The rolling donkeys dinner

Way back a couple of months ago, I described a traditional palace sweet called Rolling Donkeys to Deborah Madison. 

These donkeys are actually chewy little bundles of mochi-like rice dough wrapped around red bean paste and covered in ground roasted soybeans. Always up for something new in the food department, Deborah said that she really wanted to try it, and I was eager to whip up a batch. (See the recipe below.)

As with so many things in my life, one thing led to another, and soon we were talking about her coming over for dinner at the end of November, since she was looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with her mother and family here in California. She planned to drive over from New Mexico with her husband, artist Patrick McFarlin, and join up in Mill Valley with two other friends, author Elissa Altman of Poor Man's Feast and her partner, book designer Susan Turner. Elissa and I have been pen pals for ages, and she's also a remarkable foodie and food writer, so this was great news. To round out the dinner party, I invited baking great Flo Braker and her husband, Dave, because Flo is just too fun not to invite and I'll take any opportunity I can find to have her over.

So... was I a bit nervous about this? You bet!

Me, Flo, Elissa, & Susan

The dessert was already a given, of course, which led me to wonder whether I should do an all North China feast. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do dishes that were centered around my very own true love (at least for the present, for mine is a fickle love indeed) in the grand pantheon of Chinese cuisine: the dishes of Jiangsu. Yes, that was my plan, and I knew these folks would approve. 

Our local Dungeness crabs had just barely come into season. Duck is good in cold weather, and Jiangsu's way with duck is lovely, so on the menu went duck. Gingko nuts had just hit the Chinese markets, which meant that they would be perfect with the sweet napa cabbage and bamboo shoots I was pondering. Chinese ham. Fresh shiitake mushrooms. A nice piece of pork. Everything was coming together easily. All I needed were bottles and bottles of Shaoxing rice wine. Good. After weighing all the contestants, the final lineup was this: 

Appetizer platter

Drunken chicken with wolfberries

Snow peas with sesame sauce

Crispy duck with lotus buns

Bean curd custard with crabmeat & roe

Corn &  fresh soybeans with pine nuts

Steamed clams with fresh garlic leaves

Ham, chicken & bean curd shreds

Napa cabbage with gingko seeds & bamboo

Cherry pork with fresh pea sprouts

Dungeness crab legs in bean sauce

Rice crumb sole in lotus leaves

Bombs over Tokyo

Bamboo pith mushroom soup

Yin yang sweet sesame soup

Rolling donkeys (Beijing)

Patrick, me, Deborah, & Dave

I am sure that lots of this looks unfamiliar, particularly the one called Bombs over Tokyo. Also known as Crispy Rice with Shrimp, I'll talk about that recipe soon, as it's a real winner. And I should also discuss Cherry Pork, which has no cherries in it, its gorgeous color and heady flavor provided instead by red wine yeast. 

Here's my recipe for Rolling Donkeys, the odd man out in my menu. This Beijing native was a palace favorite during the times of the emperors. I've been told that these little sweets are called Rolling Donkeys because they look like they're covered in the fine yellow dust that blows around northern China. Donkeys are also part of the local scenery, so it's only fitting that these little morsels are called donkeys instead of, say, alligators or marmots, neither of which show up much in and around Beijing.

The traditional recipe calls for a red bean paste filling and a dusting of ground, roasted soybeans. However, I've never been a big fan of ground, roasted soybeans, as I've found them seriously lacking in flavor and possessing so dessicated a texture that I usually end up coughing quite a bit. JH suggested peanut dust, and that I thought was a fabulous idea. 

Susan, JH, Patrick, Deborah, & Dave

And instead of everyday red bean paste, I cooked up some pitted, chopped Chinese dates with rock sugar, a bit of sesame oil, and a dash of salt before stirring in a handful of toasted pine nuts. This added the final exotic touch I was seeking, as the dates and pine nuts lend a wonderful perfume to the filling, and the pine nuts are used throughout Jiangsu cuisine, so they tied this final sweet to the rest of the meal. (The following recipe calls for red bean paste, though, since that is a lot easier to find and use.) 

This dish doesn't keep and turns hard within a day, so make it the morning that you want to serve it, store it covered at room temperature, and enjoy this excuse to lots eat more than you should.

Steaming the dough

Rolling Donkeys 
Lü dagun 驢打滾
Beijing
Makes about a dozen pieces 

1-1/2 cups rice flour (Mochiko brand sweet rice flour recommended)
1-1/2 cups filtered water
3/4 can bean paste (Ogura-an brand recommended)
2 tablespoons roasted sesame oil
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1-1/2 cups skinned peanuts, roasted

Looking like a jellyroll

1. Mix the rice flour and water together to form a dough, and then knead the dough until smooth, adding just a bit more water if needed. Form the dough into a smooth ball. Wrap the ball in a piece of cheesecloth and steam it for about 40 minutes, adding more water to the steamer when necessary. At the end of the steaming time, remove the dough from the steamer and let it cool down until you can work with it without burning your fingers, but don't let it get cold.

