Yahoo! Flickr! St. Regis! Mooncake! And! Tea! Pairing!

Laiya! Laiya! Laiya! Boys and girls! Spread your ears like big elephants! Let me tell you a story!

Long long ago, there was a lazy boy who trained hard and became the greatest archer in China. He was called Houyi. And there came a time where 10 suns gathered and did horrible non-carbon-neutral things to Mother Earth. Millions died until Emperor Al Gore asked Houyi to get rid of all but 1 of the suns. When Houyi became the Emperor due to a ballot recount in Florida, he wanted to achieve immortality by way of an Elixir of (duh!) Immortality, the making of which, like some Catholic priests, involved young boys. Houyi’s wife, Chang’e, distressed with all this, stole the pill, swallowed it and started floating to the moon. On the way, she grabbed a rabbit from Duty Free to keep her company on the moon while Houyi kept shooting blanks at her. Till this day, people make mooncakes to remind themselves never to neglect their wives in the pursuit of happiness or she’ll take drugs and run away with some animal leaving you drained of your vitality.

You’d think that I’ll be tempted to end the blog entry here but a lot of effort has gone into the organization and execution this event that, I feel, to write a totally unrelated cheesy story about mooncakes as offerings to relatives and not about the mooncakes themselves would be extremely crass not to mention discourteous.

It all started when I was contacted by the Yahoo! Product! Manager! of Flickr, Suzanna, inviting me to a “Mooncake and Wine Paring” event she was organizing for certain Flickr Bloggers. I was about to decline saying that my knife-skills were limited when I realized she meant something else.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that a small group were invited and that I knew all of them. In fact they were very nervous that a certain poseur would turn up and spoil the whole thing. It didn’t occur to me that might happen but I guess I would just keep to myself and concentrate on the matter at hand.

It was a small affair with Dim Sum Dolly, Camemberu, SuperFineFeline and especially MilkMilk who was so excited that she used more than one exclamation mark! (!!)

As it turned out, having like-minded friends at the event made it more intimate and much more fun.

Michelle Lee, the Yahoo! Community! Manager! was also there. I was impressed with her title because if she was from Illinois, she could run for President come next election with her experience as a Community organizer. I was told that one of the criteria for an invite was to use Flickr.

On the St. Regis end, we were made welcome by Wye Leng, the Director of Marketing Communications and Lorraine, the Senior Marketing Communications Executive. We were hosted by Danny Chan, Manager and Wine Sommelier of Yan Ting, who gave an deep dissertation on the different ingredients that went into the mooncakes and how their interaction produced the unique flavors.

It was a cunning switch from wine pairing to tea pairing as the teas, blended by Dammann Frères, were exclusive to St. Regis. It turned out that the switch was a good thing.

Starting like cheese, we started from the lightest tasting to the strongest and with the “modern” to the traditional. Top of the line was the Almond Snow Skin With Premium Bird’s Nest and Custard Paste.

Almond Snow skin with Premium Bird's Nest and Custard Paste

Coated – I believe they tried to gild the word “Yan Ting” – with gold foil, we were informed by Danny that the filling consisted of a single strand of Bird’s Nest. The first thing that came to my mind was that it must have been a long streamer of spit until I remembered that Bird’s Nest tend to come in clumps of interwoven strands of saliva which would look like a Gordian Knot.

The Almond milk snow skin was delicate as was the almost ethereal-tasting egg custard filling that gave way to the slightly bouncy texture that is the Bird’s Nest. This was paired with a delicate chrysanthemum with wolfberry tea where the tartness of the wolfberries accentuated the sweetness of the egg custard and the nuttiness of the Almond milk.

The Almond Snow Skin with Advocaat Egg Liqueur Truffle and Black Sesame Paste introduced next was a bold rush on the palate.

This was an interesting interpretation of the traditional egg yolk in Black Sesame paste mooncake jazzed up with the use of Advocaat and egg custard blended with egg yolk. This was superbly paired with a vanilla scented tea known as Paul & Virgine that had tart notes of caramel, cherry and berries to contrast the eggy mooncake concoction.

On first glance, the Seven Perfumes Snow Skin with Single Yolk and White Lotus Paste looked like the traditional baked mooncake. Danny took pains to explain that the brown color was due to the infusion of the Seven Perfumes – of course it’s exclusive to St. Regis – tea in the Snow skin.

To avoid tempering the delicate fragrance, no extra sugar was used in the making of this mooncake. Most people would be attracted to this alleged “Sugar-free” label, some might even use it as a marketing advantage for “diabetics”, but truth be told, they have very little understanding of the role of sugar in food in the context of a diabetic.

