Egg Tarts from the Left Over Pastry

Dan tarts, egg tarts are quite popular amongst people who love yum cha.  I never liked it, but I do enjoy making them.  My whole family, (apart from me of course) all loves egg tarts, and making them and watching them eating them, is my enjoyment.

I've got some left over pastry from my pies - the Daring Cook's challenge. They do store well in the freezer, but hey, it's better just to use them up, so I have excuses to make more.

There are 2 types of egg tarts, the cookie shell and puff pastry shell, so it's perfect when I used the sour cream pastry and the rough puff pastry for 20 egg tarts.

For the custard:
180ml milk
40g sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Bring 140ml milk and sugar to a slow boil and then turn down and set aside.  Whisk eggs and drip in the left of 40ml milk and vanilla, mix well till silky smooth.  Slowly mix in the warm milk mixture, make sure the eggs don't curdle.  Pour the mixture through sift to remove air bubbles and other lumps.

Pour slowly into the shells, make sure it's up to 70-80% full.  Bake them in pre-heated oven 180C for 15-20 minutes, but check constantly, if custart is puffing up, make sure just open up the oven door ajar to let hot air out.  Otherwise custard sink after baking.

Enjoy!

Fragrant Tea Eggs

It was listed as part of the one of the Christmas recipes, the tea eggs on the Age, however, as one of the reader pointed out, it's a very old favourite Chinese street food.

It is however, very suitable for the hot summer weather, you can make a batch and have it cool, as is, with rice, with other dishes...

For this batch, I made 6.

6 large eggs.
1 cup dark soy sauce
1 cup light soy sauce
1 cinnamon stick
2-3 star arnis
1 tbsp raw sugar
a handful of goji berries
1 tea bag (any tea bag as desired, different tea will give different flavour, this time I used a normal Dilma tea bag).

Hard boil the eggs.
Wait for them to cool, crack the egg shells.
Put the ingredients in a pot and add the eggs.
Boil again for 30 minutes or more and then let the eggs soak in sauce until cool.

The shell will have marble effects...

Poach to Perfection - December Darinng Cook Challenge, Poached Egg on Poached Salmon & Prawns Salad with Lemon Herb Vinegarette Dressing

The December Daring Cook Challenge is very versatile, hosted by Jenn from Jenn Cuisine, and Jill  
(jillouci), it's all about the poaching technique.

Please refer to the original recipe for the challenge here.  

However, I thought I should be a bit cheeky and do an all poaching dish - it's summer here in Australia, and a nice light summer salad for dinner with loads of lean protein and fresh vegies, is just what we need.

Poached Egg on Poached Salmon & Prawns Salad with Lemon Herb Vinegarette Dressing:

Serve: 2

2 fresh eggs, free range eggs preferred.
2 x 250g skinless salmon portion
16 Green Banana Prawns (these are native to Australia, any medium size prawns will do)
buffalo mozzarella - 200g
1 Cos Lettuce heart
bunch of baby radish, cleaned and sliced

Dressing:
Fresh dill
Fresh mint
Dijion mustard (I used the smooth version, seeded version can be used)
Juice of one lemon
olive oil

Prawns were poached first, in water only with shell on, then they are cooled and de-shelled.
Separate the lettuce and sliced radish into 2 dinner plates.
Add prawns to the vegetables. 
Shred the buffalo mozzarella (it's a treat for us as we don't usually have it, if there's no buffalo mozzarella, ricotta cheese or good Greek Fetta cheese will do)
Then I poached the salmon, in vegetable stock with white wine, onion halves and carrot.

Shredded salmon into rough chunks after poaching and add to the dinner plates.
The last bit of poaching is the eggs.  They were poached individually in the swirl of water, in low heat on stove top. I liked them runny so it only took 2-3 minutes?  Add them onto the top of the pile.
Then I made the vinegarette and drizzle onto the salad.

Voila....

Dan Tart - Cantonese Egg Tart - Puff Pastry Version

My family love Cantonese Egg Tarts when we go out for yumcha.  There are 2 version of the Dan (egg) Tarts, the cookie base and the puff pastry base, the ones normally seen in yumcha, are the puff pastry version and the cookie base ones are usually seen in the Hong Kong style bakeries...

I have made them a couple of times, as it's so much cheaper to make them - and it's not hard at all, but I've only ever made the cookie base ones - they are a lot easier.

So this weekend, I thought, well, let's do it properly. The puff pastry ones.... of course, the short cut will be using the frozen puff pastry as you don't really need it to be too puffy anyway, the shop bought frozen puff pastry will work for this recipe.  However, it's not fun isn't it? 

It's a different puff pastry compared to the traditional French style puff pastry, mainly because of the fats, traditionally, the pastry calls for lard instead of butter, as butter was not so common in China in the old days.

In my adapted version however, I did use butter instead of lard, although the other alternative can be margarine.

Fat dough:
75g plain flour
100g lard/butter

Rub softened butter into flour and cover with cling film, put back in fridge for 15 minutes.

Water Dough:
75g plain flour
20g egg yolk (1 egg yolk) - lightly whisked
30g ice water

Make a well with flour, and add egg yolk and water in the middle, made a rough dough.

Fillings:
40g white sugar
140g water
2 large eggs
20ml full cream milk
20ml cream

Boil water with sugar, till all melted and keep aside till cool.
Whisk egg, add in milk and cream and mix well.
Add in boiled sugar water, mix well, and sift mixture through fine sift - to make sure the custard will be smooth and silky.

