Today is Yuan Xiao Jie (aka. the Winter Solstice). The official English translation for Yuan Xiao Jie is "Yet another excuse for the Chinese to gather and eat."
To celebrate, I decided it was time to master the art of making Yuan Xiao. These are also sometimes called tang yuan ("soup rounds"). It should be apparent how this dish gets its name.
Tang yuan dough is very versatile. It's basically mochi, and can be filled with balls of peanut, sesame, red bean, or lotus seed paste. Tang yuan are boiled; the more ubiquitous Japanese style mochi is steamed and rolled in something powdery and edible. The two have a similar chewy, gummy texture. For me, however, the ultimate tang yuan has a savory filling. I decided to go the Taiwanese route and make tang yuan with pork filling, cooked in chicken soup with vegetables. Ultra-Taiwanese, ultra comforting. Perfect for this wretched rainy weather. You'll need:
Filling- 1 pound ground pork (fatty is okay for this recipe)
- 2 handfuls dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in water until saturated
- 1 handful dried shrimp, soaked in cold water
- 1 tablespoon canola oil
- 1 handful dried deep fried shallots
- two or three whole star anise
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 1/2 cup soy sauce
- 1 cup water, maybe more
- lard, if you have any
I ground the first three ingredients through my food grinder, but chopping the mushrooms and shrimp into storebought ground pork will work fine. Sautee the mixture over medium high heat until the pork is separated into small pieces and almost cooked through. Add the shallots and star anise (put the star anise into a small cheesecloth if you want to remove it more easily later). Cook until the shallots give off fragrance. Add sugar, sesame oil, soy sauce, and 1/2 cup of water. Bring to a simmer and turn down the flame low enough to maintain a simmer. Stir occassionally to prevent sticking, and let everything cook together.
As the mixture dries out, add a few tablespoons of water at a time. A few tablespoons of lard will really help the mixture come together, if you have some leftover from something else you cooked. Adjust soy sauce, sesame oil, and sugar levels as you go along. When the mixture's as thick as in the picture, take the pot off the stove and let the mixture cool to room temperature. Then place in freezer until it's hard enough to hold its shape when scooped with a spoon. If you really want to make your life easy later on, drop the mix onto a cookie sheet by the half tablespoon and freeze into balls. I didn't have the time to do this, but if it would make forming the dumplings a lot easier.
Dough
- 1 pound glutinous rice flour (50 cents at the Asian market)
- about half a cup of boiling water
- about half a cup of iced water
I am no master of Chinese dough, but imprecision didn't seem to mess things up at all so just go for it. Traditionally, one would make this dough by using a heavy bowl, pouring water in with the left hand, and stirring two long chopsticks furiously with the right hand. I used my stand mixer.
Pour about two thirds of the dough into the mixer. With the mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and turned to level 2, mix in half a cup of boiling water. Watch it. I added hot water until the dough started clumping a little, but there was still plenty of dry flour. I have no idea if this is the right idea or not. My mother never made dough at home. Add an equal amount of iced water, continuing to mix. The dough should come together. At this point, I realized I might have added too much iced water, so I put more flour into the dough. Don't sweat it if you do the same. Mix slowly for several minutes until the flour is well incorporated into the dough. My dough looked shaggy, but I just dumped it out onto a floured surface and kneaded until it was soft and pliable. Working this dough is a lot of fun because it's really warm. Soothing for cold fingers.
Put the dough in a clean, ungreased bowl. Cover both the dough and the finished tang yuan with with warm wet towels while you work. The pros roll out the dough into ropes and cut the rope into sections. My ropes always come out horribly uneven, so I just scooped the dough with a tablespoon to keep the size uniform.
The problem with tang yuan is the delicate homemade dough. If you're not careful, filling will ooze out of the seams or burst through a thin section in your tang yuan. Once the dough has touched the oily filling, it won't want to seal. It becomes a greasy, ugly mess.
After a few different mediocre attemps, I found the best (for me) way to fill these puppies. Roll the dough into a ball, dent one side, and pinch the edges up and over to form a tulip-shaped bowl. Be very careful to keep the bottom and sides the same thickness all over, and make the top a bit thinner. Using a small spoon, put in about a teaspoon of filling. The more filling you put in and the thinner your dough is, the more bad ass you are. Send me a photo. I'll post it and proclaim you Ruler of All Things Tang Yuan. Pinch the top together tightly. I experimented with overlapping the dough, just pinching it together, bunching it; didn't seem to make a huge difference. Just always remember to keep the thickness even throughout, or the tang yuan won't cook evenly.
