Fried dough.

There is a Chinese buffet restaurant in Clear Lake that we went to every week when we lived there.... very nice place with excellent chefs keeping the buffet tables filled with everything imaginable. Lots of seafood and vegetables choices (which I eat) as well as chicken and meat dishes (which I don't eat). So many choices for lunch and dinner in that restaurant that you hardly know where to begin.

One of the options there were these little puffs of dough.... they called them "Dough Pillows." Delicious..... reminded me of the Italian zeppoles that you get at the street fairs in NYC, except the Chinese dough is sprinkled with regular sugar, not powdered sugar. When I treated myself to one of those puffs of fried dough, I took just one-- I knew they were deep-fried (not exactly what your heart needs) but they were just so good.

Moving here to the Hill Country..... there is just one Chinese restaurant in town, which neighbors have told us not to bother with (having had 'real' Chinese food in NY and Houston, we're sort of Chinese food-snobs with anything that doesn't come up to those city restaurants). We have found two very good Chinese restaurants up in College Station, though... excellent food...... but no Dough Pillows. Oh well. Who needs the extra calories anyway.

This afternoon, I had an eMail from my cousin F in NY..... she was telling me about going to her favorite Chinese restaurant yesterday, for an order of what they call "Chinese doughnuts." Listening to her describe these golden deep-fried puffs of dough, I knew that she was talking about the same little Dough Pillows that we used to get in Clear Lake.

F went into that restaurant yesterday and gave her order for the Chinese doughnuts to a young girl behind the counter who was certainly there for her first day on the job. The girl didn't have a clue about doughnuts of any kind, much less Chinese doughnuts. F pointed to the menu and told the girl that the doughnuts were on the menu. Still, the girl is shaking her head no. No doughnuts.

At that point, an older woman came to the counter, and F tried again.... "Can I have an order of the Chinese doughnuts, please?" The woman spoke to the young girl in Chinese....... she walked over to a fridge...... took out a blue can of Pillsbury biscuits..... smacked the can open, separated the dough, and dropped the flat biscuits into the deep-fryer. (This is a little take-out place up there, so you can just about see everything as it's happening.) Within minutes, out of the deep-fryer came the puffed up Chinese doughnuts...... the woman put them into a brown paper bag, tossed in some plain old white sugar, shook up the bag, and handed it to my cousin. Voila! Chinese doughnuts! (My cousin was just shattered.... paid for the doughnuts and walked back to her car in a daze.)

As I sat here reading F's eMail...... of course I got to thinking about the Chinese buffet restaurant in Clear Lake...... their little "Dough Pillows......" Could they be using the same not-so-closely-guarded 'Oriental recipe' from the little blue can of Pillsbury biscuits?! Is nothing sacred in this world?

I liked it better when those perfectly puffed up Dough Pillow confections were some heavenly creation handed down through generations of venerable Chinese chefs...... not something conjured up in the kitchen laboratories of Pillsbury.