Filled rice balls for Lantern Festival

Spring has sprung: the end of the Chinese New Year is here, as today is the Lantern Festival. It should come as no surprise since we are discussing Chinese food that this is yet another reason to celebrate with something good to eat. 

A bowl of sweet filled rice balls is the perfect choice. It is something that my husband insists on having both for the Lantern Festival (Yuánxiāojiě 元宵節) that lands on the first full moon in the New Year, as well as for Winter Solstice. And I couldn’t agree more.

We’ve done plain rice balls before. Today it’s going to be filled ones. You can wrap all sorts of things in this lovely dough – sweet Jiangsu fillings or Hakka-style savory ground meat are the most popular – as it really is quite easy once you get the basics down.

From chunks to marbles

This version happens to be one of the best I know of, as it is very rich and creamy thanks to both butter and sesame oil. This kind of filling is called “flowing sand” (líushā 流沙), but I think of it more as lava: hot and liquid. But the secret to making this right the first time around is keeping the filling very, very cold. It hardens when it chills, thanks to all of that fat, and so it offers something firm for you to enclose in the soft dough. If you use a soft filling, it's easy for things to go south quickly, as it will easy mush up with the dough. So, chill that filling.

The recipe is not at all hard: first make the filling, and then the rice dough. Do this over a couple of days to make it less stressful, if you like, as practically each step can be seen as a logical pause in this production.

If you have some homemade fermented rice, so much the better, because nothing goes better with sweet filled rice balls than hot fermented rice soup, unless you add a poached egg or two, and then you have an amazing breakfast or late night snack.

Steps in wrapping these rice dough balls

To divide doughs like this into 48 pieces, use a ruler: just shape the dough into an even rope that is, say, 12 inches long and then cut each slice into pieces. Or, if you want to go metric, make it into a 48cm rope and cut it into 1 cm pieces. Easy peasy, either way.

(Please note that many non-American readers have asked that I start using metric measurements here. That makes a whole lot of sense no matter how you look at it, so I'm going to do my best to comply from now on.)

Sweet rice balls with black sesame filling

Hēizhīmá tāngyuán 黑芝麻湯圓

Jiangsu

Makes 4 dozen rice balls

Filling:

½ cup/150g raw black sesame seeds

6 tablespoons/90g salted butter, softened

½ cup/60g toasted sesame oil

⅓ cup/60g dark brown sugar

Dough:

2 cups/320g sticky rice flour (nuomifen), plus more as needed

1 cup/240ml cool water

A mini processor is handy here

1. First make the filling. Lots of people use raw sesame seeds and lard or white shortening plus white sugar in here, but I go for the gold. I want this filling to be packed with flavor, so toast the sesame seeds. Do this by dry-frying them: place them in a cool wok and then toss them almost constantly over medium to medium-high heat until they pop and smell heavenly (about 5 minutes). Try a few of the seeds, and if they’ve lost their bitterness and taste toasty, scrape them into a medium work bowl and let them cool off completely, so that they don’t exude too much oil when you grind them.

2. Grind the sesame seeds in a spice grinder or mini food processor until they are reduced to a powder. Mix this with the softened butter, sesame oil, and sugar. (If you use a mini processor, you can add the butter, oil, and sugar to it, too, thus saving extra work.) This paste will be very soft, so refrigerate or freeze it until it is easy to work with.

3. Rinse your hands often in cool water to keep them from caking up as you divide the black paste into 48 pieces. Roll these into marbles that are more or less the same size, around ½ inch/1 cm in diameter. Place them on a plastic-lined pan and freeze them until they are relatively hard so that they are easy to handle when you wrap them in the rice dough. (This step can even be done days ahead of time; just freeze the hard balls in a resealable freezer bag or container; do not defrost them before proceeding to Step 6.)

The flour & water should form a firm dough

4. Set a pot on the stove and bring 4 cups/1l water to a boil while you prepare the dough. The best way to make resilient wrappers that don’t crack easily is to first make a plain rice dough out of the rice flour and water; knead this until smooth, and then remove about a quarter of the dough. Flatten the dough to form a disc, drop it into the boiling water, and then reduce the heat to low so that the water is just barely moving. Simmer the dough for a few minutes until it is cooked through and starts to float, about 5 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to remove the cooked dough and shake off all the water before you return it to the raw dough.