I tried a few different ways to smooth out the seams of the dumpling. Pictured here is the "roll against the table" method. Making sure the seam's pointing downward, gently cup the tang yuan and roll your hand in a circular motion. Press the tang yuan gently against the table until the seams disappear. I also did this same method with two hands, using one hand to cup the dumpling and the other as a flat surface to roll against. Sometimes it was eaiser to just put the tang yuan between two completely open palms and roll. Every tang yuan is different. I found that slightly moistened hands helped smooth out the dough. No matter what I did, however, I didn't have any tang yuan that were 100% crease free. I need practice, and perhaps a wetter dough. I didn't sweat it, though. As long as the creases weren't deep enough to split open during cooking, the tang yuan were fine. Small surface creases in dough tend to disappear during boiling.
Be very, very, very careful when you roll these. Those of you who bake bread will want to start shaping them as you would a boule. Wrong! These are much more delicate. As you roll, your hand might warm up the filling inside. Then, if there's a patch of thin skin, the filling will burst out! As you roll, continuously check for thin spots in the dough and gently pinch some of the thicker dough over the thin patches. It's delicate work. Now I know why my mom and her friends didn't let me touch these when I was a kid.
Fresh tang yuan take only a few minutes to cook in boling water. Salt your water, bring to a boil, and put tang yuan in for five minutes. You'll know they're done when they look a little transluscent all over. Transfer the dumplings into a bowl filled with your favorite clear chicken soup. My favorite accompaniment is an Asian vegetable called tong hao, but any leafy green will do (baby bok choy and spinach are popular). We ate ours with a dollop of the filling (which is basically style ro zao, or chopped braised pork), green onions, and cilantro. A more well-rounded meal would have included some chicken, cha sao (Chinese BBQ pork), mushrooms, bamboo, or other fillings. Tonight, however, was the tang yuan's night to shine. My better half isn't as tang yuan crazed as I am, but he pronounced this batch of ro zao possibly the best thing I've ever cooked. He got no arguments from me.
Tang yuan freeze well, so making a sheet at a time is a good idea. Frozen tang yuan are a cinch to cook; boil water, put in tang yuan, bring water to a boil again, and cook for three more minutes after that point.
I ended up with about half my filling left, but I like to eat it over rice with some vegetables anyway so I'm happy with that. I ended up with about 45 tang yuan. Regular dumplings are much easier to make, but these give me infinitely more joy. I also made some marble-sized dumplings (pictured left after being boiled) and froze a bag full of them. These are often cooked in sweetened ginger water as a simple dessert. They're usually dyed pink and white to make them more festive. Restaurants often also serve these in lieu of tapioca pearls or boba, adding them to fruit, slushees, and sweet bean pastes to make desserts.
Final note: the Chinese love circles. The whole karma/reincarnation thing is based on the idea that what comes around goes around. Ying yang, doughnut-shaped jade pendants, circular jade bracelets, those red good luck cutouts pasted to the door--you get the idea. A circle is whole, complete, and self-fulfilled whereas a line is just an endless continuation that goes goodness knows where. Therefore, it's fitting that this little ball of yumminess is considered good luck food. Sorry to inflict my soapbox Chinese self on you. Who knows if my ranting is historically supported.
Kale soup, roughly styled after a Portuguese caldo verde. Kale, spinach, and onions are simmered in chicken stock for several hours until very soft. Sauteed chopped sausages are added later so they retain flavor. Cornstarch mixed with cold water is stirred in at the end to make the soup gooey. I grated some carrots on top, but it didn't do much for color. You live, you learn.
Sashimi plate: salmon, yellowtail, tuna o-toro, and Spanish mackerel. We ordered the large sashimi plate and were presented with two identical plates of what's pictured above.
Giant clam nigiri: crunchy, sweet, with barely a hint of saltwater. I love this stuff a lot, and no one else has ever matched the quality here.
Chill in the refrigerator for at least four hours, or until icy cold throughout. Freeze using your ice cream machine. I let mine go for about 10-15 minutes, but your mileage may vary depending on your machine, what dairy products you use, how warm your kitchen is, etc.
