This is a Cantonese dim sum pastry made with Chinese or Japanese white radish, or luobo 蘿蔔 in Chinese, daikon 大根 in Japanese. There are basically two variations of the dish, pan-fried (蘿蔔絲餅), or deep-fried (蘿蔔絲酥餅). The deep-fried variation can also be baked if you so desired. Traditionally they are just shaped into rounds when homemade but in the following videos we are seeing the deep-fried version with the fancy shaping sold commercially as 天蠶酥 or Divine Silkworm Pupa Pastries as they look like silkworm pupae. This type of pastry shaping is known as 直酥 or parallel layering (please see my post on Chinese Flaky Pastry) and they also happened to demonstrate the 大包酥 large-scale laminating method (in the first video) and 小包酥 small-scale laminating method (in the second video) respectively which are very useful if you want to learn how to wrap Chinese pastries using the 直酥 parallel layering technique.
(more…)February 4, 2023
August 7, 2021
【用點心做點心】Chai Tao Kueh / Lo Bak Go 菜頭粿／蘿蔔糕
Chai Tao Kueh 菜頭粿 (also spelled either as Chai Tau Kway, or Chye Tow Kway) is a type of steamed rice cakes from Southern China made with Chinese white radish, luo-bo 蘿蔔, or chai-tao 菜頭 in Hokkien dialet, or daikon in Japanese. In Cantonese it is called Lo Bak Go 蘿蔔糕, and their version includes preserved meat. There are also variants of the rice cake made with taro or pumpkin. Due to its Hokkien name of chai-tao 菜頭 which sounds like 彩頭 meaning rising fortune, it is a rice cake popularly served during Lunar New Year for good fortune, either as is in slices after steaming, or pan-fried after it has cooled down after steaming. It is also a very popular rice cake in Malaysia and Singapore, but usually served as a stir-fried street food in cubes with eggs and preserved Chinese white radish (chai-poh 菜脯). Below are two cooking videos from Taiwan demonstrating the Taiwanese-style and Cantonese-style making of this radish rice cake.
(more…)May 23, 2021
【用點心做點心】Shrimp Shumai 蝦仁燒賣
A Dimsum favourite, flower-pot dumplings, or shumai in Cantonese… Quite difficult to wrap by beginners, but this video shows you how to wrap up into flower-pot shape…
(more…)April 10, 2020
【用點心做點心】Shiroi Koibito 白い恋人 / 白色戀人
A famous biscuit from Hokkaido, Japan, known as White Lover. It is a sandwich biscuit consisting of two crisp cat’s tongue biscuits (langues de chat) with chocolate filling. This is a video from Taiwan showing how to make these biscuits at home.
February 25, 2020
【用點心做點心】Spring-Onion Pastries 蟹殼黃
This is a traditional Northern Chinese pastry with stuffed spring onions and lard, known as Golden Crab-Shell in Chinese due to its crabshell-like outer layer of the pastry after baking even though there’s no crab meat filling whatsoever! There are a number of different fillings for this pastry including sweet fillings. Rice does not grow in northern China, therefore wheat is one of the grains they can grow which is processed into flour to make noodles and pastries for dumplings, baos, etc. You will also notice that this pastry is very similar to the Black Pepper Pork Pastries which would have been originally evolved from this spring-onion pastry over the years.
(more…)February 22, 2020
【用點心做點心】Japanese Cream Roll 生乳捲
The Japanese Cream Roll (生乳捲) or Hokkaido Cream Roll has been very popular in Asian countries for the past decade. The Hokkaido cream is reputed to be very fragrant and supposedly been pasteurized at low temperature, but it is very hard to buy outside of Japan, so just use whatever good pure cream you can get your hand on for the cream filling. I have made Cotton Sponge Roll which is very similar using the 60°C roux method. I am linking this video basically to show how to roll the chiffon roll (at about 18:50 minutes mark), this method only works with chiffon cake rolls, as they have higher moisture content, it will not work with the western-style Swiss rolls which are dryer in texture. However this video has very loud background music which is very annoying, LOL, so turn down the volume on your player…
(more…)February 17, 2020
【用點心做點心】Black Pepper Pork Pastries 胡椒餅
Taiwanese snack video from Formosa TV Entertainments‘ (民視綜藝娛樂) TV show called 用點心做點心 (translated as “Use Your Heart, Make A Snack”). From today, I will occasionally link cooking demonstration videos from Taiwan, especially Taiwanese snacks, here, and maybe I will translate the recipes into English when I have time. First off, this is a savoury Taiwanese Baked Black Pepper Pastries (胡椒餅) recipe.
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Corner Café 