Yuanxiao Makeover

After coming face-to-face with freezer-burned yuanxiao (sticky sweet rice balls) on the night of Lantern Festival, I vowed to learn how to make this Chinese dish.  Now, despite what the name of my blog suggests, I am not a natural cook (my husband is the cook in our house…but that’s a topic for another post!).  I love to eat good food, and really appreciate the magic in the kitchen that produces memorable meals.  But, sadly and despite my earnestness, I often fail to conjure such magic.

Take my latest experiment of making yuanxiao for example.  I followed RasaMalaysia’s recipe (minus the ginger syrup), and all was going splendidly until I took my first taste of the steaming dumpling.  It was salty!  I searched my mind, trying to figure out where I went wrong.  Salted butter! The recipe calls for unsalted butter, and in my haste, I grabbed the salted variety instead.  Oops.
 

I was determined to find a way to redeem this treat for my family (my poor daughter gagged after her first taste!)  And then the idea hit me, Nutella!  What is the magic hazelnut spread that makes all things taste yummy to a six-year-old? 

Nutella.

So, I remade RasaMalaysia's recipe, using Nutella instead of sesame paste as a filler (I stuck the jar in the freezer for a few minutes to stiffen the spread. Don't leave it in too long, though, or it will harden like concrete.)   

My yuanxiao, all rolled and ready to be boiled.

Three little yuanxiao. Aren't they cute?

And the result was....surprisingly delicious!  The Nutella filling in the cooked yuanxiao was warm and creamy, contrasting the thick, chewy mochi-textured outside.  Next time, I'm going to try a different rice flour (I used Koda Farms' Sweet Rice Flour this time) to see if I can make the outside layer thinner.  

What are your ideas for new yuanxiao fillings?

Review of Hessler's Country Driving

I recently finished Peter Hessler’s Country Driving, A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory, and have been mulling over what to say about this 400+ page tome. This book captures—in three acts—some of the huge changes (transformations, really) in rural China as the result of building new expressways and roads during the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Hessler, a longtime Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker and author of The Oracles Bones and River Town, divides Country Driving into three “books”--The Wall, The Village, and The Factory. Each of these “books” stand alone as complete stories, but read in succession, they paint a uniform portrait of the types of large-scale economic and social changes these roads are facilitating. 

In The Wall, Hessler documents his 7,000-mile trip as he follows the Great Wall (Changcheng) across northern China. A fact for your next game of Trivial Pursuit: The Great Wall is not one continuous wall built during one dynasty, but really a system of walled fortresses from many different dynasties (the Ming, Qin, Northern Wei, etc…) Hessler describes his adventures driving the City Special (a white Jeep with purple detailing) through remote regions, meeting locals who lead him to the ruins, and picking up hitchhikers who “pat the dog” (the motion for hitching a ride in China). The rich description of the physical geography and detailed history of the Great Wall are sure to be of interest to history and archeology buffs.

The Village focuses on Hessler’s six years in Sancha, a rural village north of Beijing. Early on, Hessler, who is renting a house in the village, becomes accepted into the local community after driving the sick child of local farmer Wei Ziqi to the hospital.  Hessler follows the changes in the small town after the local road is paved and tourists begin to the visit the countryside to experience “the simpler life.”  His friend Wei Ziqi (the farmer) is able to realize his dreams of becoming an entrepreneur by opening a guest house and restaurant. Television and packaged food becomes a staple in the house, and his friend purchases his first car.  But this new cash flow also has its downside. The town is unprepared to deal with the sudden increase in garbage, the previously small and underweight Wei child becomes overweight from packaged snacks, and Hessler's friend Wei Ziqi becomes stressed out from business deals. This sections leaves you wondering if the positives of the new highway actually outweigh the negatives.

In The Factory, Hessler follows the rise of a small bra ring (the metal components that hold a bra strap together—a picture would have been nice here!) factory in the Lishui Economic Development Zone, a newly opened area that is a sixty-minute drive (via the new Jinliwen Expressway) to the port city of Wenzhou. If you have ever wondered how a factory is started in China, this is the section for you.  Hessler takes you through the entire process, from construction of the factory and hiring of workers to manufacturing the first product and looking for the first customers. Later, he documents the factory’s move to Ouhai, another economic zone south of Wenzhou. This section addresses the complexities of underage workers in Chinese factories (Hessler’s wife Leslie Chang also looks at this issue in her book Factory Girls—another fascinating read), as well as the intricacies of “pulling guanxi” (la guanxi), a necessity of doing business in China.  One take-away from this section: The chemicals used to produce pleather  (you know, fake leather), which is also produced in Lishui, are so toxic that young women who have long-term exposure to it (DMF) are known to suffer liver damage and an increased risk of stillbirths. Yikes! I’ll buy real leather from now on, thank you.

This book is not for someone who is looking for a quick, light-hearted read, but if you want to better understand the changes that have happened in rural China in the last decade (yes, they've been huge and have had long-lasting social, economic, and environmental effects) and meet the people they have affected, then this is the book for you!

Lantern Festival and "Togetherness"

“Today is the last day of Spring Festival. You must cook yuanxiao for the children and light lanterns,” my mother-in-law called from China to remind me.

Spring Festival is the fifteen-day period in which the new lunar year is celebrated. Lantern Festival (or Yuanxiao Festival) marks the last day of the celebrations. At dusk on this day, families gather together to eat sweet or savory sticky rice balls (yuanxiao), light beautiful lanterns, and celebrate “togetherness” (tuanyuan). 

“Hao Aiyi (Youngest Aunt) waited in line to buy yuanxiao for four hours yesterday. That store on Huaihai Road (a famous commercial street in Shanghai) has the freshest yuanxiao in all of Shanghai.” She continued,  “And then she went to Yu Garden to buy a rabbit-shaped lantern for Da Yima (Eldest Aunt).”

Before we hung up, I told her that I’d try my best to share Lantern Festival with the kids.

How did this holiday sneak up on me?  It shouldn’t be a surprise; Lantern Festival happens every year at the same time—fifteen days after Chinese New Year. But here I was, again, ten minutes before bedtime looking at a package of freezer-burned yuanxiao. Memories of Mid-Autumn Festival came flooding back. 

I felt guilty for missing yet another Chinese holiday, but more than that, I felt sadness that all the yuanxiao in the world couldn’t bring my in-laws and us together to celebrate this holiday. My husband was out of town visiting my father-in-law, who was finishing up his last year of work before retirement, and my mother-in-law was in China caring for her sister, who was undergoing chemotherapy for colon cancer.

This weekend my husband will fly my father-in-law back for a short visit. Though my mother-in-law will not be able to join us, we will celebrate being together for a few short days.

And we might even eat yuanxiao!

How do you and your family celebrate “togetherness” during Lantern Festival?