Dejah

I used Tenderflake, Yuki. Make sure it says lard and not shortening...such as Crisco. You should be able to find it in the baking aisle. They come in 1 lb. blocks or 1.36kg tubs. Lard makes everything flaky and light. I used to use Tenderflake lard in one deepfryer for battered items. The other 2 fryers had veg. shortening. I have compared the results and the lard definitely produces flakier "crusts".

Very sorry to hear about your foot, Kris. As with the "other cook-off", it is never too late to enter your results for dan tart.

And I will be spending my evening picking out all the bits of fat from my siu mai ground pork.

Looking forward to all your creations this week! Tell your family to stop yelling...you need to be here to feed our hungry eyes!

I made my moussaka for our supper tonight. Instead of salting and frying up the sliced eggplant, I followed Rachel's recipe for eggplant cutlets. I will echo the fact that it is hard not to gobble them up as they wait to be put into the moussaka. I wanted to use ground bison, but the family wanted lamb as is our tradition. Couldn't find any ground lamb so I used 8 shoulder llamb chops, trimed and ground it myself. I used 2 large tomatoes, chopped red onion, parsley, and garlic, tomato sauce, red wine, nutmeg, cinnamon, ground coriander, cumin salt and pepper. The filling was really good! I used a combination of grated parmesan and leftover feta in the cheese layer. The bechamel sauce had butter, milk, cream and 3 egg yolks. The house smelled pretty good while it was baking! I kept peeking to make sure the top was browning. As sides, I cut up some turnip into thin slices, doused them with evoo, some salt, Cajun seasoning and baked them along with the moussaka. We pretended they were fries. Also had some asparagus and a salad with feta and balsamic dressing. Here is a close up of the moussaka. I think it could have used a little more sauce, but the flavour was great! I am happy that I made the eggplant cutlets. The recipe was a combination of suggestions here, an old book called Eastern Mediterranean Cooking by Roger Basque, and a book called Winners by a group of bridge players in Calgary, Alberta. And, because I love mint with lamb, I had lots of fresh mint with mine! Thanks for jogging my memory to make this dish again!

Thanks Tepee, for your recipe.

The pastry and custard look lovely, Tepee! Can you send them...errr I mean the recipe? I just MIGHT try again once the students are back in class next week. Then I will have some new people to eat up my experiments.

Can you tell us what the end result was? I'm guessing that a puff pastry-like dough must be used in order to get a flaky layered result but that the pastry must be blind baked before the filling is added. ← The frozen puffed pastry looked right around the edges, but when you bite into it, it is chewy like a danish. With the first dozen, the instructions said to bake at 350F until the edges (brushed with egg yolk) are golden. Then cover the tarts up with a cookie sheet , turn off the oven and cook until the custard set. The last 2 dozens were baked at 300F for 45 minutes. The pastry was flaky in that it was like shortbread cookies...but not the layered look of the classic dan tart. Kris's pastry looks good. IF I ever make them again, I will roll the pastry out thicker and be brave and add more filling. Helen's recipe looks interesting. Did I really say Well, Helen DID give a recipe. Not sure about the food colouring. A dab of orange colour might be good. Yellow makes it too lemony. I liked the natural colour of the second recipe with the milk and cream.

Well, it's been one long day with these da** tarts. Needless to say, I won't be making these again anytime soon, unless someone gives me a "no-fail flaky-layers, just like the dim sum chefs recipe"! Here's hoping the images will load! May just end up as links, but I am too beat to try to figure this image posting thingie! The first batch, I used a recipe from Wei-Chuan. I bought a whole can of evaporated milk only to use 1 tbsp in the outer dough! The dough worked easily but did not give me the desired results. The filling was very disappointing. I should have realized because it only called for water, 5 eggs and sugar. The photos in the book showed crimping along the tart edges, so I did. Like I said, I followed the directions exactly. This dozen went into the garbage! Egg Tarts: Double Layer Pastry http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/11137768...8_1102_7319.jpg Egg Tarts: First Dozen Pre-Baked http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/11137768...38_1102_991.jpg Egg Tarts: First Dozen Baked http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/11137768..._1102_27221.jpg The second dozen, I used a recipe by Rhoda Yee. It was a short pastry of 1/4 cup butter, 1/4 cup lard, 1 egg and 6 tbsp sugar. The filling was more like what I thought egg custard should be...at least similar to English custard. It called for 2 whole extra large eggs, 3 extra large egg yolks, 1 cup whole milk, 1/2 cup half and half, and 1 cup sugar. Look out arteries! The end result was more like an English custard tart than the classic Chinese dan tart. The filling was wonderful, silky. The shell like a piece of short bread. I thought the colour was a bit pale so I added a dab of yellow food colouring in the filling for 3 tarts. Nah...too much like lemon tart in colour. Egg Tarts: Second Dozen Baked http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/11137768...8_1102_8663.jpg Rhoda's recipe was for 24 tarts. I rolled out 7 more out of her pastry recipe, then cut out 5 from frozen puff pastry to see what would happen. Definitely DO NOT USE PUFF PASTRY for dan tart. Egg Tarts: Third Dozen Baked http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/11137768..._1102_29182.jpg I tasted 1/4 section of each dozen. Rhoda's filling was the best, although I might reduce the sugar in the custard by a couple tbsps. We are not allowing ourselves any sugar or flour at the moment, I took the last 2 dozen tarts down to different neighbors on our street. (Other than the puff pastry ones!) I also left some in my office fridge for our secretary and Chinese students who did not go home for this short break. Tomorrow...onto something I know more about. ..siu mai!

