It has only taken me about 35 years
to figure out how to make these, but it was time well spent.
You
see, I became addicted to fermented rice biscuits when I waited for one of
Taipei’s buses to ferry me home at the end of a long day at the museum. Cold winter
evenings were the worst. Rainy cold winter evenings were absolute hell. My feet
would be wet and freezing, passing cabs would splash everyone with muddy
puddles, and the gloomy skies made even a 15 minute wait seem like forever.
Fortunately,
street hawkers plied the sidewalks with their homemade foods, most of them from
every part of China, and I came to know these lovely people on a personal basis
after my many years in Taiwan. One of my all-time favorite foods became these
grilled biscuits. Lightly sweet and perfumed with fermented rice, a lovely lady
from Suzhou used to roll out the dough, fill it, and grill the breads in her
portable little kitchen. She had a tiny roof over the work area, and fragrant
steam would shroud her wherever she stood, acting as both beacon and an
irresistible advertisement.
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| Crunchy, pillowy, sweet & winy |
To
her left would be a shiny mound of dough covered with a damp cheesecloth, and
as she sold each biscuit as soon as it left the grill, she was a never-ending
whirl of activity, gracefully pinching off a fistful of dough, rolling it out,
filling it, pleating it closed, and then rolling it out again before tossing it
on her black grill.
The
anticipation would be intense as I stood there, stamping my feet to keep them
from going numb, but almost feverish in my impatience to grab the biscuit with
my name on it. She would wrap it in a sheet of brown paper while the bread was
still insanely hot, I’d fork over a few cents, and then I would first revel in
the heat radiating out into my fingers and wafting up into my face.
Then,
that first luscious bite: crunch would yield to tensile bread, with an
explosion of wine hitting my nose. An afterthought of red bean paste would be
inside, too, but all the mattered to me was the hot biscuit. I would then
huddle over it, nibbling it slowly to make it last as long as I could, reveling
in the way that even the coldest, most dreary winter might offer a reason for
celebration.
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| Ready to go |
Fermented rice biscuits
Jĭuniáng bĭng 酒釀餅
Makes 6
Jiangsu and Shanghai
½ cup/125g fermented rice solids (see Tips)
⅓ cup/75g fermented rice liquid, or mild rice wine (Taiwan Mijiu)
2 tablespoons sugar
1½ cups/260g all-purpose flour, plus extra for kneading
1 teaspoon neutral oil (like canola), plus extra for oiling the
frying pan
1½ teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons/ 45g turbinado or light brown sugar (see Tips)
3 tablespoons/ 60g toasted pine nuts, optional
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| Baking powder is my secret weapon here |
1. Start this recipe at least a day before you plan to serve it.
Mix the rice, water, and sugar together in a medium work bowl, and then stir in
the flour to form thick flakes. Knead until smooth, adding more flour as needed
to keep the dough from sticking. Rub the oil inside a clean work bowl and toss
the dough around in it. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and keep it in
a warm place 8 hours or even a day or two, which will give the wine yeast time
to multiply and turn the dough light and fragrant. It is ready when you can
poke two holes in the top and they don’t close up immediately. Also, take a
nibble of the dough – it should taste strongly of the wine.
2. Place the dough on a smooth surface and sprinkle it with the
baking powder. Knead in the baking powder until all feeling of grittiness is
gone and the dough feels smooth once again. Roll it into a ball, return it to
the bowl, cover, and let it rest for at least 20 minutes to give the gluten
time to relax. The dough will have risen considerably at this point, too, as shown in the photo to the right.
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| The fluffy second rising |
3. Cut the dough into 6 even pieces. On a very lightly floured
board, roll each one out into 5-inch circles as if you were going to make
baozi, which means that there will be a little bump in the center of the disc
and thinnish edges – this will keep the top from becoming too thick. Divide the
sugar and optional pine nuts among the discs and then gather the tops up, again
as if you were making baozi. Roll the filled balls between your palms to smooth
out the seams and then lightly press down on each one to form a patty-like
object about 3 inches wide. (You may freeze these at this point and then cook
them as needed later on.)
4. Set a wide, flat-bottomed pan on medium heat. When the edges
feel hot, use a paper towel to lightly film the bottom with oil. Lower the heat
to medium-low. Arrange as many of the discs as you wish to serve in the pan,
leaving at least an inch between them so that they can rise as they cook
without sticking together. Cover the pan tightly so that steam will form, since
this will help cook the insides quickly without burning the outsides. When the
bottoms are golden brown (about 5 to 7 minutes) and the biscuits have risen, turn the discs over and cover
the pan again. Cook until the other side is golden, too, which should take
around 5 minutes. Serve hot. (To reheat these, never ever use a microwave, but
rather gently grill them again or even heat them in a low oven, as this will
keep the bread from turning tough.)
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| Fill like baozi |
Tips
The flavor of this really depends upon the fermented rice. It
must be full-flavored for the biscuits to shine. What this means is that you
should let your rice ferment for a couple of weeks so that it has a strongly
alcoholic aroma and zero taste of fresh rice. Then, use only the thick rice
solids for the first ingredient and the clear wine (or a neutral-tasting rice
wine) as the liquid, which pack a double punch of flavor.
This is a specialty of Suzhou and other culinarily enlightened
places along the Yangtze River, and each area seems to have its own take on
what should be hidden inside. I’ve enjoyed these with the usual red bean paste,
plain sugar, and sweetened ground black sesame. However, I’ve found that turbinado
sugar and toasted pine nuts take this sweet to extreme levels of hedonistic
pleasure, at least as far as I’m concerned.
That being said, don’t overdo it in the filling department.
These biscuits are easily overpowered by anything that is too sweet or too
whatever. Anything you put in the biscuits should simply serve to amplify and
complement the aromas of the wine and bread.
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| Dimple surface from the nuts |
What I’ve done different from any other recipe I’ve found for
these biscuits is to use wine instead of water for the liquid, as this amps up
the flavors quite wonderfully. I’ve also added baking powder, which makes the
breads much lighter and less apt to turn leaden. Be sure and cover the pan, as
that way the center cooks through thoroughly – there are few things as sad as a
delicious biscuit with a raw doughy center.
Serve these at breakfast, afternoon tea, and as a well-deserved
snack in front of bus stops. Hot tea is the perfect accompaniment. They are terrific hot, when the crust is crisp and the center molten, but even at room temperature they are amazing, as the sugar then forms a crunchy, caramelly contrast to the tensile dough.
