Chinese · Dessert
Ma Tai Gou (Water Chestnut Cake)
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, char used as punctuation.
Ingredients
- 250 g water chestnut flour
- 1 litre water
- 200 g Chinese brown slab sugar, chopped
- 250 g fresh water chestnuts, peeled and roughly chopped
- 2 g fine salt
- 15 ml groundnut oil, for the tin
- 30 ml groundnut oil, for frying
The skills inside
Sautéing & the shallow frySteaming: basket, leaf and lidStraining & passing through a sieve
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · nuts · peanuts
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 the day before: the cake has to cool for at least 3 hours before it can be cut. Whisk the water chestnut flour into 500 ml of the water until no lump remains, then pass it through a sieve and stir in the chopped water chestnuts. 180 min
- Melt the sugar and salt in the remaining 500 ml water and bring it to a boil.
- Off the heat, pour a third of the raw slurry into the hot syrup while whisking hard: it thickens on contact. Set the pan on low heat and stir until it looks like single cream, then whisk that cooked paste back into the raw slurry still in the bowl.
- Pour into an oiled 20 cm tin, where the batter sits about 4 cm deep, and steam over a full boil for 45 minutes to 50 minutes, until the surface has turned from milky to translucent and springs back under a finger. A layer no more than 3 cm deep, as in a 23 cm tin, is set in 30 minutes. Cool completely, at least 3 hours, before cutting into 1 cm slabs. 45 min
- Fry the slices in a little oil over medium heat until blistered and crisp on both sides and the inside has gone soft again.
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.
Sautéing & the shallow fry 80 recipes
- Everything sits in a single layer with visible space between the pieces: nothing stacked, nothing touching, or the pan is too small for the quantity.
- The pieces move freely and keep moving, sliding across the pan rather than sticking and tearing when the pan is worked.
- Light even browning arrived at quickly: colour on most faces, not the deep crust of a sear and not grey.
- A thin film of fat with the food glossed by it: no pool left in the pan at the end, and nothing greasy on the fingers or the plate.
- Cooked through but still firm, having spent only a few minutes in the pan: anything that has gone soft has been in there too long.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, the pan cooled, and the food released its water: what was meant to brown in three minutes stews for ten and comes out grey, slack and wet.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauternes
- Also Right
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- 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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