Twelfth Month congee

China's traditional year is set to the natural rhythms of the world. Divided into twelve lunar months and 24 solar seasons, it is surprisingly accurate. I remember how one of them, Startled Insects or Jingzhe, made this so clear.

We were living in the outskirts of Taipei in the hot springs area called New Beitou. Back then, the area was still relatively undeveloped, and so some wild friends took up residence around our little home. A huge toad lived in our teeny back yard and took care of all the roaches that crossed his path, leaving little roach mummies rolling around on the concrete. A solitary bat would hand upside-down during the day behind a board propped against the wall and always come home at the sign of first light. A praying mantis made its home in the big poinsettia tree (yes) that grew by our front gate. 

Dried longans

Geckos made the fuse box by the front window their very own elephant graveyard, as that is where they went to die. It was filled with a deep layer of filagree skeletons, and we watched one night as a weak, skinny gecko slowly made its way up and into the crack by the wooden fuse box door. My husband is a dedicated animal lover, and he tried to redirect the old gecko away from its grave, but the little guy was determined, so it went, step by painful step, up to join its clan.

Which leads back in a roundabout way to the lunar calendar. I was sweeping the leaves off of the moss ground in our little front yard one morning before going to work and noticed the trilling of katydids, a sound that had been absent over the length of Taipei's long and dreary winter. Checking the calendar inside, it was the beginning of Startled Insects, a day that usually lands in early March and explains by its name that bugs are awakened at this time out of their long slumber by thunder and spring rains. 

We had no unusual storms then to speak of that I can remember, but we certainly did have our little insect friends back on the scene again. And that was the beginning of my fascination with the Chinese lunar calendar.

Korean mixed rice & beans

But it is still winter now by any calendar's calculation. The last month before Chinese New Year (which falls on January 23rd this year) is called Layue; this is when we have the two-week seasons called Slight Frostiness (Xiaohan) and Great Frostiness (Dahan). Nurturing foods are most welcome on these chilly days, and today's toe-warming congee is so perfect for this time of year that that it is even named after the month: Labazhou (congee for the eighth day of the Twelfth Month).  

You can vary the ingredients as you please (no need to be a stickler about the number eight, really), the only real requirement being that the ingredients be fresh and there be a nice balance of grain, beans, nuts, and dried fruit. If you overload it with the dried fruit, for example, it becomes too sweet and jammy. So clean out your cupboards, see what is already there, and toss in whatever you like, keeping the ratio more or less 3 parts grain : 1 part beans : 1 part nuts and seeds : 2 parts dried fruit.

Soak all of the grains, beans, and nuts overnight so that they plump up and cook more quickly. Things like peanuts and dried lotus seeds, for example, take a very long time to cook until they are just barely soft, so consider cooking them separately.  

Leftovers can be stored in the fridge, and this is one of those times when a microwave is indispensable, because if you boil the congee again, it tends to cook down into a paste; a good alternative would be steaming, as this too doesn't give the grains and beans the chance to break down further.

Twelfth Month congee can be served for breakfast or late at night; it is too filling and sweet for other times of the day, unless you have elderly folks or little children in need of something hot and comforting. 


Twelfth Month congee 
Labazhou 臘八粥

Plumped up ingredients

All over China
Serves 4 to 6 generously

1 cup rice or mixed-grain rice (see Tips)
3 tablespoons millet or steel cut oatmeal or other grains
3 tablespoons hulled sunflower seeds or other seeds
3 tablespoons mung (green) beans
3 tablespoons adzuki or other beans
3 tablespoons broken walnuts or other nuts
3 tablespoons skinned peanuts
20 dried lotus seeds, optional  (see Tips)
9 cups filtered water, plus more as needed
12 Chinese dates (jujubes), pitted and cut in half
4 tablespoons goqi (goji or wolfberries), or a handful of dried pitted longan (see Tips)
Brown or rock sugar to taste
Dash of sea salt
Toasted sesame seeds, optional

Perfect consistency

1. Start this at least 10 hours before you want to serve it. Rinse the rice, sunflower seeds, beans, and walnuts, place in a large saucepan, and cover them with water by about 1 inch. Rinse the peanuts and lotus seeds and place them in a small saucepan before covering them with water. Let both pans sit overnight to plump up the ingredients, and then drain off the water before adding about 7 cups filtered water to the large saucepan and about 2 cups to the smaller one. Rinse the dried fruit.

