Taiwanese peanut tamales

This Friday - June 7 - is Dragon Boat Festival, and there's still time to get ready with this really delicious version of rice tamales from Taiwan.

Taiwan has an absolutely fabulous range of foods, as you’ve probably already figured out from my endless ravings on the subject. Really, though, the culinary creativity of just about every corner of China found a home on this island and then blossomed.

Case in point: Chinese tamales.

Also known as zòngzĭ 粽子, you are able to enjoy an immense variety in Taiwan, including the enormous sweet bean paste or savory pork ones from Hunan, delicately hued amber tamales that probably hale from the Hakka regions, sticky rice paste ones that also lay claim to Hakka ancestry, and lovely Shanghainese tamales with sweet bean centers.

But the list goes on and on, and we’ll most likely be enjoying more recipes each summer as Dragon Boat Festival rolls around again.

Today’s recipe is simple, and so I won’t keep you in suspense for long, since I really want you to try it as soon as you can. The ingredients are absolutely minimal, but they combine to form one of my favorite types of tamale, since it can be eaten sweet or savory, hot or chilled, with toppings or as is, and are beloved by everyone who tastes them.

Honestly, these should be part of your regular repertoire all year around.

Taiwanese peanut tamales
Táiwānshì huāshēng zòng  台灣式花生粽
Taiwanese cuisine
Makes 16 tamales

Tamales:
2 cups | 400 g round sticky rice (try brown sticky rice, if you can find it)
16 large dried bamboo leaves (zòngyè 粽葉), plus a few extra just in case
1 cup | 150 g raw peeled peanuts
Lots of cotton kitchen string
Boiling water

Peanut sugar (optional):

½ cup | 75 g toasted shelled peanuts

Yup, that's it

3 tablespoons (or more) sugar of any type

½ teaspoon sea salt

or some plain old dark brown sugar

1. Start this recipe at least 8 hours before you want to serve the tamales. Pick over the rice for any foreign matter or stones, rinse it twice, and then soak the rice and peanuts together for at least an hour and up to overnight with enough cool water to cover it by at least 2 inches | 5 cm. Use your fingernail to test the rice and peanuts to ensure they’re ready: your fingernail should be able to split them easily.

2. An hour or so before you want to start wrapping the tamales, drain the rice and peanuts in a strainer over the sink and then clean and soak the bamboo leaves as directed in this recipe for Hakka tamales. Trim off the stem ends of the leaves and then cover the cleaned leaves with a moist towel.

3. If you have a slow stove, take a moment to set up about a gallon of water in a 2 gallon | 8 L pot on your stove over high heat so that it has comes to a boil while you are busy wrapping the tamales. 

5. Fold a leaf as directed in the Hakka tamale recipe with the shiny side on the inside and a slight fold at the bottom to keep the rice from squirreling out. Use a Chinese soupspoon to place 2 scoops of the rice-peanut mixture into the cone. Fold the leaf ends over the cone, allow about a half inch of slack in the fold (see the illustration and description in the previous post). Gently tie it up with 2 or 3 simple loops around the center and tie it off, keeping one end long so that you can tie 4 to 6 of the tamales together.

A personal source of happiness

6. When all of the tamales have been filled and tied, lower them gently into the boiling water, cover the pot, and boil them for about 5 minutes to set their shape. Then, remove the cover, lower the heat to a simmer, and cook the tamales for about 90 minutes; add more boiling water if needed to completely submerge the tamales, and check them at 15 minute intervals just to make sure they don't need a bit more water.

7. Remove the tamales from the boiling water and drain. Eat them right away or cool down and store. They can be sprinkled with brown sugar, which is how many people like them. To make the optional peanut sugar, finely crush the peanuts and mix with the sugar and salt; adjust the seasoning as you like. You can then sprinkle them with this for a double peanut whammy, if you are so inclined. Children and children-at-heart will love you for it.

Date tamales for the Dragon Boat Festival

Tomorrow is Dragon Boat Festival, and so today we are going to do a recap on how to wrap Chinese tamales, or zòngzĭ 粽子, and then do another post tomorrow with a new and very lovely recipe for Taiwanese peanut tamales. 

