bag of it will feed many, many people. I used 20g of dried black fungus, which after soaking increased in weight to nearly 250g!

Photo © Ewan-M, used under cc-by-sa.

夫妻肺片 (fū qī fèi piàn) is a Sichuan cold dish. Despite its literal translation, "married couple [夫妻] lung [肺] slices [片]", it usually doesn't contain any actual lung. It does, however, contain other offal, usually tripe and/or tongue and/or heart. These are simmered in a savoury broth along with some braising beef, then everything is drained, cooled, sliced, and served cold, bathed in a spicy sauce and garnished with sesame seeds and maybe some peanuts.

To make it at home, try Helen Graves' interpretation of Fuchsia Dunlop's recipe. This is the recipe I followed, though due to a slight confusion over the amount of salt I actually used 2 tsp, which was a little too much, leaving me with rather salty yet still edible leftover stock. Also, I hate making caramel, so I used jaggery instead of rock sugar and didn't bother caramelising it. (Jaggery is an unrefined cane sugar that has a fantastic flavour — I buy mine from Indian supermarkets.) As Helen mentions, the leftover stock after braising is useful for soups and things, so don't throw it away!

Regarding the main ingredients, Helen just used beef, since her local shops were out of offal. If you do manage to get hold of some tongue, Kok Robin has some tips on cooking it. I used braising beef and tripe, both purchased from Morrisons supermarket. I'm not sure the tripe I used was ideal, since it was precooked and seemed very soft. I didn't simmer it for the full hour and a half as I was worried it might fall apart; I gave it 45 minutes in the end and it was OK, if much softer than I'd prefer. It probably wasn't actually the right kind of tripe, either; when I've had this dish in restaurants the tripe has been honeycomb tripe (as pictured above), and this definitely wasn't honeycomb tripe.

Finally, I definitely recommend that you use a good chilli oil in the dressing. I like to make my own, following Sunflower's recipe.

地三鮮 (dì sān xiān) is perhaps most euphoniously translated as "three fresh things from the earth". 地 is "earth", 三 is "three", and as I mentioned on Wednesday, 鮮 is "fresh". It's a dish from northeast China (東北/Dōngběi), comforting and homely, simply made by deep-frying cubed potatoes, aubergines, and peppers, then simmering them briefly in a savoury sauce.

The ever-reliable Sunflower has a good recipe for 地三鮮 — the only variations I make are that I stirfry the peppers with the garlic and spring onions rather than deep-frying them (i.e. I remove the bulk of the oil after frying the aubergine), and I use a little sweet bean sauce instead of sugar, as suggested by hunger hunger.

Sinoblogic's 地三鮮 recipe is almost identical, but offers the additional time-saving suggestion of frying the vegetables all together; this does require some judgment as to when to add the next type of vegetable though.

Regarding the specific ingredients, some recipes (and some restaurants) use just green pepper, while others use both green and red peppers. Perhaps the trickiest one to cook correctly is the aubergine; fried aubergines tend to soak up a lot of oil. Sunflower suggests that the solution to this is to make sure you fry them long enough that the oil comes back out again, though this does result in very soft aubergine, which not everyone likes. A recipe posted on Chowhound offers the alternative suggestion of salting them before use, though Sunflower stipulates that you shouldn't do this. Up to you!