"eight treasures" rice pudding

The Chinese New Year was this past week, and I was with my parents, celebrating in the only way we know... with gluttonous amounts of food! There are a few traditional dishes we eat on New Year's day that are also served in every household all over Northern China. These include:

pork dumplings (always boiled, not pan-fried)
steamed fish with ginger and scallion (for luck in the new year)
cold noodle salad (for longevity)
Northern Chinese style chopped salad
stewed red dates
steamed "pearl" balls (minced pork meatballs covered in sticky rice)
Ba Bao Fan (eight treasures rice pudding)

There's a story or a meaning to every dish that's served on New Year's. Most are meant to bring fortune and happiness, much luck and many sons. Eight is an auspicious number in Chinese culture (it rhymes with the Chinese word for wealth). Congee is often served mixed with eight different ingredients, as well as teas, tapioca soups, and rice pudding. These eight ingredients can be a medley of all sorts of dried fruits and nuts, but there are the traditional selections, all meant to balance the yin and the yang in the body when eaten. These include:

dried lily bulbs
red dates (jujubes)
dried longan (a fruit)
lotus seeds
red beans
mung beans
goji berries
peanuts
pinenuts
walnuts

Of course, some of these many not be easily obtainable, so other ingredients can be substituted like dried cranberries, apricots, raisins, and pecans.

My mom makes this version of sticky rice pudding, with layer after layer of rice and sweet nuts and fruits. No matter how many ingredients you use, this dish will always be called Eight Treasures Rice Pudding, so don't fret if you can't find all the traditional dried goods. This dish is even better the second day, warmed up in the microwave, sticky and gooey for a wholesome breakfast.

Mom's "Eight Treasures" Rice Pudding

2 cups glutinous rice
3 Tbsp honey
vegetable oil, for greasing the bowl

OTHER LAYERS**:
1 can red bean paste
1/2 cup red dates, soaked overnight, chopped into bitesize pieces
1/2 cup toasted pinenuts
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup raisins
1/3 cup goji berries, soaked overnight

**you can use any medley of dried fruits and nuts of your choice (see list above)

1. Steam the glutinous rice in a rice maker with 2 cups of water. Once done, let cool, and mix in the honey. Set aside.

2. Grease with the oil a deep ceramic bowl, or a pudding mold, if you have one. Sprinkle a handful of dried nuts and fruits at the bottom, and cover with a thin layer of the cooled rice. Smear on a layer of red bean paste, and top with another handful of nuts and fruits. Repeat the process until the bowl is full.

3. Cover with a plate and refrigerate for up to 2 hours. Set another heavy bowl on top to press together the layers of rice. When ready, invert the rice out onto a serving plate. Serve with sugar or honey.

golden roasted brussels sprouts

Sundays are when my little kitchen gets the most action. There's just simply more time in the day to plan out meals and leisurely saunter around the kitchen. None of that 30 minute meals thing, and definitely no eating on the run. Big batch cooking is also a must, then portioned out to eat throughout the week. I had some beautiful brussels sprouts sitting around, which I had a craving to eat ever since last week. Roasting these little green heads is my favorite way to cook them- it gives them a crispy golden skin, caramelized in parts, leaving the insides tenderly steamed.

To add to the earthy flavors of the brussels sprouts, I threw into the pan an apple, and sweet onions. A final toss-in of toasted walnuts and dried cranberries finishes off this cozy fall dish. Curled up on my couch in my sweats, I finished off a big steaming bowl...yum.


Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Apples, Cranberries & Walnuts

1 lb. Brussels sprouts, cleaned
1 medium yellow onion, cut into slivers
2 small apples, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/4" wedges
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup toasted walnuts
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 375F. In a large roasting pan, toss together brussels sprouts, onion, and apples with the olive oil, and about 1 Tbsp salt.

2. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until the brussels sprouts start to brown, and are tender when pierced with a knife.

3. Remove and let cool. Toss together with cranberries, walnuts, and pepper to taste. Serve warm.


For dessert, I made a fun pumpkin trifle. For the pumpkin cream: just whip up some heavy whipping cream, sugar, cinnamon, and a few spoonfuls of pumpkin puree. And gasp! I used a store-bought pound cake for the cakey layers. Cut into 1/2" cubes and layer with the cream in stout little drinking glasses.

eve's pudding

The Anglophile in me is truly drawn to the simplicity and robustness of British dishes. No room for light mousses nor decadent ganaches, Brit desserts are stick-to-your-ribs, no nonsense creations, yet elegant in their own right. They'd be like the elephants of the dessert kingdom, staunch and reliable, well-built and heavy, and regal and graceful all at the same time. Very rarely do you find a recipe that calls for more than a handful of ingredients or for some esoteric method of preparation.