2. Bring both pans to a boil and simmer them until the beans are soft in the large saucepan and both the peanuts and lotus seeds are soft in the other; the larger saucepan will probably be done first. At this point, add the dried fruit to the smaller pan and add enough water to cover; bring the smaller pan to a boil and then lower it again to a simmer so that the fruits have time to plump up without disintegrating. When cooked but not mushy, combine the two and add sugar to taste, as well as a little salt. Slowly simmer the congee until the sugar is melted; taste and adjust the sweetness, if necessary.

3. Serve with a sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds on top, if you wish; it's not necessary, but it adds another layer of flavor to this delicious congee.

The little green tongue = bitterness

Tips

Cook the peanuts and lotus seeds separately because they take much longer than the other ingredients.

Add the dried fruits to the peanuts and lotus seeds later on so that they stay whole and don't mush up.

Be sure and open each softened lotus seed, as they often have bitter green sprouts inside. Just pinch off the green shoot and toss it away.

Korean markets often sell a mixture of rice and beans that is great for labazhou because half of your work is already done for you. (See the photo above.)

Feel free to experiment with the ingredients, using raisins and dried cranberries, for example, instead of some or all of the dried fruit. Cashews and almonds are delicious in here. And sweetening it with honey adds a completely different aroma to the final dish.

Dried longans (see photo above) lend a wonderful perfume and are worth seeking out. The fruit looks a little like a dried lychee, and when fresh they share a certain similarity, as both have white flesh surrounding a black seed and encased in a thin shell. Longan shells, though, are tan rather than the red of fresh lychees, and when dried the flesh turns into chewy little nuggets. All they need is a soaking in boiling water to wake them up.

Suzhou's sweet date paste and pine nut tamales

Since we we're just on the subject of Chinese tamales (see this video on Zester Daily for a step-by-step guide), I thought it would be fun to look at another type from another area of China (the East rather than the South) with another flavor (sweet instead of savory) and another type of rice (glutinous rice rather than rice flour). 

And this is one that you have to try if you have even the tiniest sweet tooth in your head because it is downright delectable.

The ingredients for this inspired sweet snack are simple but balanced. The hot and moist glutinous rice not only encases the sensuous Chinese date filling and serves to balance its sweetness and deep flavors, but 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. 

Jujubes on a tree near our home

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 (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 hongzao) with some smoky and very sour dried black plums (wumei) for that extra shimmer on the tongue. If you do find black plums - usually in a good Chinese herbalist - a small nibble will warn you they are so incredibly tart that you probably won't want to pop one into your mouth. I made that mistake once and my mouth felt like it was turning inside out. Ah well, one time for everything is my motto, or at least one of them.

Half ripened Chinese date

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. The absolute best variety I have tried is a smaller one called "chicken heart date" (jixin zao). These bushy trees are becoming a pretty common sight in the gardens of Asian families around here, so as with some of the other hard-to-get items like Chinese toon in a previous post, ask around and see if you can find sources near you. I've often been pleasantly surprised!

Be sure and use round glutinous 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.

Shanghai style food bondage

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 have one all alone before the guests arrive so that you can eat your second one 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 Ziploc 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.)

Date paste on top of the rice

Suzhou style sweet date paste and pine nut tamales
Sushi songzi zaoni zongzi  蘇式松子棗泥粽子
Jiangsu
Makes 16 tamales

1½ cups sweet round glutinous rice (Sho-chiku-bai brand recommended)
16 large dried bamboo leaves (zongye), plus a few extra just in case
2 tablespoons roasted sesame oil
1 cup date paste, canned or home made
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup untoasted 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 overnight with enough water to cover it by at least 2 inches. 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 the previous recipe for Hakka tamales. Trim off the stem ends of the leaves and then cover the cleaned leaves with a moist towel.

Tamale & fave sake bottle

2. 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.

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

Cover the date paste with more rice

4. 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 soup spoon 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. 

5. Now, here is the first secret to a great Chinese tamale that's made with rice: when you fold the leaf ends over the cone, allow about a half inch of slack in the fold (see the illustration below). 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. 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.

6. 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. 

Notice the slack at the fold end

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

8. 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.

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