2. While the dough is steaming, gently fry the bean paste and sesame oil together until the bean paste absorbs the oil; sprinkle on the salt and mix well, and then remove the bean paste to a plate to cool off completely. Grind the peanuts until they are a fine powder, but don't let them turn into peanut butter; the best way to do this is in small batches so that the peanuts don't heat up. Pulse the peanuts in a small processor or blender until they are chopped very fine, remove to a bowl, and then process the rest in small increments until done.

3. Spread about a cup of the ground peanuts on a smooth, clean work surface, like the underside of a cutting board. Place the warm dough on top of the peanuts and use wet hands to pat it out into a square. Shape the dough into a rectangle that's about 12 inches on one side and 8 inches on the other, scooting the peanuts under the dough as you shape it so that the dough doesn't stick to the board. 

A dusted-up donkey

4. Use a rubber spatula to smooth the bean paste over the dough, leaving an inch strip on a 12-inch edge, which will eventually be the outside of the roll. Starting from the other 12-inch edge, roll up the dough over the bean paste so that it looks like a jellyroll, using a pastry scraper as needed to encourage the dough to turn over. Gently pinch the long edge into the roll. 

5. Use a thin, sharp knife to take a thin slice off of both of the rolled-up ends to even it up and then cut the roll into 12 pieces. Dust the pieces with the remaining ground peanuts and serve with hot tea. You can eat these with little bamboo skewers as shown in the photo at the top of this page, offer small forks, or eat the rolling donkeys with your hands.

Lunch at Ubuntu with legendary cooking maven Deborah Madison, Part 2

So there we were, full as ticks, contemplating the serious question of whether to polish off that bottle of wine or do what has always proved impossible for me: order dessert.  

(Note: I've never been able to make it to the dessert course there, much to my dismay, even after four visits, since we always end up polishing off the entrees and so can't even contemplate such wonders as their Meyer lemon sorbet or sublime-looking cheesecake in a jar.  Some day, some day...)

Back at the beginning of the meal, when we had been discussing the menu, I had asked the waiter if we could possibly have their grits, since I'm still wallowing in memories of the dish I'd had of them way back in February.  

I know what you're thinking, too: You're kidding me... grits?  But this is what ground corn aspires to when it's left home, headed for Broadway, and is aiming for a Tony.  At Ubuntu, simple grits are transported into something that even outdoes polenta in the creaminess department.

Grits

And that's when the final entree winged its way to our table.  We protested some more, this time a bit more emphatically, but it still was exquisite. 

Deborah admired the way that soft, stewed garbanzo beans were combined with fried ones, allowing us to enjoy the different textures and flavors this produced.  The egg yolk was just barely done, so as it split open, it provided an extra sauce to one that was already described in "our farm EGG a la Catalan, stewed chickpeas; roasted CALCOTS with sauce romesco, sylvetta ARUGULA."  That romesco sauce was indeed divine, the roasted calcot onions sweet and creamy, but we were beyond full and regretfully left most of the plate untouched.

An egg made insanely good

Chef London appeared at this point so that he could talk with Deborah.  Only 26, he's been in the restaurant business since he was 13 and has worked in Paris and Tokyo.  Charming and ebullient, he talked about how he longed for the vacuum cooker called a Gastrovac, molecular gastronomy, and various points in between.  He stayed for as long as he could before the kitchen called him back.

Fennel cupcakes

Our waiter sidled in with a last gift: three tiny cakes called "mini vegan FENNEL pollen cupcakes; cream cheese frosting, bronze FENNEL."  Just barely sweet and unusually light, we ate them with abandon, delighting in the creaminess and almost savory anise aroma that enveloped our mouths.

Walking out into the pouring rain, I made myself a promise: next time I'm starting with dessert and working my way backwards.

Lunch at Ubuntu with legendary cooking maven Deborah Madison, Part 1

I look like a perverse imp gazing over Deborah's shoulder there, but my actual emotions were one of pure happiness and ravenous hunger.  Let's talk about the happiness first and then move on to the hunger.

Meeting one of my heroes over lunch was a dream come true, and doing so at the one-star Ubuntu Restaurant in downtown Napa conspired to send my delight into something bordering ecstasy.

First of all, Deborah is a true class act.  It was pouring rain, and yet she slogged her way over from Green Gulch Farm in Marin County bearing a lovely wreath of fresh rosemary and lavender.  

