My memoir, plus Suzhou's drunken biscuits

This is an updated recipe from a few years ago, as I've been working on my memoir for W. W. Norton and will include some of my favorite recipes in it. 

Tentatively titled The Jade Labyrinth: My Chinese Life, with Recipes, I'm getting close to wrapping it up, and so at last free enough to announce what it is I've been up to ever since All Under Heaven was published.

I became addicted to these drunken biscuits back in Taipei, when I worked for the museum and library as an interpreter. Cold, blustery evenings would often find me standing at a downtown bus stop feeling very sorry for myself. But one evening my nose detected the aroma of something toasty and decidedly alcoholic emanating from a woman's pushcart. 

One bite and I was hooked.

Golden bottoms

It took me forever to figure out the recipe because every version I tried tasted like bread yeast, not wine. These, though, are right on the money. Drunken biscuits (my pet name for them, as the Chinese term for them literally is fermented rice biscuits) are 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 a combination of sugar, nuts, and osmanthus syrup take this sweet to extreme levels of hedonistic pleasure, at least as far as I’m concerned.

The filling

That being said, don’t overdo it in the filling department. Drunken 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.

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 as the liquid, which pack a double punch of flavor.

Be sure and cover the pan, as that way the center cooks through thoroughly—there are few things as sad as an otherwise delicious biscuit with a raw, doughy center.

Drunken biscuits

Jĭuniáng bĭng  酒釀餅

Bubbling from the addition of the powder & soda

Jiangsu cuisine

Makes 6 biscuits

First rising:

½ cup | 125 g fermented rice solids (see Tips)

⅓ cup | 75 ml fermented rice liquid

2 to 6 tablespoons sugar

1½ cups | 260 g Chinese flour (or two parts all-purpose and one part pastry or cake flour)

Second rising:

1½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

Spread on the filling

Around 1½ cups | 260 g Chinese flour (or two parts all-purpose and one part pastry or cake flour)

Filling:

3 tablespoons | 45 g turbinado or light brown sugar (see Tips)

3 tablespoons | 60 g toasted pine nuts or 6 chopped raw Brazilian nuts, optional

1 tablespoon homemade osmanthus syrup, optional

Neutral oil like canola for oiling the frying pan

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 a sticky dough. Taste the dough, and if it is sour, add more sugar—up to 6 tablespoons—to give it a slightly sweet edge, which will also encourage the yeast to grow rapidly. 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. Take a nibble of the dough—it should taste strongly of the wine when it’s ready.

Your standard baozi shape

2. Mix in the baking powder and baking soda. Place about 1 cup | TK g of the flour onto a smooth surface and scrape the dough on top of that. Knead the dough until it feels smooth and no longer sticks to your hands or your counter. What you want is it to feel like an earlobe, not a sweaty palm. Roll it into a ball, cover, and let the dough rest, as this will give the gluten time to relax and the dough to double in size. It is ready when you can poke two holes in the top with your fingertips and the holes don't immediately close up.

3. Cut the dough into 6 even pieces. On a very lightly floured board, roll each one out into 5-inch | 13-cm 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, optional nuts, and optional osmanthus syrup 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. Lightly press down on each one and roll out to form a patty about 3 inches | 8 cm wide. (You may freeze these at this point and then cook them as needed later on.)

Discs ready for the pan

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. Reduce the heat to 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 a deep 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 a rich brown, 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.)

Sesame noodles. Seriously yum.

I have adored this simple street food ever since I took my first bite at a little stand on Nanhai Road, just a block or so away from work. It was a very simple affair — just fresh noodles tossed with little more than toasted sesame paste, plus a dash of black vinegar, sugar, and soy sauce — but I always luxuriated over this quiet, solitary lunch.

Over the years I have messed around with this quite a bit, as I found it to be another one of those basic templates that ought to be tinkered with until you find your sweet spot. Peanut butter found its way into the mix to provide another layer of nutty creaminess and more complexity to the flavors. Garlic soon lent its fragrance, as did homemade chili oil with lots of goop, which can make this taste very similar to Sichuan’s Dan Dan Noodles (dāndānmiàn 擔擔麵). Like stone soup, this just gets better as more delicious things get added.