And so, before you go any further, check out this video I created many years ago for Zester Daily, as it will get your tamale mojo up and working like a charm…

The ingredients for this inspired sweet snack are simple but balanced. The hot and moist sticky rice not only encases the sensuous Chinese date filling and serves to balance its sweetness and deep flavors, but it also absorbs some of its flavor and color so that you end up with a gorgeously hued pillow. Raw pine nuts lend a resiny counterpoint to all of these goings on and tease the tongue with their texture and exotic aroma. 

Chinese dates on the tree

Date paste, though, is what adds that ethereal perfume. This is a flavor of Suzhou, and it is used in a variety of pastries. Real date paste that you find in the market (look at the list of ingredients carefully) can be bought in cans, but if none is available, settle for sweetened red bean paste for the time being and swoop up some date paste later whenever you come upon it. Date paste can be homemade if you want, but it takes a bit of time and straining and frying and so forth. Don't get me wrong, it's totally worth the effort, but it is enough of a project to deserve a column of its own.

My secret to an absolutely divine date paste is to combine plain old red Chinese dates (jujubes, or hóngzăo 紅棗) with some smoky and very sour dried black plums (wūméi 烏梅) for that extra shimmer on the tongue. If you do find black plums – usually at a good Chinese herbalist’s – a small nibble will warn you that they are so incredibly tart that you most definitely won't want to pop one into your mouth.

Place the paste on top of the rice

For the record, Chinese red dates are nothing like palm dates. These meaty little fruits grow on pretty deciduous bushes in temperate climates and taste like Granny Smith apples when they are just a pale green but still ripe enough to pick. As the skin turns from green to a mahogany, that familiar sweet flavor of Chinese dates takes over, and they can then be fully dried and stored like raisins. 

One of the absolute best varieties I have tried is a smaller one called "chicken heart date" (jīxīn zăo 雞心棗), but the spectacularly huge ones from China’s western regions are also quite meaty and delicious. In fact, there are quite a few varieties available, so try as many as you can to see which ones ring your bells.

These bushy trees are becoming a pretty common sight in the gardens of Asian families around here, so ask around and see if you can find sources near you. I've often been pleasantly surprised. We now have five baby trees in our yard, since they send out new shoots from their base, and so I’ve wheedled these newcomers out of a friend’s back yard. (Yet another reason to have lots of good Chinese friends.)

Be sure and use round sticky rice for these tamales, as they provide it with the right texture. These are best if served hot, so give them a quick steaming just before you serve them. I like to eat them at afternoon tea rather than dessert because this really is like eating a bowl of rice – an admittedly very scrumptious bowl, but still a bowl's worth of rice. With nothing but a hot cup of tea to accompany your snack, this allows you to focus all of your attention on the seductive golden pillow sitting right in front of you.

Shanghainese food fashion

To eat them correctly, cut off or untie the string and then peel off most of the leaf so that the tamale sits daintily on top of the leaf (see that photo at the very top). Then, use your chopsticks (or a fork) to nip off bite-sized pieces. Chinese tea snacks should be slowly savored rather than gobbled, so do what I do and devour one or two all alone before the guests arrive so that you can eat the succeeding ones with restraint and good manners.

I've tied them the way I've seen some Shanghainese tamales done – which does make a certain amount of sense, since Suzhou and Shanghai are pretty much neighbors in eastern Jiangsu province – with a decorative sort of bondage. Feel free to tie them any way you want, but be sure and use white string so that your rice isn't dyed a strange shade of turquoise or magenta.

Double the recipe (highly recommended) and freeze any you aren't going to devour within a couple of days. They keep well in a resealable bag stored in the fridge and up to 3 months in the freezer. (Probably longer than that, but I've never waited long enough to know for sure.) 