Deborah was in town for only two nights to celebrate Greens Restaurant's thirtieth anniversary, the place where she was the first executive chef starting in 1979, the one who put that stellar vegetarian restaurant on the map.  She had also flown to the Bay Area to promote her glorious new book, Seasonal Fruit Desserts: From Orchard, Farm and Market, which she was going to talk about at famed bean maestro Steve Sando's hip and funky Rancho Gordo only a few blocks away in downtown Napa.  We agreed that a good lunch at Ubuntu would be a great way to bridge her Zen past and her cookbook-studded present.

Now back to the hunger.  One of the best things about having a meal with Deborah is that you get treated like a collateral star.  I've never been in an entourage, but my husband and I found ourselves on the receiving end of some pretty amazing service, even for the always attentive Ubuntu staff.  

Leeks posing as noodles posing as setting sun

While we made occasional stabs at looking at the menu, we spent most of our energies for a leisurely half hour discussing Greens, the Zen Center, Chinese philosophy, orchid cacti, vegetarianism vs. the desire to eat meat, and other matters of grave consequence.  Our waiter floated by with regularity of Sputnik, trying gracefully to catch our eye and take our order, but we were too busy talking until our stomachs started to growl.  

After picking out a wine and diving into some appetizers, we were told that the chef would like to send us out his favorites, and this was met with enthusiastic relief, since we couldn't figure out what on the menu would be best.  We nibbled our way through roasted nuts, olives marinated in a lovely carrot top pesto, and a delightful "chip and dip" concoction while sighing over glasses of an ambrosial Carmenere (Yorkville 2006) our waiter had recommended.

Chinese landscape on a plate

The waiter shimmered back to our table with individual bowls of "pandora LEEKS posing as noodles bathed in sweet pepper dashi; smoked garnet YAM, scarlet queen TURNIPS, soft egg, burnt nori."  (Everything that's grown on Ubuntu's farm is highlighted with capitals on the menu.)  But that really doesn't describe the experience.  The long baby leeks and the layers of flavors and textures were alarmingly sensual, the smoky scents tussling with a gentle bite of vinegar.  Half a poached egg beaming out from the dark hues that cradled it like a confetti nest.

Stained glass radishes

Following this was "warm PURPLE HAZE and cool WHITE SATIN CARROT salad; red CARDINAL SPINACH, local raspberries crushed in herb vinaigrette, Marcona almonds."  And yet this long list of ingredients doesn't even come close to telling you that this was actually a Chinese landscape of soaring reddish carrot peaks on which the tiniest baby sprouts clung like minuscule trees, the clouds formed by shavings of pale ivory carrots, and dancing cliffs suggested by little spinach leaves.  We spent at least ten minutes devouring this dreamy landscape with our eyes and picking out dainty details in the picture before allowing our appetites to destroy it in an ecstatic carnage worthy of Godzilla.

And then what was purported to be a plate of gnocchi landed on our table with a whisper.  I've had gnocchi before.  This was more like a stained glass window than a plate of gnocchi.  In fact, it seemed to be a salad.  Just look at the description: "a simple plate of horseradish gnocchi and assorted ROOTS; midnight moon, HONG VIT, smooth FAVA LEAF."  If you're anything like me, there is more than one ingredient here that will make you go, huh?  But the raw ingredients actually heightened the ravishing texture of the gnocchi, and the ingenious addition of horseradish to the soft gnocchi pillows turned what could have been a bland -- albeit gorgeous -- salad into a dish that had me trying to find a way to graciously wrangle the last few pieces off of the serving plate.

Beets disguised as dessert disguised as entree

At about the same time, our server placed an edifice on our plate that looked like dessert.  We were puzzled.  What is it, we asked.  "Marinated ruby queen BEETS with whipped goat's milk; torn brioche, pistachio pudding, honeyed pamplemousse."  Deborah stage whispered with a grin, "Pamplemousse is French for grapefruit."  

We happily regarded the now familiar chunks of citrus perched on what looked like a colorful but oddly ancient Roman bath, with blocks of vibrantly-colored beets, grapefruit, and egg bread topped with snow and moss (i.e., milk and baby sprouts) surrounding a pool of pale jade (a gentle pistachio cream).  But it wasn't sweet, not in the least.  That's what floored me.  It toyed with acting like a dessert, but it was all part of the culinary game we found ourselves happily playing with the chef.  It served as a gentle counterpoint to the pungency of the horseradish, and we downed more wine, nibbled the lavender-laced Marcona almonds that still lingered from our appetizers, and said we could eat no more.

(Continued in the next post...)