Tau suan and oil-fried devils

We felt adventurous, and hungry, and decided to make tau suan and you tiao the other day. We're happy to report that it turned out pretty well. What you see in the photo is all made from scratch! Not bad, huh? Yah, got pride.

Anyway, we'd tried to make tau suan on our own years ago when we were back at Northwestern near Chicago, but that attempt ended up a mushy mess. We'd tried to boil the split mung beans in water, but now we know that you should actually steam the mung beans and then add them to boiling syrup before stirring in some sweet potato starch to make it all sticky. So this time the tau suan actually turned out decent.

The you tiao was our first attempt. Kenneth thinks it's a little too dense, so maybe next time we'll try to make it a little lighter. The recipe was found online. Bread flour, water, salt and alum were kneaded and then allowed to rest for four hours, before cutting and frying. We didn't want to get our kitchen oily, so we sneaked down to our building's basement common lounge early in the morning to fry the you tiao in the kitchen there. Heheh.

Interesting story about you tiao. We learned from our very learned friend, Jia Min, that you tiao is actually supposed to resemble the Song dynasty official Qin Hui and his wife. Qin Hui was the guy who, according to legend, helped lead a plot against the hero Yue Fei. So tearing frying the you tiao in hot oil and tearing the two halves before eating it is supposed to be like burning the guy and his wife and them eating them up. Not a very appetizing image at all. Oh, Jia Min, on some level of my consciousness, I wish you'd never told me this. I'll never be able to look at you tiao the same way again.