Suzhou style sweet date paste and pine nut tamales
Sūshì sõngzĭ zăoní zòngzĭ  蘇式松子棗泥粽子
Jiangsu
Makes 16 tamales

1½ cups (300 g) round sticky rice
16 large dried bamboo leaves (zòngyè 粽葉), plus a few extra just in case
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 cup (220 g) date paste, canned or homemade (see page 443 in All Under Heaven for a recipe)
½ teaspoon sea salt
¼ cup (30 g) raw shelled pine nuts
Lots of cotton kitchen string
Boiling water

1. Start this recipe at least a day before you want to serve the tamales. Pick over the rice for any foreign matter or stones, rinse it twice, and then soak the rice for at least an hour and up to overnight with enough cool water to cover it by at least 2 inches (5 cm).

2. An hour or so before you want to start wrapping the tamales, drain the rice in a strainer over the sink and then clean and soak the bamboo leaves as directed in this recipe for Hakka tamales. Trim off the stem ends of the leaves and then cover the cleaned leaves with a moist towel.

 

Cover the paste with more rice

3. Heat the sesame oil in a wok over medium-high heat until it begins to smell fragrant, and then add the date paste, salt, and pine nuts. Stir-fry the date paste to remove any canned taste and to give it a nice creaminess, but be sure to keep on stirring it on the bottom so that it doesn't burn or overcook, and adjust the heat as necessary. As soon as the date paste is completely combined with the sesame oil and is gently bubbling, scrape it out into a small work bowl and let it cool down to room temperature. At that point, divide the date paste into 16 pieces and roll each one into a little ball.

4. If you have a slow stove, take a moment to set up about a gallon of water in a 2 gallon (8 L) pot on your stove over high heat so that it has comes to a boil while you are busy wrapping the tamales. 

5. Fold a leaf as directed in the Hakka tamale recipe with the shiny side on the inside and a slight fold at the bottom to keep the rice from squirreling out. Use a Chinese soupspoon to place a scoop of the rice into the cone and place a date paste ball on top, as illustrated above. Scoop some more rice on top of the date paste so that it is completely covered. 

6. Now, here is the first secret to a great Chinese tamale: when you fold the leaf ends over the cone, allow about a half-inch (1 cm) of slack in the fold (see the illustration to the right). In other words, don't fold the leaf ends over tightly. This will give the rice the chance to expand as it cooks and be light and fluffy, rather than try to muscle its way out of the leaves. So, when you fold over the leaf ends onto the cone, shake the tamale a bit – you should hear a rattling noise, which means that you've wrapped it perfectly.

7. The second secret is that you again give the tamale a bit of slack as you tie it up. The way you do this is that you wrap the string around the tamale as gently as if you are tying a string around a baby's wrist. Make the string hold the leaves flat against the tamale and keep the tamale in its desired shape, but don't pull the string tight at any time. 

8. To wrap the string Shanghai style, loop the string lengthwise around the tamale a couple of times and then wrap it around the center in an even spiral (as shown in the illustration up

With my favorite sake bottle

above). Tie the knot off and keep one string long so that you can tie 4 to 6 of the tamales together.

9. When all of the tamales have been filled and tied, lower them gently into the boiling water, cover the pot, and boil them for about 5 minutes to set their shape. Then, remove the cover, lower the heat to a simmer, and cook the tamales for about 90 minutes; add more boiling water if needed to completely submerge the tamales, and check them at 15 minute intervals just to make sure they don't need a bit more water.

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10. Remove the tamales from the boiling water and drain. Eat them right away or cool down and store as suggested above.

In search of the elusive amber tamale, plus a short story on Life & Thyme

(Note: In addition to the recipe and blogpost below that will help you celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival in style on Thursday, June 9, here is a link to a story I wrote and illustrated for Life & Thyme. It talks about how I was finally able to breach the yawning gap between my forbidding Chinese mother-in-law and a very young [and impossibly white] me. It has nothing to do with the Dragon Boat Festival, but oh well...)

Early in my marriage, I noticed that my Chinese husband became increasingly excited as Dragon Boat Festival approached, spending more time than usual haunting his favorite delis. He was, as I soon found out, stalking the elusive amber tamale. 

A gorgeous amber tamale

Unlike all the other varieties out there — including burrito-sized ones from Hunan with massive centers of braised pork or sweet bean paste, delicate Suzhou versions with date paste and pine nuts, or some simple Beijing rice parcels speckled with boiled peanuts — these were not on everyone’s radar, and so his anxiety would increase the longer the hunt took until he had finally tracked down someone who not only sold them, but made them with the requisite pillowy texture.

