Cookies

There is a woman out of San Francisco who writes an interesting blog, and is quite famous in the American blogging community. She has written a book called "No One Wants to Know What you Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog." It is a book with ideas of what to put in your blog other than the food you just ate. You could check it out here, at her site.

Now, I felt as though I had to mention the blog and the book, since the last few posts have mostly been about food. I am working on a couple of ideas, but some of those take a little time and work, and in the meantime, I am wandering the streets nearly every day, challenging myself to try something new. The something new for the day before, were these cookies. The street we live on is jammed with little shops. There is a meat shop, a framing shop, a fabric shop, a stationary store,a couple of produce stalls, some restaurants and a couple of Chinese bakeries just to itemize a few of our neighbours.

In the past month, while I have walked down the street past the bakery, the most delicious odor has wafted towards me; the scent is pure baked sugar and butter. I slowed down to find the source and noticed a young man working three machines that look like waffle irons on the outside of a bakery. The young man stands in front of the irons with a large bucket of batter. He pours one ladle of the batter on the flat surface of the iron, and then closes the lid. Meanwhile the appropriate time has passed on another iron, and the young man lifts the circular pancake, folds it quickly and uses a small wooden dowel to roll the pancake. Immediately, the pancake goes from soft to hard, and is then placed in a plastic tub near the street to taunt the potential customers. I was fascinated by the procedure and would have bought them just for the pleasure of knowing how they were made. However, I was motivated to buy some then and there, because I have no way to know whether these cookies are seasonal; I don't recall seeing them last fall.

I asked for four of them and shelled out the 1.5RMB for them (about 25 cents). The remind me of the Italian Pizelle cookies that our neighbor's daughter makes at Christmas. The Chinese version have black sesame seeds, and ground pumpkin seeds for flavor. They are crispy and flaky and crumble quickly when you eat them. They are not very sweet (oh so close to making that generalization about sweets in China) and are best eaten the day they are made. I had them with the Keemun tea, and it was a perfect match. I hope that they are not seasonal.