User:HoCheungHenryLi/sandbox
 Three pieces of chick biscuits | |
| Alternative names | gai zai crackers, gai zai beng, chick biscuits |
|---|---|
| Place of origin | Guangdong, China |
| Region or state | Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macau |
| Main ingredients | Dough, pork belly, mixture of five-spice powder, sugar, salt, Chinese distilled liquor and Chinese nuts |
Gai zai beng (Chinese: 雞仔餅; pinyin: jīzǐbǐng; Cantonese Yale: gāizāibéng) is a Cantonese style savoury cookie with a filling of preserved and minced pork belly. A Cantonese speciality, it originated from the Haizhu District in Guangzhou. It is allegedly be created by a woman only known by the name Siu Fung (meaning "little phoenix" in Chinese), the house servant of renowned Cantonese restaurant Sing Zhu House (成珠樓) owner Ng Tsz-hang (伍紫垣). In the Cantonese language, the word for a baby chicken, "chick", is often euphemistically replaced with "phoenix" and its signature trademark features such animal, hence its name.
Alleged origin
[edit]- Siu Fung is a servant from Shunde. Allegedly on a day in early autumn of 1855, she was serving guests without the presence of the head chef. The owner then ordered Siu Fung to make a Cantonese styled dim sum for the guests. With a lack of ingredients at home, she went to the restaurant and began mixing Cantonese pickled vegetables with a dough of assorted nuts, combining pork belly marinated with sugar, salt and spices. The pork is wrapped in dough, shaped into spheres, slightly crushed and baked on low heat in the oven until crispy, and then served. The guests were impressed by the unique combination of the sweet, fragrant, crispy and savoury flavours, and inquired Siu Fung the name of the biscuits. Her master then casually replied that the biscuits are called "Siu Fung (phoenix) biscuits".
- Ng Tsz-hang was serving guests with the absence of the dim sum chef. Siu Fung adds Cantonese pickled vegetables to leftovers and make biscuits with the mixture, then had dim sum chef bake them and serve. The biscuits were flaky and delicious, and the guests gave keen praises and even written compliments later. This unexpected discovery prompted Siu Fung to order the dim sum chef to repeat the recipe and named the biscuits after herself.
- The biscuits are considered a family recipe of the Leung family. The term "Siu Fung" (little phoenix) referenced the chick-esque shape of the biscuits. Later, Shing Zhu house registered a baby chicken logo as a trademark of the biscuit, referencing the local folk tradition of euphemistically referring to "chicks" as "phoenix".
Due to lackluster sales of moon cakes in Shing Zhu House, the pastry chef had the idea of making these biscuits with ingredients intended for moon cakes. Ingredients involved in making chick biscuits numbered more than ten, with the weight of sugar amounting to 30% of the total weight of ingredients, together with salt, black pepper and five spice, as well as added pork belly and assorted nuts to achieve a crispy biscuit which is sweet and savoury, resulting in a new variant.
The chick biscuits of Shing Zhu House were awarded in the early 1920s the "Exhibition Contest Merit Award", and in 1931 the first prize in the "Guangzhou city National Goods Exhibition".
After Shing Zhu House went out of business in September 2000, the former staff opened a "Shing Zhu bakery" on the opposite side of the road of the former site of the restaurant, and continued selling chick biscuits.
References
[edit]- 李文耀. 广州行·广州导游词. 广东旅游出版社. ISBN 7-80653-410-5.
- 陳紀臨; 方時嵐編著 (2013). 巧手精工順德菜 (in Traditional Chinese). 香港: 萬里機構. ISBN 978-962-14-5112-5.
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