The first time I tried amber tamales (that’s my name for them, as the Chinese one, “alkali tamales,” or jiănzòng 鹼糉, is just not very appealing), I was bowled over. For one, they were semitransparent and a beautiful golden color very much like, well, amber. Second, they were cold and topped with some plain sugar. Third, the tamale itself had no filling... it was rice and nothing else. And finally, it was unexpectedly delicious. (By the way, the character for "tamales" can be written as either 糉 or 粽 - they mean the same thing.)

Much like my other favorite type, the one made with sticky rice flour and an assortment of savory things called bănzòng 板糉, this was a specialty of the Hakka, those latecomers to South China who seasoned the food of their neighbors with the ancient flavors of the North China Plain. Even now, jianzong are an integral part of Dragon Boat Festival ceremonies among the Hakka, as they are offered with other seasonal gifts to such deities as the Earth God (Tŭdìgōng 土地公). 

It's tamale time!

Be that as it may, I never really noticed them until I got married, and I probably would never have gotten around to eating one so early in my life if my husband and father-in-law were not dedicated amber tamale fiends. But to their credit, on a hot summer’s day it would be difficult to find something more satisfying to munch on than these little guys sometimes called jiănshuĭzòng 鹼水糉 sprinkled with sugar or honey for a simple snack.

The amber tamale also has a unique flavor courtesy of the alkaline water it simmers away in for around four hours, one that tastes slightly sulfurous, and so it is an acquired taste. Once I realized that it smelled a lot like an egg yolk, my brain stopped protesting, I lifted up my fork, and I took up the amber tamale habit with a passion.

Those first couple of years I found that the best ones were sold in Taipei’s South Gate Market, a food emporium packed to the gills with small stalls selling dried goods and large delis bustling with ladies who turned out some of the finest Chinese snack foods I have ever eaten. Watching them enfold raw rice into stacks of bamboo leaves was also an eye-opener for me because before then I never could get a grip on the secrets to wrapping them perfectly so that they looked beautiful and had the requisite bouncy texture in the center. But one day I stood there for close to thirty minutes, surreptitiously watching their every move while poking around in the bins out front and learned their moves.

Make the cone

As good as those store-bought ones were, making these you at home will give you the chance to taste these at their best. The problem is that most people turn jianzong into hard little nuggets with dry, powdery centers, and that just misses the whole point of these delectable bundles of joy.

The key is to wrap the raw rice so that there is just enough room for it to expand, turning these from raggedy looking parcels into familiar plump balloons. Some people put a green or red bean filling in these, but I like mine like this: plain and delicious.

Amber tamales

Jiănshuĭzòng 鹼水糉

Hakka

Makes 24 tamales

Zongzi:

Use folds to enclose the rice

2½ cups round sticky rice (yuán nuòmĭ 圓糯米)

1½ tablespoons baking soda

24 large, dried bamboo leaves (zòngyè 糉葉)

Large pot of boiling water

Butcher’s twine or dry grass ties

Garnish:

Dark brown or granulated sugar, honey, or osmanthus blossom syrup (guìhuājiàng 桂花醬)

1. Start this the day before you are planning to make the zongzi and two days before you want to eat them. Rinse the rice in a large sieve, drain, and then place in a large work bowl. Toss the damp rice well with the baking soda, cover, and let it sit overnight on a kitchen counter.

2. Either the night before or the day of, soak the bamboo leaves in very hot water, swishing them around now and then so that all of them get evenly soaked. Soak the dry grass too, if you are using it.

3. When you are ready to wrap the tamales, lay a large tea towel on a table and place the bowl of now very yellow rice there, along with a spoon, the twine or soaked grass, and a pair of kitchen shears. (Here is a video I made for instructions on filling and wrapping these.)

4. Next, wash the leaves by carefully sponging off both sides and then rinsing them. The edges of the leaves are sharp, so don’t cut yourself. Drain the leaves, pat them with a towel, and then wrap them in a clean towel so that they do not dry out.

Ready for the pot

5. Use your shears to trim off the stem end of the leaves, as well the point. Use only leaves that have no splits or holes; put any damaged ones to the side, as these can act as bandages (more on that later).

6. Now comes the fun part: wrapping the zongzi.  Hold a leaf at both ends with the shiny side toward you, and then curl the leaf around to make a cone in the center. Here is the first key to success: make sure that there is a little fold at the bottom of the cone that you can bend over, as this will seal in the rice. Scoop about 3 tablespoons of the rice into the cone, and then lightly fold the ends of the leaves over the cone. At this point comes the second key to success: lightly shake the tamale; if it rattles and no rice comes flying out, the wrapping is just right, but if you don’t hear the rice bouncing around, then the wrapper is too tight and you need to loosen it.

7. Wrap twine (or grass) around the center of the zongzi maybe 3 or 4 times, but not too tightly. Imagine that you are tying a string around a baby’s wrist, but you don’t want it to fall off: that is how tight/loose you want it. (The rice will swell up quickly in the boiling water, so don’t worry about the shape too much at this point.) Leave about 10 to 12 inches of twine or grass hanging off of the zongzi so that they can be eventually bundled together, and that’s it. Now do the same with the rest of the rice and leaves. If any of the leaves split, you can cut a piece of the broken ones off and insert it inside of the cone to act as a bandage. You should end up with 20 tamales, give or take.

Chilled & ready to eat

8. When all of these parcels have been wrapped and tied, bundle them in groups of 5 by tying the ends of the string or grass together into a knot. Then, gently lower these bundles into the pot of boiling water; the water should cover the tops of the zongzi by a few inches, as the rice will absorb the water. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and cover the pot. Slowly cook the zongzi for 4 hours, adding more boiling water as necessary, and then drain them into a colander. Cool them completely, wrap in a plastic bag, and chill overnight.

9. To serve, unwrap a zongzi or two per person and arrange these on individual plates. Offer any of the garnishes (or all of them, if you are feeling particularly generous) to your diners. These can be eaten with chopsticks, but I’ve found that forks work particularly well here.

(This article originally appeared in more or less the same format in Cleaver Quarterly in 2014)

Publication news! (psst: it's McSweeney's!) + sweet tamales for Dragon Boat Festival

Truly happy, glorious, wondrous, stupendous, dancing-on-the-top-of-the-world news for those who haven’t heard yet:

McSweeney’s is going to publish my Chinese cookbook in 2014!

I have been screaming inside my head ever since they told me this, and you would think that would be enough for me to shriek incessantly with pure joy, but there is more:

The incredibly wonderful food magazine Lucky Peach has asked me to write and illustrate a piece for its CHINATOWN issue!

I feel like I found the golden ticket in the Wonka bar or dug up a genii’s lamp and got two of my three wishes or stepped into another dimension. But whatever it is that happened (and I still can't figure that out), I can’t stop smiling.

And can’t stop working. So first, I want to apologize to my readers out there who have been asking where I’ve been the past couple of weeks. The answer is: writing and drawing for the Lucky Peach deadline. I will get back on track very, very soon. I promise.

In the meantime, today is Summer Solstice, and while there’s not a Chinese holiday to celebrate it (at least Winter Solstice gets little rice dough balls, right?), the day after tomorrow is Dragon Boat Festival (Duanwujie), and Zester Daily just posted an article and video I did on Shanghai-style rice tamales.

... and Lucky Peach's

If you’ve ever tried to wrap these tamales and found them ridiculously frustrating, I completely understand and empathize. I discovered the secrets to wrapping them one day quite by accident. I was working at the museum in Taipei and was late (as usual) getting back after lunch break, but this time was caught outside in an air raid drill. Fortunately, I was stranded at a market, and that is where I was mesmerized for about an hour by a grandma who stuffed and wrapped bunches of tamales just like these right before my eyes.

As I stood there, I gradually noticed that there were a couple of little folds that kept the rice in. Ah-ha: the first secret touches revealed. So, while I was called on the carpet once I showed up back at the office, it was hard to feel too shamefaced because I had learned something particularly wonderful.

