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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Wednesday, February 2, 2005

Add a twist to Chinese New Year favorites

 •  Serving up a tasty tradition

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Though every family no doubt has specialties and favorites, the two dishes that define Chinese New Year for most Islanders are jai, a cleansing stew that is supposed to be the first food taken on New Year's Day, and gao, a sticky, sweet dessert that may be made at home or purchased in Chinese sweets shops.


SHANGHAI GAO

Many Islanders wouldn't recognize Linda Chang Wyrgatsch's Shanghai-style gao — filled with pine nuts and dried red dates — as the same New Year's confection they have long known. The Cantonese variety widely seen in the Islands is made with Chinese slab sugar and rice flour, topped with sesame seeds and a single red date.

Photos by Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

Jai — also known as lo han jai, monk's food or, charmingly, Buddha's delight — is a vegetarian stew that varies from region to region, family to family. However, the technique is universal: Mushrooms and other vegetables are first stir-fried briefly, then stewed in broth along with various forms of tofu, long rice (bean threads) and more vegetables, as well as flavorings.

Below is a streamlined and modern version of jai using ingredients familiar to most Island cooks. It makes a family-size dish of jai and is extremely healthful except for high sodium content. (This is primarily because of the broth and soy sauce; cut sodium by using low-sodium soy sauce, making your own no-salt broth and rinsing all canned ingredients before use.)

Traditional jai is both more time-consuming and more flavorful (and probably even more loaded with sodium).

June Tong of Kaimuki, who used to volunteer to teach Chinese cooking to Narcissus Queen candidates, makes a Cantonese version that requires a lot of prep work and more than an hour of simmering. She uses pungent and salty mashed red and yellow fermented bean curd (sold in jars or bottles), oyster sauce, a little sugar and a lot of ginger and dashi or chicken broth accented with dried squid and whole star anise (removed before the stew is finished). In the stew, she includes fungus (cloud ear or wood ear), mushrooms (dried shiitake), tiger-lily buds (jing zhen or golden needles), ginkgo seeds (sold fresh or canned, labeled "boiled white nuts"), bamboo shoots, long rice, won bok (cabbage) and fat choy (sometimes called seaweed hair, but actually a black, hair-like freshwater algae).

She first briefly parboils all the vegetable ingredients to remove impurities and to reconstitute the dried foodstuffs. (She does this ahead of time, then stores the ingredients individually in her freezer, ready for use on New Year's Day.) And note that her jai isn't strictly vegetarian, because she uses squid and dashi or chicken broth.

To illustrate regional differences, Linda Chang Wyrgatsch of 'Aiea, another cooking instructor who has worked with the Narcissus court, recalled her family's Shanghai-style jai as having a quite different ingredient profile: bean sprouts, carrots, celery, mushroom, fungus, bamboo shoots, dried tofu (tofu cheese), tofu sheets (skimmed from boiled soy milk) and ginger. Their version was always vegetarian, she said.

So the jai formula can be altered to suit your tastes.

Common features of jai are:

• Dried mushrooms and/or fungus plus fresh vegetables and some specialty ingredients such as bamboo shoots or ginkgo seeds.

• Tofu is always used, but it may be firm fresh tofu, fermented tofu, pressed tofu "cheese" or other tofu forms.

• Stir-fry first, then simmer, stew or braise in a light broth.

• Broth is flavored with spices, aromatics or sauces ranging from ginger and oyster sauce to hoisin sauce and star anise.

Contemporary Jai

  • Oil for stir-frying
  • 1 ounce dried shiitake mushrooms (about 8 mushrooms)
  • 1/2 cup cloud ear fungus
  • 1/2 cup canned bamboo shoots
  • 1 (8-ounce) can sliced water chestnuts
  • 1 carrot
  • 3 cups shredded napa cabbage
  • 3 cups vegetable broth
  • 2 ounces long rice (bean threads)
  • 1 cup firm tofu
  • 16 snow peas
  • 2 cups fresh bean sprouts
  • 3 tablespoons soy sauce (low-sodium may be used)
  • 2 tablespoons cornstarch, mixed well with 4-5 tablespoons cold water
  • 1 teaspoon sesame oil

Prepare vegetables, setting each aside in bowl or cup:

Soak shiitake in hot water for 30 minutes; drain. Soak cloud ear fungus in hot water 10 minutes; drain. Pick over shiitake, removing any hard stems and cutting caps into halves or quarters, depending on size. Cut cloud ear fungus into small pieces.

Drain bamboo shoots and water chestnuts and rinse well. Slice bamboo shoots.

Peel carrot and julienne.

Shred napa cabbage.

Soak bean threads in hot water briefly; drain.

In a wok, large heavy-bottomed skillet, Dutch oven or other commodious pot, stir-fry mushrooms, cloud ear fungus, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, carrot and cabbage in oil on high for 4 minutes.

Add broth and bean threads. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add tofu, snow peas, bean sprouts and soy sauce; cover and simmer 2 minutes. Drizzle in cornstarch mixture, stirring constantly and cook until sauce thickens. Drizzle with sesame oil and serve.

Makes 6 servings.

• Per serving: 238 calories, 7 g fat (1 g saturated fat), 0 cholesterol, 33 g carbohydrate (3 g dietary fiber), 11 g protein, 1,462 g sodium.

• • •

Gao used to take literally days to make, when people started by buying sweet rice and pounding it into flour, then mixing it with syrup in massive quantities before steaming the pudding literally for half the night. This is still how it's made in Chinatown sweet shops, where round cakes of gao, wrapped in red paper and topped with the traditional red date and sesame seeds, appear at this time of year.

Even smaller batches of homemade steamed gao take the better part of the day: The cook has to first make the syrup from brown sugar or Chinese slab sugar, then mix it with the sweet rice flour for half an hour until it's completely free of lumps, and then form and steam it for four hours.

As much as she likes to cook, Linda Chang Wyrgatsch doesn't have time for that, and doesn't think most contemporary cooks do. She makes her Shanghai-style gao in the microwave; it takes longer to prepare the red dates than it does to make the dish itself.

Linda's speedy Shanghai Gao

  • 12 ounces dried red dates (about 1 cup)
  • 1 pound mochiko (sweet rice flour)
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup salad oil
  • 3/4 to 1 cup water
  • 1/2 cup shelled pine nuts

In a saucepan, cover dates with water. Bring to a boil, lower heat and cook for 45 minutes, or until dates are soft; drain. Remove pits.

Line a 10-by-5-inch microwave-safe baking dish with plastic wrap. In a bowl, combine mochiko, sugar, oil and water; mix well. Stir in dates and nuts. Pour mixture into prepared dish; cover with plastic wrap.

Microwave on high for 7 minutes, rotating dish several times during cooking. Carefully turn gao over. Microwave on high another 3 minutes.

Let stand, uncovered, for about 30 minutes. Pull gao from sides of dish and invert onto platter. Cool and cut into serving pieces.

Makes 20 servings.

• Per serving: 220 calories, 7.5 g total fat, 1 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 5 mg sodium, 38 g carbohydrate, 1.5 g fiber, 19 g sugar, 3 g protein