[Sca-cooks] Hong Kong Waffles / gei dan jai

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Apr 17, 2008, at 4:28 AM, Huette von Ahrens wrote:

> In Wednesday's LA Times food section there was an article on the  
> eclectic mix of Hong Kong
> and Russian foods in some of the restaurants here in the San Gabriel  
> Valley.
>
> http://www.latimes.com/features/food/
>
> One of the menu items that was discussed in the article was Hong  
> Kong style waffles and they
> showed a picture of a waffle that consisted of many round balls  
> instead of the traditional
> European and American square grid waffle.  This intrigued me as I  
> had never had seen or
> encountered such a waffle before.  As I loves me some waffles, I  
> just had to investigate this
> further.  It took me forever to find a correct recipe because there  
> are several on the net that
> say they are Hong Kong style waffle recipes, but really aren't.  Now  
> I am in search of the round
> waffle iron.  I must have one for my collection.  Below is a website  
> that has photos of these
> waffles and the waffle iron.
>
> http://chaxiubao.typepad.com/chaxiubao/2006/09/gei_dan_chai_ho.html
>
> Adamantius, do you have any clue where to get this waffle iron?   
> Anyone else?  I couldn't find
> one offered for sale on the net.


Without even looking (which I will do, mind you), I'd bet many strings  
of cash that we're talking about what my lady wife refers to as "egg  
cakes", which are, indeed, cooked from a batter in an iron which  
divides the proceeds into a sheet of inch-long joined egg-shaped  
"doughnuts". Every time I've ever seen them, they've been cooked by a  
lady in a little stall on the corner of Mott and Mosco streets, who  
deftly separates them into individual "eggs" with a pair of tongs and  
sells them in small wax-paper sacks by the dozen.  I don't know the  
Cantonese name for these, but the "gai dan" part of the name you've  
provided definitely denotes hens' eggs.

The lady also sells what are called "egg rolls", which are nothing  
like spring rolls or even the deep-fried, meat-filled omelette  
wrappers also so called; they're more like a modern wafer. Not sure if  
they're baked in an oven or in an iron, but they're _very_ thin, and  
rolled into a tube while warm and soft. I've never seen these being  
made; the lady sells them in tins.

I've always liked the egg-cake lady, who I feel is tapping into a very  
ancient street food and street sales tradition (check a copy of the  
Larousse Gastronomique and see if the edition in question still has an  
entry under "Street Cries of Paris" for a nice little essay on this).  
The only time I ever really managed to have an actual conversation  
with the egg cake lady, it turned out she was not, in fact, putting  
her children through college on the proceeds. How young did I think  
she was? She was putting her grandchildren through Princeton...

Seems to me that the irons are very hard to come by. I'll have to go  
beyond the usual resource of asking my lady wife and go directly to  
the mountain... and ask my mother-in-law.

But first I'll search for "Chinese egg cake iron" on the web...

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E4DE1039F932A25751C1A962958260

All I can find are some articles on the Egg Cake Lady (apparently I'm  
not the only one who calls her this), whose name turns out to be  
Cecilia Tam.

I'll ask She Who Must be Obeyed Even By She Who Must be Obeyed, a.k.a.  
The Iron Lotus Blossom.

Adamantius



"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter