Homemade osmanthus blossom syrup

One of the almost indefinably delicious aromas in classical Chinese cookery is the perfumed essence of osmanthus blossoms, aka sweet olive (I guess because the leaves look a bit like an olive's). 

Like so much of what goes on in Chinese kitchens, I’m astonished that few people ever even heard of this, much less tried it.

You sometimes can find osmanthus blossom syrup in Chinese grocery stores, but it’s not a given. 

Plus, the quality has seriously deteriorated over the years, for I can taste chemical undertones in many of them nowadays. Plus, the labels say things like “rock sugar” or “honey,” and I seriously doubt it.

Dried osmanthus blossoms

Plus (and here’s the big giveaway), it’s all syrup with relatively few blossoms. 

This translates to little flavor, probably an overload of salt, and more than likely a big old helping of corn syrup.

But I’m here to tell you that you can make this at home with a minimum of effort. Like so many preserved things, it does take a bit of patience while you wait for time to work its magic. And so, do what I do and make a double or triple batch so that you can indulge in one jar while the rest sits quietly in the dark.

Your obligatory closeup

Now, where do you get osmanthus blossoms? The best source is a busy, reputable Chinese herbal shop.

Dealers in pretty much every Chinese herb and spice, these traditional stores – often handed down from generation to generation – take pride in the quality of their wares. 

They’ll usually also offer you a sniff of whatever you’re buying, if you ask nicely, so that you can be assured that you’re getting the best. As with good stores everywhere, repeat customers get treated with love, so cultivate your relationships here.

You can also plant a couple of osmanthus trees and/or bushes in your yard if you have the space. They live forever and are covered with magnificent sprays of white or yellow blossoms in autumn. 

Portrait with rock sugar

The fragrance is astounding, and I usually find these plants by following my nose, rather than looking for the flowers. If you are lucky enough to hunt someone down with a prolific tree who is also incredibly generous (another reason to grow your own), you will be rewarded with the most delicious syrup ever. In fact, what you'll end up with is not really syrup per se, but rather blossoms soaked in syrup, which translates to a real wallop of flavor. (Guihua jiang is sometimes called osmanthus jam, but it's not really jam, either. Concoction? Infusion? Bottled nirvana? Edible perfume?)

I’ve done something a tad unusual here to amp up the flavors a bit, since even the best herbalist shops don’t always have really aromatic blossoms for sale. 

What I do is this: when the syrup has been steamed for 45 minutes or so, and I’ve stirred in the honey, I take a tiny taste. If it needs a bit of oomph, in goes a touch of St. Germain liqueur.

Just steam these together

St. Germain takes its aroma from elderberry flowers, another one of my favorites, and another easily grown plant. 

If you love this liqueur, you can turn it into cocktails, as well as use it to flavor things like cakes and ices. Plus, that bottle looks just so darned pretty…

By the by, I'm kind of guessing that this sauce hails from Zhejiang.

My problem has been that guihua jiang is used in many of the more elegant banquet cuisines of China - especially in the north and east - but the osmanthus blossom has such pride of place in Zhejiang's deliciously aromatic dishes with their subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) sweet vibrations, that I'd place my money on Hangzhou or someplace like that.

Solid blossoms, solid flavor

You'll find lots of uses for this on this blog (just use the Search box on the right), as well as in All Under Heaven. This recipe is simply spectacular.

Osmanthus blossom syrup

Zìzhì guìhuā jiàng 自製桂花醬

Zhejiang (probably)

Makes about 8 ounces | 125 ml

½ cup | 30 g dried osmanthus blossoms

30 g yellow rock sugar (about the size of a small chicken egg)

¾ teaspoon sea salt

6 tablespoons | 90 ml pale honey (like clover)

2 tablespoons | 30 ml St. Germain liqueur, optional

Secret ingredient

1. Rinse the blossoms and place them in a heatproof bowl. Top them with the rock sugar and salt, and then steam them for about 45 minutes, or until the sugar has more or less disappeared. (Any small chunks will eventually dissolve as the sauce sits.) Remove the bowl from the steamer and let it cool down until you can handle it easily.

2. Add the honey and optional liqueur. Mix the sauce thoroughly, taste, and adjust with more salt, liqueur, or honey as desired. 

