Chapter Eight

Chinese Desserts

甜品

This is my mother's chapter. The dishes here came from her kitchen, in the order she made them — the cooling cheng tng of the long hot afternoon, the deep banquet-closing hong dou sha, the silken dun daan she made for small kindnesses, the heritage tau hwey skimmed in cloud-layers before the household was awake, and the bubur cha cha she made on every Chap Goh Mei to send out to the neighbours. The chapter is the choreography of a single home kitchen — pandan-leaf knot on a small saucer at the corner of the counter, late-afternoon light through the right-side window, four heating stations running at once. Reportedly the dish you ate last in our house was always one of these. Hers was the table that ended on amber.

Five Recipes

Hock Ko's Mother's Kitchen

Cheng Tng — vignette
Recipe Thirty-Six

Cheng Tng

清汤

Clear amber broth carrying nine heritage textures — white fungus, longan, lotus seeds, pearl barley, ginkgo, red dates, pang da hai, sago, persimmon — perfumed with pandan and lifted by rock sugar. The dish my mother made first.
Hong Dou Sha — vignette
Recipe Thirty-Seven

Hong Dou Sha

红豆沙

Cantonese red bean sweet soup with aged chenpi and lotus seeds. Sugar after bean-bloom, never before. The half-mash that gives the broth its sha consistency. The bowl that closes the banquet.
Steamed Egg Pudding — vignette
Recipe Thirty-Eight

Steamed Egg Pudding

炖蛋

Cantonese silken steamed egg, Hong Kong dessert-house style. Four rules: gentle whisk, triple strain, foil cover each ramekin, medium-then-rest. The careful is the whole dish.
Tau Hwey — vignette
Recipe Thirty-Nine

Tau Hwey

豆花

Pan-dialect Singapore silken soybean pudding — set with heritage gypsum, skimmed in thin sheets with a flat wooden ladle, served warm with ginger or gula-melaka syrup. The first sliver was always mine.
Bubur Cha Cha — vignette
Recipe Forty

Bubur Cha Cha

摩摩喳喳

Heritage Peranakan coconut-milk sweet soup with the four-colour triad-of-tubers, sago, and gula-melaka poured at service. The marbled swirl. The book's closing dessert. The bowl that distributed abundance to the neighbours every Chap Goh Mei.