韭菜餜 gucai guê

I have decided to make Dioziu gucai guê 潮洲韭菜餜 today.  So I went to the garden to harvest some gucai.  

Fresh gucai from the garden

Prepare the filling

Slice the gucai finely, season it with salt and ground white pepper and add a little oil.

Finely sliced gucai seasoned with salt and ground white pepper and a little oil - I use olive oil

Making the wrapper:

If you like the texture of bhi2ce5 米糍 then this recipe is for you.

For every 100 grams of zug8 bhi2 coi3 秫米粞, you use 80 ml of water and a little salt to taste.  Mix it to a dough and then you can either steam or microwave the dough until cook, kneading in between steaming or microwaving, until you get a stable dough which you can use to wrap the gucai guê.

You can mix different types of rice flours too.  If you want a firmer texture, you can use part glutinous flour and part rice flour.  If you want a bhi'ce texture - lovely and soft - one which you can stretch, then you use only glutinous rice flour.  

I am too lazy today and I microwave the dough on medium heat for 20 seconds each time and then knead.  I continue this process a number of times until I get a dough which I can manipulate and the dough does not break when I knead and handle.  I then make a long roll and cut into six equal size pieces.  For every 100 grams of flour, 80 ml of water, I can cut into six equal size pieces.

Put the equal size pieces of dough in a closed container or a plastic bag to stop the dough drying out.

Flatten each piece of dough with your hand until you get a round disc.  Place a tea spoon of filling and close the disc into a half moon.  Wrap the gucai guê and place the guê on pieces of small parchment paper and place these on a steaming basket and steam for 8 minutes and him5 for 4 minutes.

The wrapped gucai guê

Place the steaming basket on a pot of boiling water and steam for 8 minutes

Serve the gucai guê with diam zion or chilli sauce.  

Dioziu gucai guê 潮洲韭菜餜

I will make Suatao gucai guê 山頭韭菜餜 very soon. ^_~

Glossary

bhice 米糍 - cakes made from sticky rice dough an example is mochi 
diam zion 甜醬 - a sweet sauce made from mixing plum sauce and si iu
Dioziu 潮洲 - Teochew 
gucai 韭菜 - Chinese chives 
gucai guê 韭菜餜 - a steamed cake / dumpling stuffed with gucai 韭菜.
him5 [no character] - to rest the dumpling in the steamer with the heat turned off and do not open the steaming basket lid.  The residue heat / steam will the do the final cooking of the dumpling.
si iu 豉油 - light soya sauce 
Suatao 山頭 - Swatow 
zug bhi coi 秫米粞 - This is glutinous rice flour and in Mandarin is written as 糯米粉.

Zui2 zian1 giao2 水晶餃 Crystal Dumplings

In the family of zui2 ziaⁿ1 giao2 水晶餃 - crystal dumplings - there are many examples of Chaoshan snacks [DioSua siao2 ziah8 潮汕小食], which falls under this family of dumplings.

I have already posted about DioSua Hung Guê 潮汕粉餜 - and this is an example of a zui2 ziaⁿ1 giao2 水晶餃- crystal ball dumpling.

DioSua Hung Guê 潮汕粉餜

However, there are many others such as zui2 ziaⁿ1 giu5 水晶球 - crystal balls, which could be either savoury or sweet.  

Swatow gucai guê 山頭韭菜餜 is a very good example of savoury zui zian giu. In other places like Teochew 潮洲 or GigIoⁿ  揭陽  -Jieyang, they make their gucai guê with rice flour and in Swatow we do not - we use this crystal dumpling wrapper to wrap our Chinese chives - gucai.  In Teochew 潮洲 or GigIoⁿ  揭陽  they wrap their gucai guê in a half moon shape and in Swatow, we wrap it as a ball - hence a crystal ball - which is an example of zui2 ziaⁿ1 giu5 水晶球. Why?  This is because zui2 ziaⁿ1 giao2's 水晶餃 birth place is Swatow - my home town. 

Do also notice all our local Diosua dumplings are called guê 餜 and not giao 餃, even they are all technically a giao 餃. However, those dumplings made outside our Diosua 潮汕 area are called giao - for example zuigiao 水餃 which is actually jiaozi 餃子 in Mandarin.  Another example of a giao 餃 is he giao 蝦餃 - prawn dumpling - a Cantonese dumpling which we know perhaps by the Cantonese name of haa gaau 蝦餃. However, in our DioSua 潮汕 language it is said as he giao 蝦餃. 

We have many other types of guê in Diosua but in this posting, I am limiting myself to just to the family of zui2 ziaⁿ1 giao2 水晶餃 and specifically the recipe for the wrapper.

There are two general recipes for making zui2 ziaⁿ1 giao2 水晶餃 - does not matter if it is Swatow gucai guê or hung guê or the famous dessert zui2 ziaⁿ1 giu5 水晶球.

The first recipe:  If you want your wrapper texture to be chewy - which we say as kiu3 kiu3  in DioSua Ue and in Mandarin is rong2 rong2 茸茸. In Taiwan, they just write it as QQ. LOL

Then you make the wrapper as follows

1 cup of potato flour
1 cup of wheat starch 澄粉
a little salt to taste [for sweet dumplings - do not add salt]
2 cups of boiling water [450 ml - if you use US measuring cup]

Pour the boiling water into the wheat starch which has the salt, and stir vigorously until the steam has stop coming out of the glue like mixture, then add the potato flour and knead into a dough.  Roll out the dough into a roll and cut into equal pieces.  [Note you need to be able to handle the boiling hot dough - and I have done it for years and I have not burnt myself.  If this is impossible for you, then get your Kenwood Chef out and use a dough hook to knead the dough.]

Do notice the proportions - 2 cups of flour, 2 cups of water. One cup of potato flour, one cup of wheat starch - and hence your cup could be any size.  

Note:  For every US cup of flour or English tea cup, you can make 12 medium size dumplings - so in the above case, you will be able to make 24 medium size dumplings as there are two cups of flour. 

Second Recipe: If you were to make the more delicate Swatow gucia guê 山頭韭菜餜 or zui2 ziaⁿ1 giu5 水晶球 then you need a softer dough which is will not give you the kiu kiu texture then you follow the recipe below.

1/3 cup of potato flour
2/3 cup of wheat starch 
a little salt 
1 cup of boiling water [225 ml]

- method same as above

You cannot make the dough in the morning and then make the dumpling in the evening.  The wrapper will break and crack just like those of second rate restaurants.  The dough needs to be used immediately.

How about steaming duration?  8 minutes is a general guide for medium size dumplings.  Then you need to him5 for 4 minutes after switching off the heat. 

What does him5 mean?  You allow the dumplings to rest in the steaming basket on top of the pot without you lifting the lid - and in Diosua Ue we call this him5.  I cannot find the character for this him5.

Like kiu3 kiu3, I have not found the character either.  I think these are local dialect words which have no Chinese characters.  Perhaps people long ago knew these characters.  Remember, we have over 47 000 characters in our Kangxi dictionary.  Perhaps we have forgotten these characters through generations of illiteracy.  Even in my biggest Chinese dictionary, there are only 10 000 characters and an educated modern Chinese only knows about 3000 characters.  

So I am sure if we were to try hard enough, we could find these characters in the Kangxi dictionary.  哈哈 A joke! I am not an expert in Chinese and how do I know?  I just read Diosua Ue dictionaries, this is all I am able to do.  哈哈

How about adding oil or lard? - I have tried adding oil and not adding oil and I found no difference in the wrapper and I have stopped adding oil.

How about brushing the dumplings with oil after steaming to make them shine?  There is no need to do this.  The dumplings will naturally shine. For those dumplings which you cannot consume, just allow them to dry out on the pieces of paper which you use to steam the dumplings, on a plate, perhaps covered.  When they become cold, they will not stick together.   

Please remember I am writing this blog to help our people in the West who have no access to Chinese recipes because we are unable to read Chinese.  However, I cannot totally not use Chinese characters.  So, for those of you who want to ask questions, please do so.  I am doing this to preserve our culture through food.  It would be very sad if future generations do not know about our food and that would be very zaogao 糟糕. 

DioSua Hung Guê 潮汕粉餜

I have made so many batches of Hung Guê 粉餜 in last few days in order to regain some of my lost gongfu 功夫 and it was successful today.  Please take a look at the pictures below. Beautiful round Hung Guê 粉餜

Hung Guê 粉餜

Hung Guê 粉餜

Cai Tao Guê 菜頭餜 second posting

I could not sleep last night because the weather was too close.  So, I got up and prepared this Cai Tao Guê 菜頭餜. This cake is also known as luobogao 蘿蔔糕.

Cai Tao Guê 菜頭餜

I used my old recipe and found it be very successful and I have amended the recipe in the first post on this cake in July this year.

I used 300 grams of rice flour 粘米粉, 30 grams of glutinous rice flour 糯米粉, and 30 grams of potato flour 太白粉.

The other ingredients were the same as the first posting.  The cake was a wonderful success.

This cake is very good for those of you who are on a gluten free diet and do not eat meat.

Here is how it looks like after it has been fried.

O luah 蠔烙 part 2

My friend, Brenda Lim’s aunt has just told her how she cooked the O luah. 

First mix sweet potato flour with water to get good consistency similar to that of single cream.   Sweet potato flour comes in two kinds – one smooth, really fine grade flour / starch and the other for cooking – rough, like small pallets. You want to use the rough kind for it tastes better.

Pour a ladle of the sweet potato mixture / liquid onto a frying pan which has been heated up with some oil.

Then add one portion of small uncooked prawns, suitable for a person's share on top of the sweet potato mix. While the batter is being fried, add a beaten duck egg onto the frying pan.  Fry the egg batter with prawns until one side is crispy. 

Then scrape the now crispy layer to one side of the pan.  Be ready to add your sweet potato mixture dipped oysters next into the frying pan and cook the oysters. 

Then gather the crispy now cooked egg crepe from the side of the pan and cover the oysters for the final touch for that mixed O luah finish. When you get that fragrance oozing from the now mixed egg oyster crepe, take it up from the pan and serve it on a plate.  Add few leaves and fine stalks of coriander for garnish. Use fish sauce as a dipping sauce. 

Learning Teochew

I hope you are enjoying reading this blog.  I am at the moment busy with translating my Teochew dictionaries and posting this in another Teochew blog.

If you have time, please visit the "learn Teochew blog" where I translate my Teochew dictionaries into English.

If you do not read Chinese, then just try to ignore the Chinese characters.  It is not possible for me to omit Chinese characters in my postings - but I then translate them into English.  

I am writing that blog to help people to learn our dialect, and there are not much material out there to help people learn the Teochew dialect.  I hope this tiny contribution will help some people.  

Thank you. 張如意

O luah 蠔烙

O luah 蠔烙 is another Teochew gluten free dish and is made from oysters - and sometimes known as oyster omelette.  My friend, Brenda Lim, from Singapore,  had o luah 蠔烙 for dinner tonight.  Her Ngou Gou 五姑 [the fifth aunt - the fifth sister of her father] made this dish for her.  Just delicious!  I am going to share the pictures from Brenda with you.  When her 五姑 Ngou Gou shares her recipe, I will publish this too. 

O luah 蠔烙

o luah 蠔烙 close up - and one can add prawns to o luah, in case you are wanting to ask