Life Lesson #1: Seize the day, and the pineapple.
My Peranakan tart-chaperones and I had been planning this pineapple tart day for several weeks by now, and we had said we would start at the crack of dawn and push on until dusk, death or dinner called us elsewhere. We did start close to the crack of dawn, but we took our time scoffing vegetarian bee hoon, reading the newspapers, talking to the dog, playing hide-and-seek with the air-con repair man, scratching our heads over the correct population size for Singapore, before we finally went in search of pineapples. I suspect that we were sort of afraid to start handling real rather than rhetorical pineapples, to actually excavate these pineapple tarts from the realm of memory into the here and now. I know this was at least true for me. I am not a baker, and I am terrified of what can become of the simplest baked goods in my hands. But that doesn’t stop me from getting bitten by the baking bug every so often, and all I need to do is mention it to these tart-chaperones, and the deed is as good as done. As we hurried out the door, one of us said, “Don’t know whether there are any more pineapples left. The aunties may have bought them all by now.” To which I said, “What are you talking about? How can the market possibly run out of pineapples?” It’s hard to say which of us is right, because, in the event, we didn’t even find the market. We started at the bakery supplies shop, where we found that all the pineapple cookie cutters were sold out even though an extra large shipment of them had been brought in (prompting another incredulous line from me: “Who are all these people who still make their own pineapple tarts??”). We were so debilitated by the unavailability of pineapple tart cookie cutters, we lost the will to find a market. Thankfully, next to the baking supplies shop, in a shop calling itself a building contractor and trading shop, tucked in a box on the bottom-most shelf, we found some pineapples. So that was that — there was no getting away from making these tarts.
Life Lesson #2: Don’t take sass from cheeky uncles, or your pineapple.
Back in the day, when tart-chaperone #1’s whole family got down to their annual pineapple tart-production day, her dad started it off by unsheathing his special pineapple-skinning knife, and skimming off their ornery husks to unveil the sweet golden flesh inside. Today, I was given strict instructions to get the pineapples skinned at the shop, because my Peranakan tart-chaperones and I were children of a different age, possessing no special pineapple-skinning knives. While you get your pineapples skinned, it’s only natural to get into a conversation with the pineapple uncle — watch out! Pineapple uncles are not pineapple uncles for nothing. He praised me for my selection of the pineapples, $4 Dole pineapples from the Philippines (a scandal! considering you can much cheaper ones from Malaysia… not like there were any other pineapples for me to select), saying, “These are top grade pineapples. With these pineapples, you won’t need any special kung fu, and your pineapple tarts will still be great.” I replied, “Oh good, because I don’t have any special kung fu.” He didn’t take a beat to reply, “Yah, I can tell.” And then he had the cheek to remind me to bring him pineapple tarts to eat after I made them! Get your pineapples home, and chop up just the fleshy bits finely (junk the central hard cord). Or you can also grate instead of chop, but if you do that your pineapple jam later will be all beardy, and one of the tart-chaperones may say to you, “The hairs are sticking out everywhere!” (something you don’t expect to hear when baking). Drain it until it sort of holds together like a fibrous ball when you drop it in a bowl, but not until it’s bone-dry, because you need that liquid for cooking down the jam without burning. Four pineapples: four fibrous sort-of balls.
Life Lesson #3: Keep calm, and carry on stirring.
Now comes the jam-making. Use a brass pot, in this case tart-chaperone #1’s grandmother’s special pineapple jam-making brass pot (her family members all seem to have instruments reserved for dealing only with pineapples). Nobody ever thinks to tell you these things, but brass pots are just the thing because pineapples are pretty acidic (you’ll know this when you cut yourself up while grating and the juices sting your cuts) and if you use something like stainless steel or iron, the acid will act on the pot and give your pineapple jam a metallic flavour. People who don’t have heirloom brass pots from their grandmothers can use enamel-coated cast-iron pots. Toss your yellow fibrous sort-of balls into the pot, together with a cinnamon stick, maybe ten cloves, and say three, four tablespoons of brown sugar. It’s all according to taste. You start with less sugar, and you can amp up as you go. This process goes on for about an hour or more. At first, you can just stir your pineapple jam every two minutes or so, and spend the time in between thinking, will this jam ever stop being yellow? Then when it begins to turn golden, you’ll have to watch it like a hawk and stir it relentlessly so it doesn’t accidentally burn. Ours did almost get burnt, when we got caught up talking about our futures, our dreams, something like that. We had to put all that on hold and focus on the jam. You’ll know when it’s ready. It will look like the jam you see on pineapple tarts, and there will be no more liquid pooling at the bottom of the pot when you clear a hole in the jam. Turn off the fire and turn your attention to the pastry.