5. Knead these together on a smooth board lightly dusted with more rice flour. When the dough is smooth, divide it into 48 even pieces, and then roll these into balls. Again, moisten your hands as you work to prevent the dough from both sticking to your fingers and cracking. Keep the balls covered with a sheet of plastic whenever you are not working on them.

6. Shape one ball at a time by sticking your thumb into the rice ball to make a small cup, and then inserting one of the sesame marbles inside. Roll the ball between your hands. The filled rice ball is now finished. Cover it with plastic wrap and repeat with the rest of the dough and filling until you have 48 filled balls. You can immediately proceed to cook them or else freeze them in a single layer before freezing them in a resealable freezer bag.

 

Cook one piece of the rice dough

6. To cook these, bring a couple of cups of water to a full boil in a deep pot, as you will be adding more water as you cook the rice balls. Add as many of the filled rice balls (frozen or unfrozen) as you want, stir the pot gently to keep them from sticking, and when the water once again comes to a full boil, add a cup of cool water and bring the pot to a boil again. When the pot full of rice balls has come to a full boil three times, the rice balls should be floating. Use a slotted spoon to remove them to individual bowls. They can be covered with the water in which they were boiled, sweetened hot fermented rice soup, or even luscious sweet red bean soup. Eat immediately.

Tips

Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese black sesame seeds tend to be good quality: fresh, with no sand hiding in there. If you are unsure of what you have, pour small amounts of the sesame seeds out onto a white, rimmed plate and look at them closely. Taste a few of the raw seeds, as they should not be stale, either.

Cut the dough

White or unhulled sesame seeds will work fine here, too; they just won’t have that dramatic coloring is all.

For the rice flour, be sure it is sticky (aka sweet or glutinous) rice flour. Mochiko Sweet Rice Flour is dependable and easy to find.

Winter Solstice soup

Winter Solstice is finally here, the time when the nights are longest and the days shortest. Today (December 21) is the Winter Solstice according to our Western calendar, but the Chinese lunar calendar says that Dõngzhì 冬至 (literally, “winter is here,” which is a step up from the Stark clan’s motto of “winter is coming”) is tomorrow. Maybe that’s because China is, after all about half a world away or something.

In many ways, this is my favorite holiday of the year. I think it has to do with hope – hope that the days will soon grow longer, that the trees will start to explode with green shoots, and that the earth’s surface will begin to crumble as seeds sprout and the growing season gets underway.

Homemade rice pearls

And so, before our planet starts to tip the other way and welcome more of the sun’s rays, it’s time to celebrate the joys of winter. Chief among them in my book is hot, filling, nourishing foods. The Chinese do soups better than anyone else, I think. Part of the reason for my saying this is that sweet soups and cold soups are just as important throughout the culture as savory and hot ones.

Just about every Han Chinese cuisine has a deep weakness for sweet soups. And I cannot for the life of me figure out why this isn’t the case in every other great food tradition. Yes, we have our hot chocolate and coffee and milky teas, but no matter how good they are, they don’t have the body and variety and the wonderful textures of a gently sweet soup that soothes a chilled body and is just so satisfying.

Cut up the dough and then roll

In my family, this is the soup we come back to again and again whenever it’s cold out. It also contains those soft rice-paste balls called yuanzi in Chinese, something my husband starts clamoring for this time of year. That’s because Winter Solstice is almost always celebrated with these little pillows in Han Chinese cuisines, either plain like this or stuffed with a sweet nut or bean paste. (Here is a recipe from a Muslim part of China that is highly recommended, too.)

In the future I’ll show you how to make the stuffed ones, but right now with the holidays coming up, no one has time for something that fussy. Instead, I really want you to try this, so I’m making it absolutely as simple as possible. And, if the week really is getting out of hand, do know that you can go an even simpler route and simply buy a can of red bean paste (chunky, if at all possible), dilute it to taste with water, thicken it with a cornstarch slurry, and toss in some frozen rice balls. It’s been done before and it’s better than nothing.

Soak the beans until easily pierced

However, the following recipe is hundreds of times better. For one thing, the texture of the beans becomes really silky when they are soaked overnight and then cooked until they simply explode out of what seems like simple exhaustion.

I use a pressure cooker to speed things up, but a regular pan on the stove will work, too. Then, instead of regular sugar, I add some sweetened condensed milk, which adds another layer of satiny richness without making this soup too sweet.