3. Scrape the sauce into a sterile jar (around 8-ounces | 125 ml), cover, label and date the jar, and set it aside in a dark pantry for as long as you can stand it, as the flavors develop over time.

Beijing's watermelon soup

Hello all, back again to posting after a long hiatus while I was writing up and illustrating what I hope will be some interesting stuff for the upcoming Lucky Peach issue on Chinatown!

Today (and the next post's) topic is just perfect for these dog days of summer: watermelon. 

Now, you might assume that when you finish connecting the dots between Chinese cuisine and watermelon, you are going to find yourself either in the tropical south or the deserts in the far west. But after looking at all of my tattered old cookbooks from China, I've come to realize that while watermelon is enjoyed all over the country -- and Xinjiang really does produce some great melons and grapes -- the watermelon is beloved as an ingredient in one place and one place only: the far north.

I know, bizarre. But today's recipe for a slightly thickened and chilled watermelon soup has elegance written all over it, with its gentle sprinkle of dried osmanthus flowers and a dollop of syrup made from those same blossoms adding a depth and fragrance to the mix. It has refined simplicity that is the hallmark of some of the palace's best desserts, so I wouldn't be surprised if it in fact had is origins in the imperial kitchens.

Round and ripe

Traditionally, the watermelon is juiced before being cooked with agar and some water to slightly thicken the mixture, with a bit of sugar to heighten the flavor. But I've found that this is truly excellent if the watermelon is left raw and only enough sugar is added to make the melon flavor pop. Of course, you can cook it, if you prefer.

Nowadays, when excellent varieties of watermelon are available seedless, making this dish is even easier. And if you have a blender, then this dish can be put together with very little effort indeed. (I got a ten-pound melon for this picture on the right, and it had enough flesh and juice to make about double this recipe. )

The only relatively unusual ingredients are the dried blossoms and the osmanthus syrup. As I've noted elsewhere, you can usually buy dried osmanthus in Chinese herbal shops (and in some good Chinese tea stores), while the syrup will be on the shelves of a well-stocked Chinese grocery store. In case you can't find these, don't worry, as the soup will still be terrific; just add a tiny bit of salt to cut the sweet edge.

Fit for an empress

If you are feeling particularly creative, you could make this into a Yin Yang Soup, using red and yellow watermelons instead of the hot nutty soups of winter; just be sure to chill the soups well so that they are thick enough to hold their shape without bleeding into the other color.

Chilled watermelon soup 
Xigua lao 西瓜烙 
Beijing
Makes about 7 cups and serves 6 to 8

2 packets (5 tablespoons) gelatin or powdered agar
2 to 4 tablespoons sugar
1 cup boiling filtered water
5 to 6 pound ripe seedless watermelon of any color, chilled
2 tablespoons osmanthus syrup (guihua jiang), or a bit of sea salt to taste
Dried osmanthus flowers for garnish, optional

Chill the soup

1. Mix the gelatin and 2 tablespoons sugar together in an 8-cup heatproof bowl. (Mixing them helps cut down on the gelatin lumping when it hits hot water.) Pour in the boiling water and immediately stir the gelatin with a small whisk until both the sugar and gelatin are completely dissolved. 


2. Wash the melon and pat dry. Cut it open and scoop out enough of the flesh into a blender to make 6 cups of loose watermelon puree. Pour the puree into the bowl, add the syrup or salt, and stir thoroughly. Taste and add more sugar, if needed. Cover the bowl and chill; stir the soup occasionally with a whisk as it chills to keep the soup smooth.

3. To serve, ladle the soup into individual bowls and sprinkle with the dried osmanthus flowers.

Breakfast of champions Chinese style

The chill of fall is in the air, as well as way too much smog. My head feels like squirrels are nesting in it. Time for something more powerful than just coffee is called for.

Bring out the Fermented Rice and make a breakfast that warms even my toes and clears out the rodents in residence. 

This is a great meal to have whenever you're feeling out of sorts... coming down with a cold, chilled from the weather, hungover, depressed, or just in need of something particularly comforting. It's also the dish that so impressed me back in my Taipei student days. And it's fast and cheap. Do I need to go on?

Breakfast's ingredients

I will show you how to poach the eggs here, which is a nice way of making all of the diners happy. 

