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Recipes with goji berries

3 recipes that use goji berries, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Osmanthus jelly (gui hua gao), takes 25 minutes. It is most often cooked with dried osmanthus flowers, agar powder and candied orange peel.

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Osmanthus jelly (gui hua gao)

In Hangzhou and Guilin the sweet osmanthus trees flower around Mid-Autumn, and their tiny golden blossoms are dried to scent teas, wine and this crystal-clear jelly, a light dessert after a mooncake-heavy festival meal. Set with agar instead of gelatine, it is vegan, firm enough to cut into neat squares, and studded with flowers and red goji berries. The mistake is adding all the flowers to hot liquid at once: they float to the top in a crowd, so stir them in once the mix starts to thicken. Chef's tip: a mould with layers of flowers suspended all through looks far prettier than one with all the petals at the top.

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Eight treasures rice

On New Year's Eve in Shanghai and the towns of Jiangnan, the reunion dinner ends with a dome of sticky rice turned out onto a plate, its top patterned with red dates, raisins, goji berries, walnuts and lotus seeds, and a heart of sweet red bean paste. A glossy syrup goes over just before it reaches the table. Older recipes use lard; this one uses neutral oil, so it is vegan. The usual mistake is undercooking the rice at the first steaming: if it is still chalky before shaping, it never turns tender. Chef's tip: pack the fruit pattern into the bowl first and press the rice firmly over it, so the design comes out sharp.

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Yunnan steam-pot chicken

In the old town of Jianshui in southern Yunnan, potters still make the purple clay qiguo, a lidded pot with a chimney rising through its centre. Set over boiling water, it lets steam rise into the pot, where it meets the chicken, condenses and drips back as a pure, golden broth, with no water added at all. After three hours the meat falls from the bone and the soup tastes intensely of chicken and ginger, clean and restorative; in Kunming it is the dish for guests, for convalescents and for winter weekends. Serve the broth in small bowls first, then the chicken with rice and a chilli dip. Chef's tip: if you don't own a steam pot, a heatproof bowl covered with a plate in a steamer works well; it just needs a small splash of water to start the broth.

by KrazyBadal 0 views

Goes well with goji berries