When Chinese greet each other it isn't "Hello", it's "Have you eaten yet?". Food is an integral part of life for the Chinese. Since my wife is Chinese (Taiwanese) I have learned a lot about eating for social, as well as nutritional reasons. Recently a young family we met moved into their first house, actually a rental. In keeping with Chinese tradition, we all went over for a housewarming pot luck. One of the dishes that MUST be prepared and served is
tang yuan, a glutinous rice ball in sweet soup. Why
tang yuan you might ask. Round (yuan) means a circle without an end so a complete and endless relationship; soup (tang), sometimes sweet and sometimes savory so that there would be sweetness and harmony in the relationship, whether it be a wedding, birth, new house, or any number of things. We started early that morning making four colors of rice dough; green, pink, orange, and white.
The colored dough was formed into rectangles which were stacked on top of each other
making a "sandwich" which was then rolled up like a jelly roll.
After cutting into convenient lengths
the sections were reduced in size
then cut into pieces
that were rolled into balls
and more balls
which were dropped into boiling water
and left until they floated to the top indicating they were done.
We took the prepared dough to the party and everyone joined in making rice balls.
Some were very artistic
All were boiled until they floated
then served in either a sweet sugar syrup or a brown sugar-ginger syrup
They were very filling and stuck to your ribs for sure.
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