I made my first batch of dan tart, and was very disappointed in the results. I used a recipe from Wei-Chuan's Chinese Dim sum book. I actually followed the recipe( for the first time in my life without wavering) to a gram by using a newly purchased electronic scale. Followed the instructions carefully, but it must be my technique in rolling the dough with the two layers. The filling was a terrible colour...very pale yellow with a greyish tinge. Did not look appetizing at all. It used eggs, water and sugar. I tasted 1/4 of one, and man! The pastry was chewy on the bottom inspite of having layers. The instructions said to crimp the edges, so I did. Can't see any layers when you do that. So, I have another recipe done up and 12 are now in the oven. This is a recipe by Rhonda Yee. She uses a recipe with butter and lard...single layer. None of this outsy and innsy stuff. The filling called for eggs, milk and half'n'half. I thought the colour was still too pale, so for 3 of the tarts, I added the tiniest dab of yellow cake decorating colour. We'll see what happens. I took pictures of the process from the first batch, and the rexults before I threw them into the garbage. The seond batch, I didn't take pictures of the process but I will post the results. "sigh"

Don't rush me! I keep forgetting to bring the meat out from the freezer...Besides, I did something to my back and have been going for therapy. I looked in the mirror this morning and I don't look quite so lopsided, so I am going to do the "other dim sum" today. I DO have the pork out now and will do siu mai tomorrow.

Go ahead and make these "enormongous" dan tarts anyway! The size would be like the custard pies we bought in England. Most people would share one among 4 friends. I ate a whole one by myself! But then, that was when I was pregnant and ate alot.

Looks like one happy couple there with the siu mai! I will be very interested in seeing the eggplant in black bean garlic sauce. My eggplants are slated for another cook-off...so I'll just stick with the meat fillings. If you have lots of meat filling left over, you can always do a steamed main dish for supper. Just put the meat into a shallow dish and add sliced Chinese sausages and slivered ginger on top and steam for about 20 minutes.

Hey! First to enter! Hurray! They look great! I don't fold my sui mai. Hope to make mine soon, so I will post pictures of what I do to shape them. Basically it is just laying a wrapper on top of a circle formed by joining the finger tips of my thumb and index finger. Put a dollop of filling in the centre and push down gently. Add more filling until desired size, squeeze gently to form the cylinder. Flatten the bottom gently so it will sit on the steamer plate.

←

I have always sliced, salted and drained for moussaka in the past, but I like Rachel's idea of baking. So, for this round, I am going to follow her idea. Ground lamb is not to be found in any of our sources at the moment, not even frozen chubs. I bought some shoulder chops, but I am thinking of using ground bison which is very lean and suitable for our low fat diet at the moment. Talk about putting my own spin on a classic...

When I was in Hawaii for the first time and saw some manapua, I thought that was scarily big! Where do you find the paper-thin, grapefruit size siu mai wrappers? ← Home made? Come on, hzrt, you can do it!

Your comment about dim sum every moring before the market brought back a dim memory of when I was young. I was the only one of 4 kids with whom my dad spent time after I was born. He was in China for about 1.5 years before returning to Canada. My "memory" is what my Mom told me. He'd take me to his fav. tea house, meet with his friends and gossip over tea and dumplings, and jook for me. Then we'd go to the market and shop for the day's meals. Never got to spend this kind of quality time with my Dad again.

Thanks so much for sharing your garnish cabinet! I have not advanced beyond "retro"... but they still impress people who ask me to do cakes. I will be referring back to your pictures often, for inspiration. They will never turn out like yours, but it will be fun trying to duplicate!

I will be using muffin tins, regular size ones. There is enough "fat" in the pastry that unmolding shouldn't be a problem. Having said that....

What has been said about the condensation with metal steamers is probably true, but I've never noticed excess moisture on the dim sum I've made...baos, sui mai, har gow, etc. Maybe this time I will use the big bamboo lid I have and see if there is noticable difference. That's what's great about a cook-off...trying and learning something different!

Dim sum: touch(like a finger tip) of heart... Grapefruit size: PUNCH! In the movies, if you punch someone in the heart, it stops! Might take some waiting to cook... I don't use a bamboo steamer when I do large amounts. I use the perforated inserts in my steamer. It works fine. If you use a plate inside the steamer, then you will get an accumulation of liquid which may make your sui mai skin soggy.

I think you can make sui mai with just pork, or a mixture of pork and shrimp, crab, glutineous rice, and you can also add chopped bamboo shoots, ginger, Chinese mushrooms. To get the springiness to the filling, the addition of liquid(I use water), sugar, baking soda, lemon juice and cornstarch all seem to be at work. My KitchenAid does the "abuse" for me. When you see "threads" in the meat mixture, you will get the springy texture.

I have recipes that use a short pastry. I am sure frozen would work, but you may not achieve that layered flaky tart shell...me thinks...

Such party poopers! They focused on fat content and sodium, but what about the sugar content in waterchestnut cake and bean soup! That's why we need to make these items at home. We can be more health conscious and adjust the ingredients, then just go out once in a while an OD at restaurants! Moderation is the key word. Repeat after me!