Dessert Atlas · Dessert
Jian Dui
- Advanced
- 1 h 30 m
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with toasted, nutty warmth throughout, real fire that builds and stays.
Ingredients
- 300g glutinous rice flour; 60g sugar dissolved in ~220ml just-boiled water (the hot-water dough is the stretch)
- 250g sweet red bean paste (or lotus paste), chilled and rolled into 12 balls
- 150g raw white sesame seeds in a bowl; a second bowl of water for wet-rolling
- Oil for deep frying: starting LOW at 130°C and finishing at 160°C; the two-stage fry is the inflation mechanism
- A slotted spoon and gentle pressure: you will be massaging them as they fry
Equipment
Deep-fry pot
The skills inside
Deep fryingDraining fried food: a rack, never paper
The words inside
Building the Home & Starting Bar
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · sesame
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
- Make the hot-water dough; knead smooth; rest 10 min. Wrap each chilled paste ball in dough, sealing seamlessly: cracks become blowouts. 10 min
- Wet each ball's surface; roll through sesame and press the seeds home between your palms.
- Fry at 130°C, rolling constantly; as they firm, press each gently against the pot with the spoon; they rebound and BEGIN TO INFLATE; keep pressing and rolling as the shell expands hollow.
- Raise to 160°C for the final minutes until deep gold and audibly crisp. Drain upright; eat warm: crackling sesame shell, chewy wall, soft sweet heart.
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.
Draining fried food: a rack, never paper 77 recipes
- The rack was in place before the first thing went into the oil, not fetched afterwards while food waited in a spider over the pot.
- It lands on a rack with air moving underneath it. Anything set down on paper or a flat plate traps its own steam against its base.
- Salted within seconds of landing, while it is still hot enough to take seasoning.
- A minute later the underside is still as crisp as the top: no soft flat patch where it has been sitting.
- Nothing is stacked or piled while hot, however tempting it is to keep it together. A pile steams itself soft from the inside out.
Where it goes wrong It was drained on paper, or piled up to keep warm. Steam leaving the food has nowhere to go but back into the crust, so the underside softens within a minute: the crispness the frying just bought is gone before the plate reaches the table.
Deep frying 96 recipes
- The oil was at temperature before anything went in, measured rather than guessed, and the vessel is no more than two-thirds full.
- Everything went in dry. Surfaces are patted down and any coating is not dripping, because water hitting hot oil erupts and is the one accident this technique actually has.
- The oil recovers between batches. It is back at temperature before the next load goes in rather than falling further with each one.
- A steady vigorous bubbling that slows as it finishes: the bubbles are the food’s own water leaving, so a piece that has gone quiet has stopped drying out and is done.
- Seasoned or finished in the first seconds out of the oil, while the surface is still hot and will hold what lands on it. Anything applied to a cooled crust sits on top and falls off.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once and the oil temperature collapsed. The crust forms slowly while the food sits in warm fat absorbing it rather than shedding steam, and it comes out heavy and greasy instead of crisp, which no amount of draining afterwards will fix.
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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