Chinese · Dessert
Guihua Nuomi Ou (Osmanthus Lotus Root with Glutinous Rice)
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
A quiet dish that lets its main ingredient speak: season well and stand aside.
Ingredients
- 2 lotus root segments, about 700 g
- 200 g glutinous rice
- 150 g rock sugar
- 60 g Chinese brown slab sugar, chopped
- 6 dried jujubes
- 3 g dried osmanthus blossom
- 2 litres water
The skills inside
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilSkimming: foam, fat and a clear brothThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
The words inside
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Start this in the morning: the rice soaks for 4 hours, the roots simmer for 2, and they must cool before slicing. Soak the rice in cold water for 4 hours and drain it well. Scrub the lotus root and cut a lid off each fat end, 2 cm down, keeping the lids. 240 min
- Pack the rice into the open channels with a chopstick, tapping the root upright on the board to settle it, and stop at about nine tenths full: the grain swells and will split the root if it is rammed to the top. Replace each lid and pin it with cocktail sticks.
- Lay the roots in a deep pot with both sugars, the jujubes and the water, bring to a boil, skim, then cover and hold it at a bare simmer for 2 hours, until a skewer slides through the flesh with no resistance. 120 min
- Lift the roots out, pull out the cocktail sticks, and lift out the jujubes to serve alongside. Boil the liquid down to a syrup that coats the back of a spoon, then return the roots and turn them in it to glaze.
- Cool and slice 5 mm thick with a heavy knife. Stir the osmanthus into the warm syrup off the heat, since its scent boils away, and spoon syrup and blossom together over the slices.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes
- It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
- The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
- Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
- The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
- Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.
Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes
- Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
- The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
- The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
- The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
- Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.
Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauternes
- Also Right
- Demi-sec Champagne
- From the Taps
- Belgian tripel
- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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