Eve's Pudding is aptly named after Eve and the apple from the tree of knowledge, mostly for its desirable qualities. Sweet apples are topped with a traditional Victorian sponge cake. Since the sponge acts as a crust, the apples cook by steam, yielding a brilliantly tender layer of stewed fruit, then a creamy light vanilla cake.


We associate puddings with sticky, wobbly, and creamy things, but when the Brits speak of pudding, they're referring to a large array of desserts, mostly cakey things that are steamed or baked. Dense and buttery, these puddings vary with the seasons, capitalizing on the freshest and best fruits of each, whether it be berries for a summer pudding or charlotte, prunes in a sticky toffee pudding, or candied fruits and peels in a Christmas pudding.

This recipe is easy and delicious, and must be eaten all in one sitting. That's an order. (Its texture is wet and creamy, thus keeping it longer for more than two days is probably a bad idea.) It can be done, really.


Eve's Pudding

Sponge Cake:
1 1/4 cup flour
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
6 Tbsp sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

3 apples, peeled and cored
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
pinch salt

1. Slice apples into thin 1/8" slices. Gently toss with 1/4 cup sugar, lemon juice, and cinnamon. Set aside.

2. Preheat oven to 350F. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, cream together butter and sugar with a mixer until it becomes smooth and pale. Add the eggs, one at a time. Alternately add in the milk and flour mixture. Do not over beat.

3. Spoon reserved apples into single-serving ramekins or souffle pans (48 oz), about 3/4 of the way full. Pour any remaining juices over the apples.


4. Spoon batter over the apples and with a flat spatula, level out the batter to form a flat seal to cover the fruit. Sprinkle the top with sugar.


5. Bake for 45 minutes. Serve warm with whipped cream.

retro recipe: lime fluff

With a population of less than 400, Smith Island, Maryland, lies in the Chesapeake Bay, accessible only by boat. It remains isolated from the rest of the world, yet preserved. Crabbers and fishermen still carry on the 300 year old tradition of harvesting from the water to support their families and their small community. Generations of fishermen's wives toil away in their kitchens, making the most of the abundance of the bay, passing on family recipes and traditions.
Ms. Frances Kitching, an island native, owned one of the most loved inns and restaurants on the island. Her recipes are passed down from her grandmother. Her fame began when in the 1950's she volunteered to cook for workers installing electric lines on the island. She later published a compilation of her recipes in 1981 simply titled Mrs. Kitching's Smith Island Cookbook. Some of these time-honored dishes include stewed crabmeat and dumplings, pan-browned wild duck, cracker pudding, Smith Island ten layer cake, and pickled watermelon rind.

For the Food Maven's Retro recipe challenge, finding a "wobbly" recipe (gelatins, aspics, molds, etc) from before 1985 was in order. I decided to make Mrs. Kitching's Lemon Fluff. It's ethereally light; it melts on your tongue! More so than ever, I found myself enthralled by the wonders of Jello.

When I recreated this recipe, I used lime Jello instead of lemon for a bit more tartness. The color reminded me of seafoam. The texture was that of mousse, but even lighter, and just as creamy. Best yet, the recipe is incredibly simple, my pet monkey could make it! This challenge definitely forced me to park myself in front of the Jello shelf (for the first time ever) in the baking aisle at the store. (When did there get to be so many flavors?? Anyway I'm certain I'll be making more frequent stops here.) Most importantly, retro recipes are really just snapshots of a moment in time, the mood and the trends of the people of that era. It teaches us the origins of many of the dishes we eat today, and recipes like Mrs. Kitching's teach us about good honest American food.


Lemon Fluff
From Mrs. Kitching's Smith Island Cookbook

1 3-oz. package lemon jello (I used lime)
1 cup water
1 13-oz. can evaporated milk
1 cup powdered sugar
2 Tbsp lemon juice
vanilla wafers

Chill evaporated milk. Dissolve jello in one cup water. (my recommendation: use hot water) Let gel slightly. Whip evaporated milk (after chilling) until stiff. To milk, add sugar, lemon juice, and jello. Line shallow baking dish with vanilla wafers. Pour jello mixture over top. Crumble wafers on top and refrigerate until firm.