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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The corn thimbles of Hebei

My late mother-in-law hailed from Tianjin, and although she never lived there after fleeing the invading Japanese in the late 1930's, her palate had been molded by North China's way with food. After marrying in Kunming and then traveling around the country with the children and her Air Force pilot husband, she settled in Taiwan in 1949 before finally making the U.S. her home.

Nowhere, though, was she able to find the food she longed for, and it must have been awfully hard to never taste the flavors of childhood again.

Unaware of this at first, I started to ask her about what she used to eat just because food tends to be on my mind a whole lot. Reminiscences started to flow out, and I was captivated. She was not a terribly good cook, but she loved to dine almost as much as I do, and her taste memories were always right on target. 

Ready for the steamer

One of the things she missed the most were the little corn thimbles called wowotou'er. There is no direct translation for this word, which makes me think that it might be Manchurian, like another Beijing snack called aiwowo. Corn, of course, came from the New World, and from what I understand from all the books I've referred to, wowotou'er were probably first made from millet flour, or mizifen. 

Millet has a nice stickiness that you will notice if you have ever made millet porridge. But cornmeal can prove to be a little difficult to shape into something like these thimbles. 

That led me to add just a bit of flour to up the stickiness factor, plus some sugar to heighten the corn flavor and a touch of baking powder and salt to lighten the dough. The balance now is just right. 

Later on, I made other thimbles out of such things as chestnut flour, which is even sweeter than corn; my mother-in-law demolished them with glee. 

These thimbles are often made as fist-sized cones for peasant style meals. But I like them smaller, ones that can be enjoyed in two or three bites, something like what used to be served in the imperial Qing palace.

So, these are fit for a king, or an emperor, or even a homesick mother-in-law.

The right consistency

Corn thimbles 
Wowotou'er  窩窩頭兒  
Tianjin

Makes about 12 and serves about 3 or 4 people

1 cup cornmeal (not coarse ground, as for polenta)

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons sugar

½ teaspoon sea salt

6 tablespoons filtered water, plus more as needed

1. Set aside an hour or so the first time you make these; this will give you enough time to practice and redo them a couple of times. Set up a steamer, and line a steamer basket with either a square of damp muslin or a sheet of steamer paper. Turn the steamer on with the covered basket on it so that the inside of the steamer gets hot and moist; steam the basket and liner this way for at least 10 minutes while you prepare the corn thimbles.

Shaping a thimble

2. Mix the flour with the baking powder, sugar, and salt. Add the 6 tablespoons water and mix it into the dry ingredients. Squeeze a piece of dough in your fist; if it forms a cigar shape easily without crumbling, it's ready to go. If not, dribble in just enough water to do this (see Tips). Do note that you probably will need to add a bit more water later on as the cornmeal starts to absorb it, so keep some water nearby.

3. Put a walnut-sized piece of dough in one hand and shape it into a ball. Take the forefinger of the other hand and insert it into the ball to form a thimble shape. Smooth the outside into a cone or dome, whichever you prefer. Sit the thimble right-side up on your work surface; if it crumbles or looks less than steady, pop it back into the dough and try again. Repeat until you have formed a dozen or so wowotou'er. 

4. Place the corn thimbles on the hot muslin or steamer paper. Cover and steam for about 30 to 40 minutes so that the cornmeal cooks completely through. Remove the wowotou'er from the steamer. You can serve them immediately or freeze them for later (see Tips).

Tips

The water content of cornmeal and flour can vary, so it's difficult to give a precise amount here. 

Japanese style steamer paper

Add only as much water as you need at first, and then sprinkle in more as you go along to keep the dough moist and supple. If you happen to add too much water, just add a bit more cornmeal. 

Steamer liner paper is great to have on hand if you do much steaming. It's very cheap and you don't have to bother with washing steamer liners. Plus, it's relatively nonstick. Get a package in the housewares section of a Chinese market.

To prepare the wowotou'er for freezing, put the cooled corn thimbles in a single layer on a small sheet, freeze them until solid, and then store them in a resealable freezer bag. To reheat the frozen corn thimbles, just place them with or without defrosting in a lined steamer and steam until heated through.