Yunnan ham pastries are usually a plain sweet-savoury mouthful. This one puts blue cheese in the filling, which sounds wrong until you taste it: the salt of the cheese cuts the honey and the ham stops the whole thing turning into dessert. The pastry is a lard shortcut with two roll-and-rest cycles.
Yunnan · Pastry
Yunnan Ham Pastries With Blue Cheese and Honey
The sweet-savoury ham pastry from Yunnan, with blue cheese folded into the filling and a lard pastry that opens into a hundred layers.
- Prep150 min
- Cook30 min
- Serves12
- LevelHard
Ingredients
| 250 g | Yunnan ham , diced |
| 35 g | plain flour , toasted |
| 40 g | icing sugar |
| 30 g | honey |
| 25 g | sesame seeds , toasted |
| 20 g | blue cheese |
| 110 g | plain flour , for the water dough |
| 20 g | caster sugar |
| 40 g | lard , for the water dough |
| 45 g | boiling water |
| 90 g | cake flour , for the oil dough |
| 45 g | lard , for the oil dough |
Method
- Soak the diced ham in cold water for an hour, drain, then steam for 20 minutes and drain again.
- Mix the warm ham with the icing sugar, toasted flour, sesame and honey, crumble in the blue cheese, and roll the filling into 15 g balls. Freeze them for 20 minutes.
- For the water dough, rub the lard into the plain flour and sugar, pour in the boiling water, and knead to a smooth dough. Rest it in a bag for 30 minutes.
- For the oil dough, press the lard into the cake flour until it holds as a paste. Rest it alongside.
- Divide the water dough into 21 g pieces and the oil dough into 13 g pieces. Wrap one of each, seam side up, and rest for 20 minutes.
- Roll each parcel into a long oval, roll it up from one end, and rest for 20 minutes. Repeat the roll and rest once more.
- Press a rested roll flat, roll it into a circle, and wrap a frozen filling ball inside. Set seam down and flatten with the base of a cup.
- Bake at 180 °C for 30 minutes, until the layers have opened and the base is dry.
Notes
- The filling has to be frozen, not chilled. Cold ham smears through the layers instead of sitting in the middle.
- Resting is what makes the layers. Dough that skips a rest tears when it is rolled and the pastry comes out flat.
- Lard gives the flakiest result; butter works but needs 10 minutes longer in the oven.
Ratios and technique checked against 66•食屿 on Douguo (蓝纹奶酪火腿酥饼 | 中式酥皮惊艳碰撞). The method here is written by Stellaok and the illustration is ours; no text or photograph from the source is reproduced.