Finally, rice balls get tossed in. These are easy to put together and kids love to make them, as it’s sort of like edible Play-Doh. So, seriously consider using child labor here and freeze the extra rice balls, as they store well.

Happy holidays!

Sweet red bean soup with rice pearls

Hóngdòu yuánzi tāng 紅豆圓子湯

North China

Makes around 2 quarts and serves 6 to 8 generously

Red bean soup:

1½ cups dried small red beans (like adzuki)

Here's your beans

Water, as needed

About ¼ to ½ cup sweetened condensed milk, store-bought or homemade

Rice pearls:

½ cup sticky rice flour (aka sweet rice flour or glutinous rice flour)

¼ cup cool water

2 cups boiling water

1. The night before you plan to make the soup, pick over the beans just in case some pebbles or detritus are hiding in there. Rinse the beans and then soak them in cool water for at least 8 hours by covering them with the water by a couple of inches so that they have room to expand. If they are fresh, the beans will be swollen in the morning and you will be able to pierce them with your fingernail.

2. Drain off the water and place the beans in either a pressure cooker or a regular quart pan. Cover the beans with fresh water by a couple of inches. If you’re using a pressure cooker, lock on the lid, bring the pan to a boil over high heat, and then lower the heat to maintain an even high pressure; cook the beans this way for about 30 minutes, or until they are very soft. If you are using a regular pan, bring the uncovered pan to a full boil before reducing the heat for a lively simmer, and then cook the beans until they too are extremely soft and broken, which will take at least an hour or two, depending upon the freshness and size of the beans, as well as the heat of your stove. (Accurate cooking times for dried beans are one of the hardest things to give with any confidence, so you will have to use your own judgment here. Sorry.)

Stir the water into the rice flour

3. Once the beans are done, check their texture: They need to be very creamy and soft for this recipe to work, so simmer them longer if need be. Also, adjust the thickness of the soup by adding more boiling water, if you like. I prefer this particular soup a bit on the thin side, which means that I end up with about 2 quarts soup, but there’s plenty of wiggle room here. Finally, stir in as much of the sweetened condensed milk as you like. (This soup can be made ahead of time up to this point and either refrigerated or frozen.)

Mix into a soft dough

4. To make the rice pearls, begin by placing the rice flour in a medium mixing bowl. Mix the water into the flour to form a soft dough. Place the dough on a smooth surface and knead it briefly. Roll the dough out into a long rope about ½-inch thick and then break off or cut the rope into around 36 pieces. Roll each piece into a small ball, and wet your hands as you shape them if the dough feels a bit dry or the balls look like they are cracking. (These can be made ahead of time and frozen; see Tips.)

5. Just before serving, bring the 2 cups water to a boil in a medium saucepan and then add the rice pearls in loose handfuls so that they do not stick together; stir after each addition to help separate the little balls. As soon as the water comes to a boil again and the pearls rise to the surface, drain off the water and add the pearls to the red bean soup. Serve immediately so that the rice pearls do not soften.

Tips

The rice pearls can be made ahead of time and frozen on a pan lined with plastic wrap. As soon as the rice pearls are hard, place them in a freezer bag and store for up to a couple of months. If the balls looked cracked or if the bag is full of ice crystals, discard and make a new batch.

 

Korean sticky rice flour

About the only things I’d caution you here is that, first, you get fresh beans from a busy store, as they cook much, much, much faster that way and will give you a marvelously silky texture, while old beans will remain old beans no matter what you do. Second, make sure your sticky rice flour is fresh, too, as there’s nothing in here than can cover a musty flavor. If the package is already opened, smell it and then take a tiny taste of the flour: It should have no aroma or taste other than that of rice. And third, use either homemade sweetened condensed milk or organic canned. There are so few ingredients in here that they all need to shine.

Stop! This is regular rice flour

Mochiko Sweet Rice Flour is by standby brand for the sticky rice flour, but others can be good, too. Korea and Thailand have some good ones, for example. 

Sometimes, though, the Thai brands can be hard to figure out. If you read Chinese, look for the characters nuòmǐ 糯米 (sticky rice) on the bag. If it says zhānmǐ 粘米, that is regular rice flour (like ground sushi rice) - don't use that here.

