Pastries for a dowager empress or a MIL

Here is one of the recipes that will be featured in my upcoming memoir: AT THE CHINESE TABLE. W. W. Norton will most likely be publishing it in 2021, and it will be illustrated just like all of my other books. 

One of the stories in there evolved out of a short story called "Good Graces" that I wrote for the online magazine Life & Thyme. "Good Graces" talks about the day I finally broke down my mother-in-laws defenses using the tastiest weaponry around: food from her childhood.

If you haven’t read “Good Graces” yet, here it is again. And if you are wondering what those chestnut thimbles taste like and how to make them yourself without breaking a sweat, I’m here to tell you that, too.

First off, though, let me tell you a bit about what these are and how they evolved. In North China, just about any pastry or starchy morsel can be called a wōwō 窩窩, and tóu 頭means "head" or "tip,"wowotouer basically translates as pointy little pastries. Which is what they are.

Dry, hard-to-digest millet was the grain of choice for wowotouer until maize was introduced from the Americas, and, as in Italy, the lovely flavor of dried corn quickly upended millet’s standing in that part of the world. (Reliance on this admittedly delicious grain also was a deciding factor in the rise of niacin – aka vitamin B3 – deficiency wherever it was happily adopted and overused, but going down that rabbit hole would seriously derail the topic here.) 

Italian chestnut flour

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Wowotouer were mainly eaten by northern Chinese for centuries because they were cheap and filling. And that is where they stayed for endless years.

However, these little thimbles eventually became refined enough to find admirers in the imperial household. Dowager Empress Cixi was said to have loved them, and enterprising palace chefs tried other ingredients to expand their repertoire and please the picky old lady. Much like I was attempting to do with my new MIL.

Back in the day, these were a genuine pain to make. I had to spend many hours soaking the dried Chinese chestnuts and then painstakingly ferreting out the hard red skins that cling steadfastly to the intensely wrinkled nuts.

But ever since I discovered Italian chestnut flour, I’ve happily given up on all that drudgery. The mild, smoky flavor of dried chestnuts is still there – admittedly not as strong as in Chinese chestnuts – and it gives these delicate little steamed pastries a wonderful airiness that makes it incredibly easy to breathe down half a dozen before realizing it. You can find this wonderful ingredient in good Italian delis and markets, as well as online.

Red dates

The addition of dates and milk make this a riff on the traditional recipe, as I never really enjoyed the dry and (I’m sorry, Popo) rather boring and even leaden texture of the originals. However, the dates offer little sweet-and-sour jolts in every mouthful and increase the moistness to a delicious degree, while the milk powder offers a subtle sweetness that amplifies the natural flavor of the chestnuts. 

You can easily put these together in half an hour, but they are just as easy to make ahead and freeze. I like them for a simple breakfast with black tea (lychee tea is incredibly good here) and fruit, or in the afternoon with green tea and a couple bowls of sweet sesame soup.

Beyond suitable for feeding a dowager empress or a terrifying Chinese mother-in-law, they are also perfect for feeding your homesick Beijing friends.

Chestnut thimbles

Lìzĭ wōwōtóuer  栗子窩窩頭兒

Makes 16 to 18

 

Ready to be steamed

10 small (or 5 large) Chinese dates

Boiling water, as needed

1¼ cups | 115 g Italian chestnut flour (farina di castagne)

1 cup | 120 ml boiling water

Spray oil (if you are using paper steamer liners)

2 tablespoons cake or pastry flour

1 tablespoon powdered milk

1 teaspoon baking powder

⅛ teaspoon sea salt

1. Stem and rinse the dates before placing them in a heatproof bowl. Cover them with boiling water and set a plate on top of them so that they plump up quickly. When the water has cooled down enough for you to handle them easily, pit the dates and chop them finely.

2. Pour the chestnut flour into a medium mixing bowl and stir in the boiling water to make a thick, bouncy dough. Let the chestnut mixture cool down while you prepare the other ingredients and your steamers. Line 2 steamer racks with either moist cheesecloth or steamer paper and spray oil on the paper, if you are using that.

Shape it on a finger

3. Stir the chopped dates, flour, powdered milk, sugar, baking powder, and salt into the chestnut dough to make a moist mass. Set a work bowl with cool water next to your work area so that you can shape the wowotouer without the dough sticking to your hands. Pick up a golfball-sized wad of dough (around 2 tablespoons) and shape it into a ball. Repeat with the rest of the dough, which should give you around 16 balls.