Heat up the nutty sauce

Sesame noodles

Májiàng miàn 麻醬麵

Taiwan Military Families and Beijing

Serves 4

2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil, or 2 tablespoons chili oil plus goop

2 tablespoons toasted sesame paste

2 tablespoons peanut butter, crunchy or smooth

1 or more cloves garlic (I like 2), finely chopped

1 green onion, the white and greens finely chopped and in separate piles

1½ tablespoons regular soy sauce

1 tablespoon dark vinegar

1 teaspoons sugar

Boiling water, as needed

8 ounces dried wheat noodles of any kind

1. First make the sauce: In a wok, mix together the sesame oil (or chili oil and goop), sesame paste, peanut butter, garlic, onion whites, soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar. Heat this slowly while stirring until the sauce is slightly cooked through, then taste and adjust the seasoning.

Toss and serve

2. Boil the noodles in a quart or more of boiling water until they are barely done. Transfer the cooked noodles to the wok. Toss the noodles until they are all well coated, adding some of the hot pasta water as needed to keep them from clumping up. (To be honest, this will take more water than you expect the first time around.) Divide the noodles among the bowls, sprinkle on the onion greens, and serve hot. I like to offer small bowls of the pasta water on the side as a simple soup that can be used to further thin down the sauce as needed.

Tip

This makes an amazing breakfast if you toss a fried egg or two on top. Make the sauce ahead of time, and you'll be able to put this together in a minute or two. 

Shanghainese fried icicle radish pastries

Shanghai's pastries and street foods are downright incredible. Rarely seen this side of the Pacific, they are marvels of balance: sweet with savory, crispy with juicy, hot with cold, spice with blandness.

One of the most delectable of these is a thin wrapper filled with shredded icicle radish (luobo, which has a similar, more commonly seen cousin sometimes known by its Japanese name, daikon). This vegetable is crisp, delicious, and only subtly spicy if fresh, the heat amplified by mostly age and the number of days it has been out of the ground.

So, selecting a good icicle radish is the first priority here. And now is the perfect time to buy them, as they are at their peak during the beginning of winter when cold weather makes its first appearance. Icicle radishes should be firm all over with no discoloration or wrinkling. Hold one in your hand and run your fingers all over it; the tiny rootlets should be wiry and springy, telling you that this radish is very much alive. Look at the leaves; although some of the outer leaves may be yellow or even removed, the center leaves ought to have a good green color and sprightliness.

A fresh icicle radish

Use a potato peeler to remove the skin of a radish, and trim off both the top and bottom of the root. If it is an older radish, it will have a fibrous layer under the skin. Be sure and peel off all of this white netting. The radish is now ready for cooking. 

This pastry uses a technique called "hot dough," where boiling water is mixed into the flour, thus cooking it. Hot dough (tangmian) is what you make for steamed dumplings (zhengjiao), braised filled breads (jianbao), and fried pastries such as this; if only cold water is used, the wrappers will be pasty and powdery. 

There is a secret to frying pastries, one that no one ever mentions for some strange reason: you must cover the pan as the pastries fry in order to create steam. It is the steam that cooks both the sides of the pastries and the filling, and it will allow you to end up with perfectly fried icicle radish pastries. Keep this tip in mind whenever you fry any type of Chinese pastry, as it is something that I discovered through trial and error and a virulent dislike for uncooked dough.

One thing that I've done here that is slightly unusual is adding butter to the filling. You can, of course, omit this if you wish. But the butter makes the icicle radish filling so much richer and delicious that I urge you to try it. As the great Julia Child once said, "Fat gives things flavor"!

A batch of these pastries can be made ahead of time and frozen, but they are never as good as fresh, since the radish filling will get slightly soggy. So, if you can, make this when friends are coming over. It will make your reputation as a great cook with Shanghai smarts!