The Seven Perfumes tea gave the mooncake a bouquet of, according to the literature provided, of lemon, Bergamot, Pitanga, lotus flowers, fresh fig, peel of orange and petal of rose. Pairing it with the actual tea itself would have been too easy, so a delicate white tea (Sau Mei, I was told) was used.

Alas, the delicate harmony of the Snow Skin of Seven Perfumes was shattered in the Seven Perfumes Snow Skin with Martell Cordon Bleu Cognac Truffle and White Lotus paste.

Not even the Earl Grey Yin Zhen tea could save the strongly-flavored Chocolate truffle. A novelty mooncake that was obviously created for the brand-conscious and the palate-dumb.

As this is a democratic society, there is Freedom of Choice or at least an illusion of it in the form of a mooncake with the unwieldy name Almond Snow Skin with Martell Cordon Bleu Cognac Truffle and Custard Paste.

Almond Snow Skin with Martel-Cordon-Bleu-infused Chocolate Truffle and Custard Paste

Of all the “modern” snow skin mooncakes introduced that night, the Bloody Mary Snow Skin with Custard Paste was the most interesting. I like Bloody Marys.

Upon masticating a complete slice, you get different flavors that assault your tastebuds in waves right down to the aftertaste of a peppery sourish heat that can only come from Tabasco. A citrus rhubarb tea was served but it only detracted from the different flavors coming from the mooncake.

At this point, Danny decided on a traditional Pu’er tea to go with the traditional mooncakes. Its delicate astringency with a bittersweet smoky oak finish provided the right contrast required for the heavier-tasting traditional mooncakes.

Traditional mooncakes are usually in-your-face sugary savory confections that turn people off after 2 slices, but not so with the St. Regis mooncakes which were delicate tasting and had a refined texture.

And my favorite mooncake of the night will have to be the Jin Hua Ham and Assorted Nuts and Seeds.

Again this is a different take on the traditional nuts and seeds mooncake with delicious chunks of pork lard exploding in your mouth like a Conga party where everyone’s invited. As a kid, I wasn’t restricted to sweets but my consumption of pork fat was strictly controlled by mom because I gravitated towards the savory than sweet, as such pork fat was like candy to me. I still fight over it with people. This version was toned down with the use of Jin Hua ham. The Conga became a Waltz.

Service at the St. Regis is world-class as it is impeccable with a refined sense of delicacy. The St. Regis range of mooncakes is an extension of this refinement. Those used to the in-your-face, cloying sugary starchy confectionery constructions would do their palates a cleansing favor with these mooncakes.

As an epilogue, Liu Bowen of Zhejiang Province, advisor to the Chinese rebel leader Zhu Yuanzhang, wanted to coordinate an attempt to overthrow the Mongolian rulers of China by stuffing a paper saying “Kill the Mongols on the 15th day of the 8th Moon” in the mooncakes which the Mongols do not eat because of alleged excessive lead content. Unfortunately, the attempt was unsuccessful because of a sudden and mysterious outbreak of choking amongst the Chinese populace.

This is why today, mooncakes are stuffed with soft and delicious fillings. And from what I’ve tasted, there is none more refined than the mooncakes created by the Chefs at Yan Ting of the St. Regis Singapore.

Yan Ting is at the St. Regis Singapore, 29 Tanglin Road, Singapore 247911, Tel: 65066866, Open daily 11:45 AM – 3:00 PM

At Least They All Look In The Same Direction

Posted on 7th Sep 2008 in Cantonese, Food and Drink

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There Are 5 Comments

Camemberu commented on September 7, 2008 at 3:35 pm

LOL!!!!!!! (yes, seven exclamation marks!)
This has got to be one of your funniest posts!

superfinefeline commented on September 7, 2008 at 3:43 pm

Beautiful pics & composition especially of the slice of Almond Snow Skin with Advocaat Egg Liqueur Truffle and Black Sesame Paste.

MilkMilk commented on September 7, 2008 at 6:06 pm

Couldn’t have put better words to the wonderful stuffs we had that night.

Ivan commented on September 15, 2008 at 3:08 pm

@Camemberu, superfinefeline, MilkMilk: Thanks! I had a tremendously fun time with all of you at the tasting and the dinner later.

food.recentrunes.com | Loyalty or fulfilment commented on October 19, 2009 at 9:18 am

[...] invited to certain functions of the Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs of Singapore and other fun and/or spectacular events. Mostly when they can’t find enough people and/or remember [...]

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