4. To shape a wowotouer, wet your hands once again and then stick one of your smallest fingers into one of the balls, and then smooth the paste around it to form a thimble with a pointy tip. Smooth the exterior so that it looks elegant, and place the thimble in a warmed-up steamer basket. Repeat with the rest of the dough until done. Cover the steamer and steam the wowotouer over medium-high heat for 15 minutes. Serve these thimbles hot or warm with tea as an afternoon. These can be made ahead of time and even frozen in resealable bags. Steam to reheat, rather than microwave, because as with all pastries, microwaving them gives them a tough texture.

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Yunnan cold rice noodles

This is a taste of the kind of simple foods my grandfather-in-law probably enjoyed during his youth in southern Yunnan’s countryside. 

People all over the spice-laden highlands of China make variations on this dish, for it’s the sort of thing that sparks the appetite even when it is hot and muggy.

The story about my late mother-in-law's father is told in my upcoming memoir, The Jade Labyrinth. She had always told us he was a warlord. However, what I discovered was something so much more fascinating that my husband is still trying to wrap his head around it. Sorry to be so opaque here... I'm just throwing that out there to get you excited about this upcoming book of mine.

If your mom is whispering something in the back of your brain about eating sensibly, note that there are enough vegetables and meat in here to turn this into a superbly delicious, easy, and totally balanced one-bowl meal. And if you want to eat this in winter, this dish is excellent hot.

Yunnan cold rice noodles

The tasty nuggets in here

Yúnnán liáng mĭxiàn  雲南涼米線

Yunnan cuisine

Serves 4 as a main dish

Around 1 pound | 500 g dry round rice noodles (see Tips)

1 teaspoon peanut or vegetable oil

8 ounces | 225 g fresh soybean, or 4 ounces | 100 g mung bean sprouts

Boiling water, as needed

2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil

8 ounces | 225 g ground pork

3 to 4 cloves garlic, chopped

2 to 3 tablespoons golchujang sauce, or to taste (see Tips)

1 teaspoon toasted ground Sichuan peppercorns, or to taste

2 to 3 tablespoons sweet soy sauce, or 2 tablespoons regular soy sauce plus 1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

1 teaspoon regular soy sauce

½ cup | 40 g chopped garlic chives

½ cup | 20 g coarsely chopped cilantro

Garlic chives & cilantro

1. Bring about 1 quart | 1 liter water to a boil in a saucepan.  Add the rice noodles and stir. As they soften, work them apart with chopsticks or tongs so that they aren’t allowed to form sticky clumps. When the noodles are plump and fully hydrated, transfer them to a colander set in the sink. (Check package directions, as each brand is different.)  They should be cooked, like any pasta, just to the point of al dente and no further, as this gives them personality. Rinse the noodles with cool water to stop the cooking. Put them in a work bowl and toss with 1 teaspoon oil to keep them from sticking.

2. Bring the pot back to a full boil. Check over the sprouts and discard any discolored ones, as well as any extra seedhead casings. Add the bean sprouts. Cook soybean sprouts until the yellow heads no longer taste raw, and yet they retain a nice crispness, about 10 minutes. Mung bean sprouts only need to be blanched briefly. Drain the sprouts and rinse under cool water to stop the cooking. Add to the rice noodles and toss. (If you are serving these noodles hot, reserve some of the noodle water for Step 4.)

3. Set a wok over medium-high heat. Add the 2 tablespoons oil, swirl it around, and then add the pork, breaking it up into smaller clumps as you go. Add the garlic and stir-fry the meat until it is no longer pink. Toss in the chile sauce for about 30 seconds to coat each piece of meat. Add to the rice noodles along with the raw chopped chives.

4. Toss the noodle mixture with the sweet soy sauce, vinegar, and cilantro. If you are serving the noodles hot, at about ½ cup | 125 ml of the hot noodle water to the bowl, too. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve immediately while the vegetables are still vibrant.

Tips

Jiangxi style dried rice noodles (called làifěn 瀨粉) work perfectly here. Make sure the rice noodles are about the thickness of spaghetti to give them enough heft to hold their own against the rest of the ingredients.

As for the chile sauce, Zhàotōng 昭通 style is traditional, but Korean golchujang works in a pinch. Zhaotong chile sauce is made with ground toasted soybeans, and that gives it a nice crunch. Plus, this fermented sauce contains Sichuan peppercorns and chiles, which give it a wonderfully buzzy flavor. If you don’t have this, use the golchujang with a good spoonful of ground toasted Sichuan peppercorns.

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.)