My husband likes his egg yolks hard (he says "done perfectly," I say "done to golf ball consistency"), while I love my barely cooked (he says "raw," I say "sensuous"). 

No need to fight at breakfast, though, since each person's eggs can be done separately. They then sit in their own bowls while you prepare the rest of the eggs and the fermented rice soup, and once you pour the steaming hot broth over them, they'll heat up again in a flash.

I won't go onto one of my tangents right now. I'm still pretty flush and happy from breakfast, so I'll make this simple. Just gather up the ingredients ahead of time and you'll have everything ready for when you need it. And it will be perfect every time.

My degree of perfection

Hot fermented rice soup with poached eggs and sticky rice cakes
Jiuniang niangao dan  酒釀年糕蛋
Jiangsu

Serves 2 to 4

2 cups filtered water
4 fresh large organic eggs
Rock sugar or honey to taste
Large handful of fresh or vacuum-packed sliced sticky rice cakes (niangao pian)
1 cup Homemade Fermented Rice or store-bought fermented rice, plus more if needed

A few tablespoons of osmanthus blossom syrup (guihuajiang), optional 

Test the egg to see if it's done

1. Bring the water to a boil and then lower the heat to a bare simmer. Crack an egg into a small bowl, hold the bowl barely above the boiling water, and slip the egg into the water gently so that it more or less holds its shape. Use a spoon or silicon spatula to urge any wisps of egg white to curl back onto the egg. Crack another egg into the small bowl and slip it into the other side of the pan, again trying to keep it in a nice solid mass. 

2. Cook the egg to the desired degree of doneness. I like to fish the eggs out with a slotted spoon and press the yolk with a finger to see how hard or soft it is. Place the cooked eggs in one or two individual serving bowls and cook the rest of the eggs in the same way.

3. Add some sugar or honey to the water and toss in a handful (or two) of the sticky rice cakes. Stir in the fermented rice and taste the soup, adding more sugar or fermented rice if needed. Stir in the optional osmanthus blossom syrup. Bring the water to a boil and divide the soup and rice cakes among the bowls. Serve while very hot.

Jiangsu's sweet stuffed lotus roots

October is the best time of the year for lotus roots, or so I was told by a lotus farmer in Modesto many years ago. He scoffed at the tubers that were for sale the rest of the year and told me they had been in storage for too long or weren't ripe enough. Surrounded as he was by ponds full of insanely beautiful lotus blossoms of every imaginable color, I figured he knew what he was talking about.

Scroll forward to today. It is now October and indeed the lotus roots are the best I've seen them in ages. Plump and white, they practically beg to be taken home.

Lotus roots are actually long tubers that grow horizontally under the plants, the real roots being the hairs that bristle out from between the white segments. Cut into slices, these tubers are one of the most beautiful of all vegetables, lacy and perfectly patterned. And as for taste and texture, well, they are exquisite on every count. Blanch them and toss the thin slices in a Chinese vinaigrette for a delectable appetizer, deep fry them into chips that will blow people away, or stew them whole or in large chunks for yet another level of deliciousness... it's hard to go wrong with lotus roots.

A plump, fresh tuber

Do note that the fresh tubers will often exude long threads when they are cooked; if you don't know what's going on, you might think that there are hairs in the dish! But these are perfectly edible and just part of the sticky quality of these quintessentially Chinese vegetables.

When you buy fresh lotus roots, again, get them in autumn, as they are at their freshest then. Look for smooth, round, hard tubers that don't have any bruises marring their perfect exteriors. They should feel heavy because they are full of juice when very fresh. Also, try to find ones that have both ends sealed with at least part of the joint, as this keeps the mud and air out, and you'll end up with a clean root.

To prepare them, snap the tubers apart and rinse them carefully to remove any mud. Trim off the joints flush with the tubers so that you only see very tiny holes at the ends. Remove the thin skin with a vegetable peeler to end up with smooth, white flesh all over. Then, if you are planning on stuffing them like in the recipe here, cut off between half an inch to one inch from one end; this will be the cap, so reserve it. If you are going to either slice it or cut it into chunks or cook it whole, trim off both ends of the tuber.

Wash out the insides

Clean the inside of the tuber by running water through the holes and lightly scraping the interiors with a chopstick. (See the photo on the right.) Tip the roots upside-down to drain. Prepare the rest of the recipe right away so that they don't oxidize.

In this recipe, the tuber is stuffed with raw rice, poached for a few hours, and then chilled. It sounds so simple, so prosaic, but it's one of the most treasured sweets of China's answer to French cuisine: Jiangsu. If I keep writing love letters to the lush foods of this region, it's because I am helpless whenever I come face to face with its rich and yet oh-so-delicate creations.

But that doesn't mean that I don't fool around with the tried and true!

Traditionally, round sweet rice fills the holes in the tuber, but I am infatuated with Thai black rice. It smells divine as it cooks and turns everything a luscious shade of purple, so when I picked up some fresh lotus roots at the market and realized when I got home that I had used up all of the regular sweet rice to make lots of fermented rice, my trusty bag of Thai black rice suggested that it be used instead.

Lavender lace and polka dots

As I rinsed off the grains, though, I noticed how much larger they are than round white rice. They would be hard to stuff into the roots that way, so I slightly ground them in a mini-processor (about eight pulses did the trick), just to knock them down in size a bit without turning them into powder. It was a perfect fit, and they ended up making a terrific dish nothing short of superb.

You will find that this recipe is a whole lot less sweet than most versions. I prefer to let the distinct aroma of the lotus root and rice shine through, with the osmanthus syrup popping through with bursts of perfume and a slightly salty edge. If you like it sweeter, by all means add more rock sugar toward the end. As with all chilled desserts, it will taste less sweet when it is cold than when it is hot.

Most directions for these stuffed roots tell you to watch them carefully during the last hour of cooking, as the sugar can easily cause the tubers to scorch. But, I found that placing a trivet in the bottom of the pot keeps the lotus roots out of harm's way and saves me from worrying that I'm going to ruin my dessert.

Crystalline air bubbles

Lotus roots stuffed with sweet rice 

Jiangmi lian'ou  江米蓮藕  
Jiangsu

Serves 6 to 8 as a dessert

2 fresh lotus root tubers (each about 6 inches long)
½ cup sweet (glutinous or nuomi) rice, or sweet black Thai rice
Filtered boiling water as needed
3½ ounces rock sugar (bingtang), about the size of 2 large eggs
½ cup osmanthus syrup (guihuajiang), or grated peel of a Meyer lemon plus another small handful of rock sugar chips and ½ teaspoon sea salt

1. Prepare the lotus root tubers as directed above. Cut off the caps, reserve, clean the insides, and drain.

2. Place the rice in a strainer and rinse under running water; shake dry. If using the black Thai rice, grind it very coarsely in a mini-processor or mortar so that the grains are chopped more or less in half.

Stuff the roots using a chopstick

3. Use one hand as a funnel to hold the top of one tuber and use the other hand to stuff the rice into the holes; a chopstick is useful in working the rice down. Pat the outside of the tuber to help shake the grains down, but don't pack the rice too tightly, as it will need to expand as it cooks. Use three chopsticks to pin the cap back onto the tuber. Repeat this step with the other tuber. Discard any leftover rice.

4. Place a small trivet upside-down in a pot that will easily hold the tubers in one layer. (Something that is about 7 inches in diameter is about right.) Lay the stuffed lotus roots on top of the trivet and cover with boiling water by about 1 inch. Bring the water to a boil again over high heat and then reduce the heat so that the water just simmers. Cook the lotus roots over gentle heat for 2 hours and then add the sugar. 

Pin the caps on with chopsticks

5. Continue to cook the lotus roots for another hour, adding more water only if the sauce cooks down too quickly. After the roots have been cooked for a total of three hours, remove them to a container to cool off. Add the osmanthus syrup (or the lemon peel plus extra sugar and the salt) to the pan and rapidly boil the sauce down until it has the consistency of maple syrup. Cool it to room temperature and pour it over the lotus roots. Refrigerate them at least overnight. 

6. To serve, remove the caps, cut off the other ends, and enjoy them yourself. Slice the roots into pieces about ½ an inch thick. Arrange them on a rimmed serving plate in an overlapping pattern. Pour the sauce over the slices and serve with hot green tea.