1/11/2024 0 Comments Best egg tart recipe![]() Even though the Macau locals have modified it to their taste and brought it over to Hong Kong, Hong Kongers being colonized by the British back then, decided to further modify it according to the British style egg custard where it has more of a silky smooth texture to it. Over the years, the Portuguese style egg tarts were then modified by Macau locals and brought over to Hong Kong since it’s only a short boat ride there. Even though these two pastries may look and taste slightly different, both are delicious in its own way with the Portuguese counterpart having a sweet denser filling and a slightly scorched top to enhanced its flavour accompanied by a crusty shell whereas the Hong Kong style egg tart offers a lighter mouthfeel with its silky smooth eggy custard filling accompanied with either a flaky type crust or a dense and crumbly type shell. The surface of the Portuguese custard tart is carefully charred and caramelized to give it that brownish colour and enhanced scorched flavour. It wasn’t quite as good as the last one I had at the famed Tai Cheong bakery in Hong Kong, but holding the egg tart in my hand-one that I had made from start to finish-felt pretty darn empowering.Speaking of, did you know that the Hong Kong style egg tarts are actually derived from the Portuguese style egg tart? In the beginning when Macau was still under Portuguese colonization around the twentieth century, the Portuguese style egg tarts or otherwise known as the pasteis de nata, was brought over to Macau and rather than Portuguese egg tarts, they are better known as Portuguese custard tarts instead! While the Hong Kong style egg tarts as we see today have a light colour and a shorter crust as compared to its Portuguese counterpart. I bit into the crisp, tender pastry and savored the smooth custard. My first try turned out terribly I had overworked the dough and it was tough and brittle. “You can just feel really prideful of yourself and your culture too.” That afternoon I thought about Cho’s words as I followed Wong’s egg tart recipe. “When you make yourself, you lay a little claim to it,” Cho says. Setting my dinner table full of the foods I grew up eating-and sharing this experience with my husband-filled my chest with pride. Cooking through Irene Kuo’s The Key to Chinese Cooking, Cecilia Chiang’s The Seventh Daughter, and Grace Young’s The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen felt like reconnecting with my culture. I immersed myself in Chinese food blogs and cookbooks. But last year’s shooting in Atlanta and the recent rise in anti-Asian hate crimes jolted me awake. I never learned to make turnip cake or mooncakes from scratch. In my most vulnerable moments, I thought that disregarding my heritage seemed like a fair price to pay if it meant I’d be unequivocally accepted by my peers. ![]() After these negative experiences in high school and early adulthood, I couldn’t help but feel that being Chinese was more a burden than a joy. I was emotionally exhausted by the rejection that often came when I shared my food and culture with others. I want to steam a whole fish, dive into a bowl of red-cooked chestnuts, and fill my apartment with the warm, spiced aroma of flavor-potted tofu.įor a long time I felt pressured to assimilate and shied away from my Chinese heritage. Lately, I’ve been yearning to re-create the flavors of my childhood in my own kitchen. ![]() It wasn’t just about embracing a new challenge, though. It seemed silly that I was confident in my ability to make a fancy French cake like a marjolaine or opera but couldn’t imagine baking something as essential to my culture as the egg tart is.
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