Shanghainese fried icicle radish pastries 
Lúobosī jiānbǐng  蘿蔔絲煎餅 
Shanghai

Makes eight 3½-inch pastries

Wrappers:

2 cups Korean or Chinese flour (or 1½ cups all-purpose plus ½ cup pastry flour)
¼ teaspoon sea salt
⅔ cup boiling water

¼ cup cool water

Make flakes of dough

Filling:

1 icicle radish (about 1½ pounds)
2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
3 green onions, trimmed and finely chopped
¼ cup finely chopped Chinese ham, prociutto, fresh black mushrooms, or dried shrimp
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 or more teaspoons freshly-ground black pepper
2 teaspoons roasted sesame oil
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, optional

Extra flour for shaping the pastries
Peanut or vegetable oil for frying

Grate the radish into long strips

1. Place the flour and salt in a large work bowl. Use chopsticks or a wooden spoon to mix the boiling water into the flour until it forms large flakes. Stir in the cook water to form a soft dough and turn it out onto a flat surface. Use a pastry knife at the beginning to work the dough and keep it from sticking to the board, as you do not want to add any more flour at this point. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it is silky and no longer sticky. When you roll it up into a ball, it should feel like a soft baby’s bottom. Place the dough in a clean bowl and cover with plastic wrap; let the dough rest for about 30 to 40 minutes. It is ready when you can pinch a piece and it keeps its shape. 

2. While the dough is resting, make the filling. Peel the radish, removing any hard white fibers under the skin, and trim off both the top and bottom, as well as any imperfect places. Grate the radish into long strips (not too finely, as it will turn to mush) and place it in a colander set in the sink; you should have just under 4 cups. Use your hands to squeeze out the juice from the radish shreds.

Pleat the wrapper

3. Heat the 2 tablespoons oil in a wok or large frying pan over high heat until it starts to shimmer, and then add both the green onions and ham. Quickly stir-fry them to release their fragrance and then add the radish shreds. Stir-fry these together over high heat, season them with the salt and as much black pepper as you like. If you see liquid gathering at the bottom of the wok, scoot the radish shreds up the sides of the wok so that the liquid can be rapidly reduce. Toss and cook the radish shreds until they are barely done; that is, still crispy but with no raw radish taste. Remove the filling to a large plate so that it can cool down to room temperature. Divide the filling into 8 pieces.

4. To form the wrappers, lightly flour a flat surface, turn out the dough onto the flour, roll it gently into an 8-inch long log, and use your pastry scraper to cut it into even 1-inch pieces. Roll the pieces lightly in flour to form balls and while you form each piece, cover the rest with plastic wrap to keep them from drying out.

5. Flatten a ball with your palm and then lightly roll it out into a circle about 6½ inches in diameter, dusting the dough and rolling pin as necessary to keep the dough from sticking. When you roll out the dough, use light, gentle movements, as this will allow you to control the shape of the dough and keep the gluten from becoming too active.

Fry-steam the pastries

6. If you are using the butter (optional but very delicious), put about 1½ teaspoons in the center of the circle, and then place an eighth of the filling on top. Bring up an edge of the dough over the filling, and then enclose the filling by pleating the dough around the center as shown in the photo above. Close the dough well so that it does not leak while you fry it later on. Turn the pastry over, shape the edges with your palms so that it forms a perfect circle, and place the finished pastry on a clean tea towel; cover it with another clean towel to keep it soft and supple. Repeat with the rest of the pastries.

7. Heat a film of oil (about 2 tablespoons) in a frying pan over medium heat until the edges of the pan are hot and a sprinkle of flour in the hot oil immediately froths; if it burns or browns, lower the heat. Add 2 of the pastries (or as many of the pastries as will fit comfortably without touching) to the pan; the pastries will puff up as they cook, so leave plenty of room between them. Immediately cover the pan closely; this will allow the pastries to steam while they fry and ensure that the dough cooks evenly. Shake the pan gently now and then to keep them from sticking to the pan. After about 3 to 5 minutes (depending upon the size of your pan and the heat of the stove), check the pastries. Turn them over if the bottoms are a nut brown. Cover the pan again and cook them until the other side is brown, as well. Serve while very hot.

Taiwanese beer house style sausage

In my previous column I talked about the wonders of Chinese sausage stir-fried with cabbage.  I'm now going to surrender to another taste memory that centers around lop chong, but this one is dated about 10 years later when I already was a seasoned denizen of Taipei.

