The story appears on

Page B1

August 4, 2016

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Feature » iDEAL

Mooncakes, A cup of tea

THIS year’s Mid-Autumn Festival is still almost six weeks away, but advertisements for mooncakes are already spreading fast across Shanghai. It won’t be long before queues of up to six hours form at Guangmingcun Restaurant, where some of the city’s most famous mooncakes are handmade and baked around the clock.

Mooncakes are synonymous with the Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on September 15 this year — the night of the full moon. For those who prefer moon watching to weight watching, the calorie-laden mooncakes are a seasonal treat. They come in many variations. Something for everyone.

The traditional mooncakes most popular in Shanghai are those in the Suzhou style, with layered, flaky pastry crusts, and those in the Cantonese style, with a thinner, gooier and sweeter crust.

Both varieties have their guilty little secrets. The Suzhou style uses lots of lard in the two layers of crust. The Cantonese style requires a large amount of sugar syrup to make the crusts glossy. And the fillings, whether savory or sweet, are also very rich and dense. The delicious salty yolks often found in mooncakes double the amount of cholesterol because of the salting process.

Of course, we live in an age where the accent is increasingly on healthy eating. So contemporary mooncake-making also focuses on reducing fat and sugar content. The snow-skin mooncake, also known as the crystal mooncake, uses wheat starch and water to make the crust, and various beans and sweet potato for the filling. There are also mooncakes that use beans and sweet potatoes to make both the crust and the filling.

Mooncakes are best served with tea, which helps dispel that greasy, sugary taste. A pot of freshly brewed tea with your favorite mooncake makes a simple but festive afternoon break during the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday season. Different teas go well with different mooncake varieties.

Chinese black teas like Pu’er and oolong teas like Tieguanyin undergo a certain aging, or fermentation, period after the leaves are harvested. These teas are strong flavored yet smooth, and they are considered beneficial to the digestive system when eating greasy foods.

Ripe Pu’er tea, named after a city in Yunnan Province specializing in the dark tea, is an ideal companion for Suzhou-style mooncakes filled with savories like pork and salted radish shreds. These mooncakes are often eaten hot.

Pu’er tea has a gentle aroma. It complements the mooncakes, rather than clashing with the flavor of the juicy pork filling.

One can even also add a few dried chrysanthemum flowers to the Pu’er tea to add more flavor.

Dahongpao is a type of oolong tea that originated at Wuyi mountain in Fujian Province. The tea leaves are harvested in May, when they are neither too tender nor too mature. The making of Dahongpao tea combines techniques from the production of both green and black teas — a complicated process.

The tea’s flavor has a hint of smokiness and orchids. It’s distinctive and refreshing. It is best enjoyed in the “Kungfu tea style” of using small tea cups. This tea is perfect for pairing with the sweet and savory Cantonese mooncakes filled with satay beef or dried scallops and served at room temperature. The mooncakes can be a bit oily and heavy.

Another caffeine-free option to accompany savory mooncakes is the tea made by roasting Tartary buckwheat kernels. The strong aroma and slight bitter taste of the tea goes well with rich foods and has the added health benefits of the antioxidant rutin as well as amino acids.

Bitter buckwheat tea can be found in supermarkets across China. To make the tea, simply pour on hot water and let the kernels infuse the flavors for a few minutes before serving. Good quality bitter buckwheat tea has golden brown, plump kernels.

Traditional sweet mooncakes come in a wide variety. They include the nutty wu ren, or five nut, mooncake, the egg custard mooncake, the shredded coconut mooncake and the lotus seed, jujube or red bean paste mooncake.

Sweet mooncakes are usually eaten as desserts and are ideally paired with various green teas.

These teas are high in antioxidants, and their slightly bitter, fresh taste goes well with sweet dishes. Green teas like longjing have a gentle, aromatic taste, while ones like maojian, which originated in Henan Province, are more bitter, with some acidity.

For the lighter flavored snow skin mooncakes, the floral flavor of an oolong tea like Tieguanyin works well, especially with starchier fillings.

This tea, which comes from Anxi County in Fujian Province, is harvested four times a year. The spring tea is the best quality, followed by the extra fragrant autumn tea.

White tea is a lightly fermented tea with a mild, natural flavor. The tea buds and leaves are very tender when harvested, and they contain higher levels of antioxidants. The tea comes from specialized areas in Yunnan, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces.

Western influences have permeated the mooncake realm. It’s now possible to buy mooncakes featuring ice cream or chocolate. These mooncakes can work well with floral teas, blended fragrant green or black teas.

Jasmine tea is among the most fragrant teas in China. It also originated in Fujian Province.

The tea is made by blending jasmine flowers with green tea. Jasmine tea is best made with hot water at 90 degrees Celsius, brewed for three to five minutes.

Rose tea can be prepared by itself or in tandem with other teas. Adding a few dry rose petals to green tea neutralizes the strong fragrance and adds a touch of bitterness.

It can be mixed with Roselle tea to make a bright red-colored drink that’s both sweet and sour.




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend