The Moon Food Page
Recipes and directions for cooking moon food. |
What is moon food?
| Made popular by the Chinese, moon food was prepared during the time of the
"Moon Festival". People would read and write poetry while consuming moon cakes.
These are round cakes made of flour, brown sugar and stuffed with sweets. Depending on location, different kinds of filling were used.
In the north - white sugar paste and brown date paste were favorites.
In the south - ham, dates or preserved apricots, walnuts, lard
or watermelon seeds were used.
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| "Moon Cakes" Recipe | This recipe for Mooncakes comes from Shanghai. Originally made in moon cake
molds with imprints such as chrysanthemum pattern or other traditional Chinese
characters. They should be about three inches (seven centimeters) in diameter.
Before baking - invent and draw your own "traditional patterns"!
4 cups flour 4 tbsp. brown sugar half tsp. salt 4oz (11Og) margarine 1 egg 1 tsp. sesame oil For the filling: 2 tbsp. peanuts 2 tbsp. sesame seeds 2 tbsp. walnuts or pine nuts 2 tbsp. chestnuts, boiled until tender, or blanched almonds 2 tbsp. sultanas or other dried fruit, chopped 2 tbsp. chopped dried apricots 4 tbsp. brown sugar 2 tbsp. Margarine 2 tbsp. rice flour or poppy seeds | | Preheat oven to 400F or 200C - Recipe makes about 15 cakes. | - Sift the flout, sugar and salt together.
- Chop the margarine into pieces and rub into the flour until crumbs form.
- Add enough hot water (about half a cup) to make a pastry dough.
- Cover with a cloth.
- Roast the peanuts in a hot pan for two minutes.
- Add the sesame seeds, then put a lid on to stop them from jumping out of the pan.
- Roast for a further two minutes.
- Put the peanuts and seeds in a food processor or blender and grind with the other nuts.
- Add to the rest of the filling ingredients and mix together.
- Roll out the pastry on a floured board.
- Cut rounds with a pastry cutter to fill the mold - if you have one - or make little pie cases.
- Rub the mold with margarine and spread pastry over the bottom and sides of the mold.
- Put in a tablespoon of filling. Press down gently.
- Wet the edges of the pastry and cover with another round to make a lid.
- Seal together, and remove from the mold if you are using one.
- Put all the cakes on a greased baking sheet.
Beat the eggs and sesame oil together and brush each cake with this mixture.
- Bake about thirty minutes until the cakes are golden brown.
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| "Moon Biscuits" Recipe | Moon Biscuits are traditionally eaten with wine during various moon
celebrations or rituals. They are made in the shape of the crescent moon,
and the whole hazelnuts in them represent the Full Moon that is to come.
250g/9oz Wholewheat Flour 75g/3oz Soft Light Brown Sugar 175g/6oz Butter or Vegan Marg A Large Handful of Hazelnuts | | Preheat oven to 300F or 150C. | - Beat the butter or margarine with the sugar until blended.
- Add the flour, and mix together to form a dough.
- Knead on a floured surface.
- Gently work the whole hazelnuts through it, flatten out to a depth of about half an inch.
- If you have a moon-shaped pastry cutter, use this to form the biscuits.
- However, you may want to cut the moon shapes yourself with a small sharp knife.
- You can even add a few features, or Moon symbols, to the surface.
- Place the biscuits on a baking sheet, and put in the oven until light golden brown.
| | "Moon Shine" Recipe | | NOTE: This is not the alcoholic beverage... | This recipe for Moon-Shine comes from an eighteenth-century English recipe book.
The recipe is not entirely plain or easy. I've added it more as a curiosity than serious recipe.
It is made in a large tin mold in the shape of a half-Moon, and in one large and two or three
smaller star-shaped tins.
| - Boil two calves feet in a gallon of water till it comes to a quart.
- Strain it off, and, when cold, skim off all the fat.
- Take half the jelly, and sweeten it with sugar to your taste.
- Beat up the whites of four eggs.
- Stir all together over a slow fire till it boils.
- Run it through a flannel bag till clear.
- Put it in a clean saucepan.
- Add an ounce of sweet almonds blanched beat very fine in a marble morta.
- Add two teaspoonfuls of rosewater, and two of orange-flower water.
- Strain it through a coarse cloth.
- Mix it with the jelly, stir in four large spoonfuls of thick cream.
- Stir it all together till it boils.
- Have ready the dish you intend it for.
- Lay the tin in the shape of a half-moon in the middle.
- Pour in the above blanc-manger into the dish.
- When quite cold, take out the tin things.
- Mix the other half of the jelly with half a pint of good white wine.
- Now mix the juice of two or three lemons, with some loaf sugar.
- Add the whites of eight eggs, beat fine.
- Stir it all together over a low fire till it boils.
- Now run it through a flannel bag, till it is quite clear.
- In a china basin, and very carefully fill up the places where you took the tin out.
- Let it stand till cold.
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