PEANUT BUTTER STICKY RICE BALLS IN GREEN TEA
THEY COMPLETE ME
Sorry but I have to run off quickly today, and leave you with this traditional and wildly beloved Chinese dessert. These little pretty purses called tang-yuan, meaning “soup-circles”, are very popular, if not mandatory, at all major celebratory event and holidays because of their literal implication for roundedness and completeness. The elegance of its name may be lost in translation but I assure you that the reasons for their popularity are not, if you would just invest 1 hour of your life to find out.
The recipe for sticky rice ball-dough is an update from an older recipe, which I thought had a couple unnecessary steps and confusions. Then instead of making a peanut-filling from scratch, which would probably never be as smooth with my incompetent food-processor, I decided to use a mix of store-bought smooth peanut butter with a little coconut oil (to loosen the texture further) and brown sugar. The sticky rice wrapper is slippery and chewy, like little delicious purses bursting with lava-like peanut butter filling that comes with a hint of coconuts. It’s a mouthful of complimenting textures and flavours, chewy and runny, sweet and slightly salty, intensely nutty and rich but balanced with the subtle bitterness and fragrance from lightly honey-sweetened green tea.
More than just words, they’ll complete you.
