5 Ingredients, an Urban Family series where we sit down with a Shanghai-based chef and ask for a family-friendly meal using 5 Ingredients easily found in Shanghai; let us help you start the week with a simple five-step recipe!
This week we met with Simon Ruf, Executive Chef at Hyatt on the Bund. Coming from a small but beautiful town on the shore of Lake Thun in Switzerland, Chef Simon has spent the past 20 years working around the world in countries such as Germany, Austria, Singapore and now China. Joining the Hyatt family in 2008, Simon has shared his culinary delights in high profile properties Grand Hyatt Guangzhou, Grand Hyatt Singapore and Grand Hyatt Shanghai before moving to Hyatt on the Bund 3 years ago. Simon’s two children, Elle and Lou were both born in Shanghai, love to eat their Daddy’s cooking and speak an impressive level of Mandarin.
What dish are you helping us prepare this week?
I’m going to teach Christmas ginger cookies, a simple version that can be produced at home. The traditional type is slightly complicated, so I developed a home-style ginger bread cookie, made with sugar dough and ginger spice. It’s an easy recipe to prepare and once you make the dough you can use any type of cookie cutters. It’s fun to make these with your children, use Christmas themed shapes during the festive season and have fun decorating the cookies with icing and embellishments. A great (and easy) way to spend time in the kitchen together.
What five ingredients do we need?
300 grams butter
200 grams icing sugar
100 grams egg (two)
500 grams cake flour
10 grams gingerbread (ground ginger)
What is the five-step recipe?
1. Place the butter in a large bowl, add the icing sugar and mix together with a wooden spoon. Add the eggs and keep stirring. Gradually add the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly until you create the dough.
2. Place the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.
3. Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Take the dough from the fridge and with a rolling pin, roll it out to an even, thin layer.
4. Use the cookie cutters and cut the dough into shapes, then place them on a baking tray and bake at 170 degrees Celsius for 12 minutes or until lightly browned.
5. Once cooled, decorate your cookies with chocolate sauces or strawberry jam, icing sugar or other decorations.
What’s your advice on your dish of the week?
For step 1, the butter must be at room temperature so it can be easily stirred. The reason I recommend icing sugar is so it can melt into the butter and mix well with the other ingredients. To enhance the flavour of the cookies, you can also add 50 grams of almond powder. Keep in mind, you may need to adjust the baking temperature according to your own oven.
Tell us something that’s happening in your restaurant at the moment, that our Urban Family community can enjoy.
This festive season at Hyatt on the Bund will continue with our charity program collaborating with the World of Art Brut Culture (WABC) organization to offer cookie jars painted by the intellectually disadvantaged. These jars will be available for purchase for RMB68, with 5 percent of the sale price donated to the WABC. The donations will be used for education programs for people with special needs, offering them opportunities to display their artistic talents.
On Christmas Eve in VUE Restaurant at Hyatt on the Bund, we will offer a specially created four-course set menu. Prepared tableside, guests can enjoy the delectable taste of continental European cuisine, with a menu that includes crispy live Boston lobster with celeriac crème and horseradish, slow cooked goose Leg with morel mushroom, baby carrot and potato gallette and cinnamon apple with vanilla ice cream.
CNY798 net per person (including one glass of Perrier Jouet Champagne, free flow wine and water). CNY388 plus 15% service charge and tax for children below 12 years (including free flow juice and water).
See listing for Hyatt on the Bund.
For more 5 Ingredients recipes, click here.
