Making red bean paste

 I know it is not easy to make the mooncake paste but I didn't know it is so hard!!!! Now I remember the Phoot Huat chef even said about the paste. "Just go and buy, it is not worth the effort to make it yourself." I cannot agree more on his comments but if the paste is a success then it worth more than a million words.

Why do I say it is very labour intensive to prepare the paste? (the fact is I am the only labour around doing it) 1st you need to soak the red bean over - this is a easy step. Then you can put it in your rice cooker which did a better job then boiling over the stove cos the heat is very well distributed using the rice cooker. If you have a power pressure cooker will save you a lot of time. Ask me how much red bean I cooked. Ask me ask me....

 

I begin with 1.2kg of red bean. WOW!! cos the 600g of red bean look innocently little so I thot they will not be enough for 10 mini mooncakes? Well, it turn up that an innocently looking 600g of red bean is enough for may be 30 mini mooncakes and I boiled 1.2kg of them.

 

The slow cooking took my rice cooking about more than 2hr to turn the red bean soft, so I cool it down (dun get angry - cos anger trigger negative ions), blend it with my blender (always have a kitchen model food blender around) then I started to cook my red bean into the most professional looking red bean paste.

 

You see, this is my 1st time doing the red paste, things will go wrong. I am not kitchen god so I have to try, make mistakes, try again and make it right the next time or next next time. Just keep trying.

 

The transformation of the red bean smoothies or puree to a deep reddish purple red bean paste are hours of  journey of tremendous hard work. I always feel that my arm is going away, numb and hope I can deployed a automated rotating machine doing the job.

 

Try to estimate the sweetness, whether the sweetness will turn stronger when it is cool. Sweetness if still not the hardest. The hardest is to cook till the paste gives a smooth and shine just like we saw the tao sar paste in our tao sar bao.

 

You cannot imagine the amount of oil I have to pour in to get that consistency. If I did not go through the process, I wun know the amount of oil the commercial market used to make the red bean paste looked great to the consumers.

 

 

 

 

It took me from noon till night that I keep adjusting the paste till I got on top. The one on the right is the white lotus paste but it is not as perfect as I wanted it to be cos cooking the lotus is much more harder than the red bean.