Connections

Day 148: One of the items in this photo is quite different from the others, but even so, there is a very strong connection between them. Can you guess what it is? I made another batch of snowskin mooncakes yesterday (one is shown center right), and this time, I used a double-boiler to cook the custard filling. The process was much easier and trustworthy than using a pan on the stovetop. The custard thickened quickly without any danger of burning. Having made the egg-yolk custard, I was then challenged to use the leftover egg whites, and I remembered having a bag of flaked coconut in the fridge. Call them "macaroons" or call them "meringues," they require only a few ingredients: egg whites, sugar, a pinch of salt and a dash of vanilla, and are a crispy, fragile sweet-treat which can be made in just a few minutes. You might say yesterday's cookery was a win-win situation, if not quite fusion cuisine, definitely drawn from disparate cultures.

Sidebar: my double-boiler is older than I am, its reservoir caked with mineral deposits from the hard water in the area where my mother was a young wife. She used it to make "fisheye pudding," a tapioca made with pea-sized "pearls" of starch rather than the fine-grained "minute" tapioca you see in today's supermarkets.