You will find that these tamales are smaller and much, much more delicate than most tamales, and the rice is much lighter. One of the reasons for this is that these are Shanghai style and are designed to be eaten as tantalizing little tea snacks and not meant to be filling at all. (Check out these Hakka ones for a savory, filling variety.) Their airiness comes from the looseness with which they are packed into the leaves; notice how I shake the packet in the video and let it rattle. That is the second secret to beautifully tender tamales.

So, Happy Dragon Boat Festival, and thank you for reading this blog! Here is the beginning of the Zester article with a link to it and the video:

“The Dragon Boat Festival is one of the three great traditional Chinese celebrations that have been celebrated for thousands of years, the other two being Mid-Autumn Festival and Chinese New Year.

"Many reasons are given for this summer holiday, which falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month (on June 23 in 2012). The two most popular explanations are, first, that it commemorates the day that the poet and official Qu Yuan committed suicide and, second, that it is a festivity in honor of China’s national symbol, the dragon. Even today, those Chinese who are more traditionally minded say they are the descendants of dragons, for many of China’s most ancient gods had bodies that were at least partially dragon-like.

“So, both reasons are plausible, both are buried in the mists of history, and both have their fervent adherents. Two customs have been handed down to us from these separate camps and are now vital parts of the day’s celebrations: dragon boat races and rice tamales. The dragon boat races seem self-explanatory, but the tamales do need a bit of help....”

 (Read the rest on Zester Daily, plus view a helpful video by Yours Truly, right here.)

Translucent tamale

Shanghai’s sweet rice tamales 
Hushi dousha hetao zong 滬式豆沙核桃粽 
Shanghai
Makes 16 small tamales

16 large dried bamboo leaves (zongye), plus a few extra just in case

1½ cups sweet round glutinous rice (Sho-chiku-bai brand recommended)

2 tablespoons roasted sesame oil

1 cup sweetened red bean paste, canned or homemade

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup chopped walnuts

Lots of cotton kitchen string

Boiling water

1. Soak the bamboo leaves in hot water until soft and green. Trim off about 1 inch from both ends, then wipe both sides of the leaves with a towel; cover the leaves to keep them moist. Place the rice in a strainer and rinse it under running water; drain.

2. Heat the sesame oil in a wok over medium-high heat until it begins to smell fragrant, and then add the bean paste, salt and walnuts. Stir-fry the bean paste to remove any canned taste and give it a nice creaminess. As soon as the bean paste is gently bubbling, scrape it into a small work bowl and let it cool to room temperature. Then, divide the bean paste into 16 pieces and roll each one into a little ball.

3. Bring about a gallon of water to boil in a 2-gallon pot while you are busy wrapping the tamales.

4. Fold a leaf as directed in the video, with the shiny side on the inside and a slight fold at the bottom to keep the rice from squirreling out. Use a spoon to place a scoop of the rice into the cone and place a bean paste ball on top. Scoop some more rice on top of the bean paste so it is completely covered.

5. When you fold the leaf ends over the cone, allow about a half-inch of slack in the fold so they are not tight. This will give the rice the chance to expand as it cooks and be light and fluffy. When you fold over the leaf ends onto the cone, shake the tamale a bit – you should hear a rattling noise, which means that you’ve wrapped it perfectly.

6. Give the tamale a bit of slack as you tie it up. The way to do this is to wrap the string around the tamale as gently as if you are tying a string around a baby’s wrist. Make the string hold the leaves flat against the tamale and keep the tamale in its desired shape, but don’t pull the string tight at any time.

7. To wrap the string Shanghai style, loop it lengthwise around the tamale a couple of times and then wrap it around the center in an even spiral. Tie the knot off and keep one string long so you can tie 6 to 8 tamales together.

8. When all the tamales have been filled and tied, lower them gently into the boiling water, cover the pot and boil them for about 5 minutes to set their shape. Then remove the cover, lower the heat to a simmer and cook the tamales for about 2 hours. Add more boiling water if needed to completely submerge the tamales, and check them at 15 minute intervals to make sure they don’t need more water.

9. Remove the tamales from the boiling water and drain. Eat them right away or cool down and store in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. To reheat, steam them until heated through.