Life Lesson #4: Time, tide, and butter wait for no man.
All things considered, this is a very democratic pastry, in that you need no more complicated and expensive equipment than a fork.. and a healthy sense of haste. We nicked this recipe off the internet and would give credit except we can’t remember where we found it. You combine 400g plain flour, 50g corn flour, 1/4tsp salt, 6tbsp icing sugar in a big bowl with a heavy base (that’ll give you ballast for what you get down to next). The corn flour and the icing sugar do a lot to help the pastry hold its shape as well as be more melt-in-your-mouth. Again, I would give the credit to the cunning cook who realised this, if my memory weren’t full of holes. Drop 280g of cold, unsalted butter, chopped up into, say 1cm-thick pads, into the powder mix. Usinh the tines of the a fork, press down into the cold butter pads until it starts to flake into the flour, until there are no more noticeable chunks of butter, and you look like you’ve got a big bowl of fine bread crumbs. You have to work fast here, or the butter melts. Make sure your butter is not already softening to begin with, because you need things to stay dry up to this stage. If you’re cold-blooded, you can use your fingertips only to rub the butter into the flour, to get the same effect. Beat together 3 egg yolks, 3tsbp cold water, 1/2tsp cognac (in my case, tart-chaperone #1, in a fit of puritanism, made me use vanilla extract instead of cognac), and add this into the flour-butter mixture. Using your fingertips only, pull everything together into a ball. As long as it all holds as one entity, you’re good. Do not knead, or you will get the gluten to start acting, and that’s not good for our shortcrust pastry. Pop the dough ball into the fridge to chill, get yourself a drink (at least 10 minutes).
Life Lesson #5: Many hands make short work, and shortcrust pastry.
Cast back in history and see if there’s any instance ever of anyone making pineapple tarts as a solo enterprise. Tart-chaperones #1 and #2 both remember pineapple tart production as whole family affairs, with some people having clear and highly evolved duties, while others were assigned as necessary to various sundry chores. The whole reason I suddenly wanted to make pineapple tarts in the first place was because I had been thinking of my old nanny, who used to dragoon all the kids she looked after into her kitchen, which became, in the weeks before each Chinese New Year, a hub of cookie cottage industry. Ahh, the good old days before food preparation licences and child labour laws. Maybe, in those good old days, because they used lard in the pastry, there wasn’t as urgent a need to work fast. And, they probably started early enough to get themselves the special cookie cutters that we failed to get. So we needed three pairs of hands: tart-chaperone #1 to roll out the dough and cut out the basic shape, tart-chaperone #2 to use the end of the rolling pin to make a depression in each one, and I to roll balls of pineapple jam and place into the depressions. I strongly encourage you to put your own signature on your pineapple tarts, since there are so many commercial ones out there. I tried to make my pineapple jam filling towering and conical, but tart-chaperone #1, puritan that she is, squashed them back down. Her traditionalist grandmother and father would have spit blood at conical pineapple tarts. So I was left to play only with the latticework of pastry on top of the jam. I started with crosses but the pastry kept disintegrating in my hot-blooded hands, so I turned to making nipples instead. Brush liberally with egg wash (2 egg yolks beaten with 2tbsp water). Pop into 160-degrees Celsius oven for 20 minutes.
Life Lesson #6: Embrace your achievements, and your family.
You may think you’ve come to the end, but, if after all that slaving you don’t make the most of your achievements, then you’ve missed the point of pineapple tarts. I highly recommend that you put them in pretty boxes and give them away to loved ones, particularly anyone who’s ever doubted your baking skills (in my case, almost everyone), liberally flavoured with stories about the making of the tarts, until your recipients are suitably impressed. I tried this with my mother, as I packed the pineapple tarts before her eyes, one by one, slowly, tantalisingly, from the big container to a takeaway box for her, until, before I was done, she started to try to trick me into giving her all the pineapple tarts instead of saving any for my uncles and aunties, who, she said, never really loved me anyway, and had diabetes and high blood pressure and all kinds of reasons why they shouldn’t have pineapple tarts. The best part of this whole process is when you’ve given them all away and are left with nothing but dirty bakeware and buttery crumbs and the wish that you had more to give.
With thanks to my tart-chaperones, their own tart gurus, my old nanny, and even the pineapple uncle.
Copyright of Phua Mei Pin.
Phua Mei Pin is a former policy-maker and political journalist. A lifelong writer and lover of food, she is Teochew-Hakka with pronounced admiration for all things Peranakan.