A couple of posts ago I mentioned the beer houses (pijiu wu) that used to line the upper reaches of Zhongshan North Road in the Tianmu district. And boy, was that the best time to live in Taiwan, for in addition to the incredible restaurants that studded almost every street in Taipei, the buzzing little hives of great food and cold beer known as beer houses were always on my permanent rotation list because it just was the best way to end the week, relaxing with good friends over savory nibbles that just kept on coming until we couldn't eat any more.

Julienned leeks form the bed

One of the most popular of these Chinese tapas was a truly simple dish: slices of grilled sweet sausages lightly brushed with a soy marinade and served on a toothpick with garlic.  This was one of those redolent dishes that everybody at the table had to eat, but we never complained... the sausages were crispy and juicy, the sauces sweet and salty, the raw garlic sharp and tasty, and it all mixed so well with our icy beers that we'd often order seconds.  This dish is also a beloved street food throughout Taiwan, with people walking down streets as they nibble on fat wieners roasted on sticks, much like corn dogs.

When we moved back to California, I worked on recreating this favorite dish, and over the years it morphed into its present state, one that we love to eat on warm summer evenings with, yes, a beer or maybe some cold sake or a glass of chilled Pinot Grigio. It's now sausages chez Huang, but enough of the original fingerprints are still visible to keep this firmly in the Taiwanese corner of Chinese cuisine.

What has changed here: first out was the garlic.  I love garlic in all its forms, but too many raw cloves can be overwhelming. However, I did want the suggestion of garlic, so I started serving the sausage on thin shards of fresh leek, which has much of the same herbal zing as its earthier relative without all the fumes.  I now cut up big pillows of leeks to serve under the main event because, more often than not, I want a big mouthful of that oniony goodness to cushion to meaty burst of the sausage.

Lop chong

Next, since I can't get ahold of the fat fresh wieners that seem to be made only in Taiwan, I now rely on Cantonese lop chong. However, they're dry rather than juicy, so instead of grilling them whole, I slice them thinly on the diagonal. This makes them easy to chew and also exposes more of the sausage. 

That last point is really important because slicing them into long strips allows more of the lop chong to brown and even burn a bit on the edges, so that it ends up crispy and smoky.  I like to bake the sausage slices at very high heat, rather than broil them, as the sugar in the lop chong blackens easily. And if you do this in a toaster oven, it will end up as an incredibly economical dish, plus using a small oven helps keep the house cool.  

Just arrange the slices in a thin layer on a broiler pan (which allows the fat escape and not catch on fire), bake the lop chong until it's browned and smells delicious, and that's pretty much about it.  I drizzle some soy sauce paste or oyster sauce over the leek shards, pile the sausage slices on top, and serve.

One variation on this that we adore is duck liver sausage (yagan chang) instead of the lop chong. This is a darker meat that when done right has the subtle boozy undertone of white liquor, or gaoliang.  No matter what type of sausage you use, keep an eye on it as it broils, turning it over often so that all the pieces brown evenly. Snap up any burned offerings for yourself.


Chinese sausage Taiwanese style 
Taishi kao xiangchang  台式烤香腸 
Southern Fujian, Taiwan

Serve 6 to 8 as a small plate or tapa

1 medium leek, white part only
6 Chinese sausages
Soy sauce paste or oyster sauce

1. Cut and rinse the leek as directed in this post. Shake the leek dry and cut it sharply on the diagonal into very thin slices.  Separate the rings, fluff up the pile, and mound it on your serving dish.

2. Heat your oven to 450 degrees F.  Rinse the sausages and pat dry.  Slice them thinly on the bias into long pieces.  Separate the slices and place them on a broiler pan.  Cook the sausage slices a few inches from the upper element, turning them every minute or so as they cook so that they brown evenly. Remove the pan from the oven.

3. Drizzle the soy sauce paste or oyster sauce over the leeks. (You can also serve extra in a small saucer on the side.) Pile the sausage slices on top of the leeks and serve with a cold beverage.