Moon Cake

This weekend was the Mid Autumn Festival which is traditionally celebrated by the giving of 'Moon Cakes'. The festival falls on the full moon and we have been lucky to have had three beautiful clear nights and warm temperatures. Everyone has been outside milling around buying moon cakes, setting off strings of firecrackers and generally taking a break from their usually busy schedules. The street vendors are everywhere with cheap freshly harvested pears, watermelons and other miscellaneous items that are not quite discernible (I still can't tell the difference between dried meat or dried vegetables). I am not tempting fate either by trying those miscellaneous items. The fresh roasted squid and mutton I tried last week was more than enough 'dining on the wild-side' for me. Heck I was adventurous enough the other night at the restaurant when we were served "100-day old eggs". I tried this traditional delicacy. They are regular chicken eggs that are set in some sort of paste or bread or something food-like and baked slowly. The eggs ferment/cook/harden/become gelatinous. I can't really tell you what the process is I just know the end result is not what we are used to. The white turns a clear green colour and the yolk a greenish-grey. By themselves they are strikingly unattractive and today at Wall Mart we passed the meat section and found that you can get sausage links where the 100-day old eggs are encased in the meat. Slicing it like deli-meat reveals the internalized egg. The "100 day" part comes from the fact that the egg is encased in ??? for about a month to ensure that it becomes fully ... congealed. So delicious! If you shut your eyes they taste pretty much like hard boiled eggs they just look way worse.

Back to moon cakes. Moon cakes are traditionally small, quiche-like pies with with vegetables and some spices but as holidays tend to exploit the theme there are now hundreds of types of moon cakes. They can vary from fruit jellies to spicy bean and meat mixtures. One of my students bought me the expensive moon cake variety pack as a gift. I was totally surprised as I have only taught the child for one week. It was very nice. The box was extraordinarily nice so I took some photos of it to post here.

We also received a bag of moon cakes from our boss which was very nice. So far I have had at least one dinner party every 5 days and been given gifts every week. I hope this is a trend. For the most part moon cakes are pretty good. I have yet to encounter the not-so-good meat mixtures. I can't read all the symbols on the packaging so it's like eating the Harry Potter jelly-beans where you can't tell if you are getting a fruit or a vomit-flavoured snack. mmmm-mm.

Hope you like the picks of the box. It has some beautiful Chinese motifs.