Read Quick & Easy Chinese Online
Authors: Nancie McDermott
Quick & Easy Chinese (40 page)
ALMOND COOKIES
Chinese cuisine holds sweetness in high esteem but, unlike most Western traditions, often joins sweet and savory rather than relegating each to its own separate domain. Sweet flavors show up alongside savory ones, throughout the meal and in street-food snacks as well as banquets and in homestyle cooking. Pork in particular is cooked with rock sugar, honey, and spices such as cinnamon, star anise, and cloves, which belong on a sweet side within Western cuisines. Additionally, sugar is often added to seasoning mixtures as a component of the flavor pattern.
Dessert as a special and anticipated course enjoyed after a festive meal is not a Chinese concept. Fresh fruit or a comforting sweet, thick soup involving small red beans, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, and rice dumplings are what you might be served on such a grand occasion. Sweet treats abound in Chinese cuisine, but most often as a snack picked up in the marketplace and brought to the teachers’ lounge, bus station, or study hall, there to be nibbled with friends amid conversation.
Today, you’ll find fabulous Chinese bakeries with shelves lined with gloriously decorated cakes, glistening pastries, and fruit tarts piled high with perfectly positioned berries and slices of kiwi fruit. These testify to the delight and enthusiasm with which Chinese people have embraced Western desserts and sweets, but they remain a store-bought or restaurant treat. Home ovens are rare, and the Western ingredients, techniques, and equipment used in baking present a challenge for most home cooks. Many traditional Chinese sweets are purchased from vendors to this day.
This chapter provides you with a small collection of Chinese sweets that have made themselves at home within the cuisine and can be made at home with wonderful and delicious results. Three are standards that began in the West and demonstrate a sweet and savvy harmonizing between the traditions.
Almond Cookies
(facing page) and
Fortune Cookies
(page 160) both originate in Western lands where ovens have been standard home and restaurant equipment for generations. Almond Cookies are extremely easy to make and fortune cookies repay you well in the pleasure they provide.
Egg Custard Tartlets
(page 162) go back farther, to contact between China and Portugal in earliest trading days many centuries back. The Portuguese protectorate of Macau established a presence in the vicinity of Hong Kong long ago, and the traditional custard tarts of Portugal called for making a sugar syrup to be mixed with eggs and milk to make the custard. This unique method is used to this day in commercial
danh tot
, as they are called in Cantonese, and it yields extraordinarily smooth and shiny custard. You’ll find them in old-style Chinese coffee shops in Chinatowns, as well as in dim sum parlors and in bakeries.
Rounding out the chapter is a Chinese-inspired dessert, elegant
Five-Spice Poached Pears
(page 165), which are made in advance and offer a lovely denouement to any meal.
The Chinese original of the group here is
Candied Walnuts
(page 166). They make a wonderful gift for your host or for friends at holidays and can be served as an after-dinner nibble or even stir-fried with shrimp or chicken, in traditional Chinese fashion, where sweet and savory dance together in delicious harmony, anytime and anyplace.
This is my version of a recipe by my friend Jean Yueh, renowned cooking teacher and author of
The Great Tastes of Chinese Cooking
(see page 182). These little cookies are easy to make and eating them is a delight. Jean uses a pastry brush to glaze each cookie with a little well-beaten egg just before baking, to give them a golden sheen. You could use all butter or margarine in this recipe, if you prefer. I often make a double batch, so that I can keep a roll of almond cookie dough in the refrigerator or freezer, tightly wrapped in waxed paper or foil. That way, we can bake a batch of warm cookies anytime we want a speedy little treat.
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter at room temperature, shortening, or margarine
6 tablespoons shortening or margarine
1 egg
¾ cup sugar
2 teaspoons almond extract
16 to 32 whole almonds, skinless or skin on (see Note)
MAKES
16
LARGE OR
32
SMALL COOKIES
NOTE
For larger cookies, shape each half of the dough into a cylinder about 2 inches in diameter, and cut them into a total of 16 pieces. For smaller cookies, shape each half into a cylinder about 1¼ inches in diameter, and cut them into a total of 32 pieces
.
Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl and stir with a fork to mix them well.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter, shortening, egg, sugar, and almond extract. Using an electric mixer, beat at medium speed until all the ingredients are evenly combined, 1 to 2 minutes; or use a wooden spoon to mix well.
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir with a wooden spoon just enough to bring everything together into a smooth dough. Stop as soon as all the flour disappears. (If you won’t be baking the cookies now, cover or wrap dough well and refrigerate it for up to 1 week, or freeze it for up to 1 month.)
Heat the oven to 400°F. Divide the dough in half and shape each half into a cylinder. (See Note about size and number of cookies.) Cut each cylinder evenly into rounds, placing each round on an ungreased cookie sheet, about 2 inches apart. Press an almond firmly into the center of each cookie, flat side up.
Bake at 400°F for 10 to 12 minutes, until the cookies are firm and lightly browned. Cool on the cookie sheets, and then transfer to a serving plate, or to a cookie tin or another airtight container.