Miniature rice paste balls for the Winter Solstice

One of the most delightful aspects of Chinese culture has to be the many traditions that link food to minor holidays with as much seriousness as the big whole-nation-takes-the-day-off festivities. One of these is Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, which falls on December 21 this year on both the western and lunar calendar. 

As part of the celebrations, we all get to eat moon-shaped balls of mochi-like rice paste. Called tangyuan, or "soup balls," these are almost invariably served as a sweet after dinner tomorrow.

Today we are going to look these in their miniature state, which are called yuanzi or xiaoyuanzi (little balls). These are simply unstuffed little marbles of rice paste dough, some of them often colored a pink or red -- and even lavender or orange -- to snazz up the bowl. These are popular all over China, are easy to make, and go great in a hot bowl of Fermented Rice Soup.

If you have time today or tomorrow to prepare these ahead of time, you can freeze them on a baking sheet and then store the rice balls in a freezer-safe resealable bag. Then, you just have to drop them into the boiling water; no defrosting necessary. 

The dough is ready to roll

Many ready-made versions are available in the freezer section of larger Chinese markets, and in case you are short on time, go ahead and take advantage of this shortcut. Look carefully at them before you buy the rice balls, though, since they cannot be frozen for too long before they dry out and crack. Once that happens, they become inedible, as the dough will never soften up in the boiling water and the filling will leak out over everything. 

If you have extra, freeze them and save them either for another dessert or even for Lantern Festival, which falls on the first full moon after Chinese New Year, or February 6, 2012. On that day, it is customary to serve a type of filled rice ball made by interspersing coatings of rice flour with sprays of water, giving the balls a completely different texture from tangyuan. However, these yuanxiao are extremely difficult to find outside of China unless you make them yourself, and so the tangyuan are acceptable substitutes. 

Small rice paste balls 
Xiaoyuanzi 小圓子
All over China

Makes lots and serves at least 12

1 pound glutinous (sweet) rice flour, either Mochiko brand or the Thai brand with green print
1½ cups filtered water at room temperature
Red, pink, or other food coloring (optional)
Rock sugar or Hot Fermented Rice Soup (eggs optional)

 1. Pour the rice flour into a medium work bowl, reserving about a quarter cup for rolling out the dough later on. Stir in 1¼ cups of the water until it is complete absorbed by the flour, and then dribble in as much of the rest is needed until a soft dough is formed. The dough is ready when it no longer is in clumps, you can pinch it into pieces, and it does not stick to your fingers. (Add a bit more water, if necessary.)

2. Use one hand to lightly knead the dough in the bowl until it is smooth. Sprinkle a smooth work surface lightly with the reserved rice flour, and cover a large, rimmed baking sheet with plastic wrap; have more plastic wrap ready. 

3. If you would like to color all or some of the dough, do it now by working in a few drops of food coloring. (The traditional way is about a third colored pink and the rest left white, but feel free to be creative here.) 

4. Pull off a handful of the dough, roll it into a half-inch wide rope, and pinch off pieces that are also about half an inch in length. Roll each piece between your palms to form a ball, and then turn the rest of that bit of dough into more little balls. Place these balls on the plastic-lined pan so that they do not touch each other, as otherwise they will stick. Repeat with the rest of the dough until all of the dough has been turned into little marbles, and place another piece of plastic wrap on top. (It's best not to layer the raw dough, as the balls will flatten into discs.) 

Form the dough into marbles

5. Freeze the balls on the sheet until they are hard, and then transfer them to a resealable freezer bag; remember that if you leave them uncovered in the freezer for too long, they might dry out and crack.

6. To cook the xiaoyuanzi, bring a couple of cups of water to boil in a saucepan. If you are serving them in just hot, sweetened water, then add rock sugar to taste and stir until the sugar dissolves; if you are serving them with the Hot Fermented Rice Soup (with or without eggs), then get this ready, as well. 

7. Toss a few handfuls (or however many you want to serve) of the frozen rice paste balls into boiling water. Gently stir the balls until the water boils again. As soon as the balls float, they are ready. Immediately remove them to your waiting bowls and cover them with some of the boiling water or a good ladle-full of the hot soup, and garnish with eggs, if you like. (Either poach the eggs as directed in the soup recipe, or beat them in a small bowl, hold the bowl near the top of the simming water, and slowly drizzle them into the hot water so that they immediately cook and float, rather than sink to the bottom.) Serve immediately.