To make pastry:
Roll out water dough to a square.
Roll out fat dough to a smaller square and put in middle of the water dough as a diamond shape.
Fold over the 4 edges of the water dough to cover the fat dough.
Fold up like letter, covering the edges, into 3 folds, and then roll out to half an inch of thickness.
Fold into letter shape - 3 folds again and then put in fridge for 20-30 minutes to chill (a warm dough is very hard to work with and will easy break, a bit of flour can be added to the working bench)
Repeat the process for 3-4 times, each time, the dough needs to be back in the fridge to chill and set.

Roll out the pastry as thin as you can, around 1-2mm thickness, and use a round shape cookie cutter to cut out the round circle to set into the lined mould.  I use patty pans as lining, and usually use 2 cases.  You can buy those Dan Tart moulds in Asian grocery shops specialised in Cantonese food, or just use muffin tray.  If you use muffin tray, use cup cake cases instead of patty pans, as Dan Tart moulds are smaller.

Press a bit of holes on the bottom of the tart shells using fork.

The egg tart shells don't need to be blind baked, so just fill in the custard fillings, to around 80% full.

Pre-heat oven to 200C or 185C fan forced, and bake for 15 minutes in the middle layer of oven, and then lower the temperature to 180C or 165C fan forced, for a further 5-10 minutes till ready.

Cool to serve. 

This will make about 15, but will be around 8-10 if using muffin tray.

From Shanghai to SziChuang - Egg Crepe Pork Mince Rolls & Mapo Tofu... and the so Italian Sfogliatella Riccia

It's Saturday again...
After helping out with mum's duties, we went out for lunch and had some really yummy Cantonese Roast Duck, and Roast Pork - and awesome fishballs (well, the 3 year old had them)...
So tonight, I can't do Cantonese any more...

Something I learned from mum, a very fiddley Shanghai Dish or is it Hangchow... Sometimes I get it mixed up... but that region, most dishes are super fiddley and time consuming, this is the cheat version of egg dumplings - dumpling skin made by egg only, which means you will have to stand beside the stove, with a steel scoop, a bit of whisked egg in the scoop and making dumpling skins one by one, before the egg is cooked, you need to put the mince in, and close the egg crepe when it's still runny... I don't have the scoop, so I decided to make egg rolls instead... I don't have a proper crepe pan either, but, the $5 Ikea 20cm frying pan will just do the trick...

But first of all, I have to get the mince ready... and my mince, is not all that authentic, this is why...

The Fish Sauce.... something exciting I found after having Vietnamese food....

Ok, this is my 3 year old helping out with the mince, it's just pork mince, with fresh ginger mince, finely chopping spring onion, and finely chopped mushrooms, marinated with salt, light soy sauce, chicken dripping (I just happen to have them, normally I'd just use some vegetable oil) sugar (what is Shanghai food with no sugar and soy) Shaoxin wine, 5 spice and fish sauce.... I can't be bothered to wash the food processor and also I'd like to have a bit of bite in the meat... and a bit of Tapioca flour to bind.
And then, I whisked 5 large eggs, a pinch of salt, and made some thin crepes... no flour, or corn flour, potato starsh, tapioca starsh is allowed! Nothing else, just eggs and a pinch of salt, bit like very thin omelette, not that hard really.

And I spreaded the mince all over the crepe, and rolled them up, 5 of them and stacked neatly in the plate, into the steamer.

There usually will be some sauce after the plate being steamed, and it's time to cut them up and drizzle that sauce all around to let the mince soak it in again... well, this is not one serving, this is for all of the family... There's usually no individual plating for Chinese - it's a culture of communal eating.

Then, with the left over pork mince, I decided to do my favourite Mapo Tofu... well, I'm not SziChuang - so this is as authentic as I can get apart from one thing....

The Chillies...

I've got too many red chillies in the garden, so I replaced the dry chillies with the fresh ones from the recipe I've got.

I think there was about 75-80g of mince left.

First of all, I sliced up some ginger, garlic and the red chillies - I know all too well how hot they are so I got rid of some of the seeds of one chilly, the other one, I used the whole lot.

Heat some vegetable oil in wok and in goes the ginger garlic and red chillies, and my generous 1big tbsp (maybe 1.5?) of Szichuang Peppercorn...

the Aroma...

Then I threw in the pork mince, Szichuang Chilly Bean Paste. Stir to coat, at this stage, the wok should be dry stri fry, no excess liquid.

Until the pork was almost cooked, I add in Soy and Shaoxin, and the sliced mushrooms (something that's optional) Cubed Tofu (not silky not firm, something in between) and some tapioca flour paste (tapioca flour with water, enough water for the sauce)

3-4 minutes later....

Finely chopped spring onions were the last to be added and this is my version of Mapo Tofu....

But today's big big project was Sfogliatella Riccia....

I know, I have been watching too much Italian Food Safari and was tempted to do this amazing Italain treat...

I set the dough for half a day rather than the half an hour suggested by recipe, and rolled out in pasta maker and stretched with clarified butter.....

And I found that when making indivisual shells, put the dough into the freezer or fridge temporarily will give me better results, otherwise the layers stick, and you just can't open them up!

However I did half the filling recipe, and still got some left, I think the chef was making pastry shop quantity? However, this is what they look like before they got into the oven....

It does take longer than the recipe suggested, even though I put oven on 200C rather than 180C suggested by recipe, and this is what they look like after 30 minutes:

Of course I dusted them with icing sugar after they came out!

I think hubby will order them again and again now.... it's so crispy, and the filling is light... you can hear the crunch, when you bite into these little parcels.... oh... all the work just is worth the trouble!

This is the link to the original Italian Food Safari recipe, if anyone is interested.....

http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/italianfoodsafari/recipes/detail/recipe/9562