KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 14 — For three generations, the Wong clan have upheld the traditional way to make their mooncakes.
It is laborious work for the family who make everything from scratch including the paste used to fill the mooncakes. The taste of their old-fashioned mooncakes does set it apart from others.
Their long history started in Gopeng, Perak where the patriarch of the Wong clan – a migrant from Guandong province – opened a bakery selling wedding biscuits and mooncakes.
The enterprising man of Cantonese descent also prepared dim sum items and cooked dishes on the side.
In 1941, the family relocated to Serdang Lama to avoid the Japanese invasion. In 1950, following the communist party resurgence, new villages like Serdang New Village (later known as Seri Kembangan) were set up and the family moved into the village and its present site. The restaurant prospered over the years as it was adjacent to the cinema.
But tragedy struck the two-storey restaurant on April 25, 2003 when it was burnt down. The Wongs then rebuilt the place keeping it to a one-storey building.
Wong Kwok Cun, 62, and his wife Goh Hoon Lian, 60, run the business today. He is the only one out of the eight children willing to take on the hard work. After the fire in 2003, his son Wong Yew Hoong, 35, left his job and joined the family business with his wife, Yau Sook Ching, 35.
The restaurant is popular for its Chinese fare and many return (especially the children) for its free Polar Cup ice-cream given to patrons as dessert.
For the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Wongs sell a total of 15 types of mooncakes ranging from baked to snowskin varieties. Yau says their bestseller is the red bean or tau sar mooncake followed by the mixed nuts or kam tui mooncake. In the early days, mooncakes were just limited to red and green bean paste versions. The lotus seed paste only came later. This was followed by mixed nuts and the snowskin mooncake is a new variety introduced from 1983 onwards.
The mooncakes stand out for their homecooked pastes – a change from the commercially manufactured pastes usually found in most mooncakes. Most manufacturers prefer the commerical variant since making it from scratch eats up a lot of time and cost.
Goh insists on only the best ingredients for their mooncakes and prefers fragrant walnuts and almonds from America versus the cheaper China imports. Wong Senior explains that the red bean paste is made from the pulp of the soft cooked beans. It takes on a midnight black sheen after the paste is slowly cooked for four to five hours with sugar, peanut oil and maltose. For the green bean paste, he infuses the peanut oil with ginger slices to get rid of any raw taste of the green beans.
Their kam tui or mixed nuts mooncake is chock full of goodies including shredded ham. Bite into the mooncake and you will taste walnuts, sesame seeds, melon seeds or kuaci, almonds and candied oranges or kat paeng. The taste is a bit unique with the addition of fragrant olive seed kernel or lam yoke. Some tweaks have been made to the recipe through the years to suit changing tastebuds and for health reasons eg. the omission of fatty pork, kaffir lime leaves and candied wintermelon.
When you cut through the mooncake, you will discover a bright orange glistening yolk inside. “We steam the yolk first before we add it into the mooncake,” Goh explains.
Rather than opt for the cheaper salted egg yolks sold in bulk, the family prefers to separate the eggs to extract the golden yolks themselves to maintain the quality. Peanut oil is also preferred compared to lard since mooncakes made from lard will coagulate at room temperature.
Most of the mooncakes are handshaped and made with intricate wooden moulds. These moulds are slowly becoming a rarity with fewer craftsmen willing to carve the patterns. Some of these moulds can go for up to RM500 for a 3-dimensional mooncake.
The third generation is breathing new life into the mooncake-making process by modernising its processes to cut down the labour time as orders pick up. Five years ago, the Wongs invested in second-hand machines including a stand oven that uses fan forced heat to evenly bake the mooncakes.
Not all the mooncakes are made by machine as some like the Shanghai mooncakes need to be baked in the old oven for a crispier golden top. Yau is also experimenting with popular cult characters like Angry Birds or even Minion-shaped mooncakes. These have proven to be popular with the younger crowd.
Last year, Yau started to distribute the mooncakes to a tea art centre in Subang Parade. She worked with the tea connoisseurs to devise a new creation: Puer tea infused green bean mooncakes. The fermented tea infused green bean paste tastes uncannily like lotus paste and leaves a clean non-oily aftertaste in the mouth.
The business is set to continue into the fourth generation with Yau’s two young sons, Wong Pak Lam, 5 and Wong Wai Lam, 2. In future, Yau hopes her sons will keep their great-grandfather’s legacy alive or else the taste of these mooncakes will disappear. She believes that even if the children are not keen to make mooncakes as a business, she wants to encourage them to hold cooking classes to teach others the old ways since it is a disappearing trade. “You don’t want to lose the tradition as the future generation will forget the taste of these old-fashioned mooncakes.”
Tuck Chan Restaurant, 33-34A, Jalan SK10/4, Seri Kembangan, Selangor. Tel: 03-89488836.
Open: 10.30am to 2.30pm, 5.30pm to 10pm (Tuesday to Saturday), 8.30am to 2.30pm, 5.30pm to 10pm (Sunday). Closed on Mondays. The prices of the mooncakes range from RM9 to RM15.50 per piece. You can custom make your fillings for a minimum box of four mooncakes.
Follow the restaurant https://www.facebook.com/TuckChan
This story was first published in Crave in the print edition of The Malay Mail, 13 September 2013.
