Today is the 15th day at the first month of the Lunar Calendar, which is the end of the Spring Festival celebration. At this day, people will make glutinous rice ball to celebrate it, which also called Yuanxiao Festival or Lantern Festival. Yuan in Chinese "圆“, in English "circle", meaning happy ending and family reunion. Well, as you can see, the shape of Yuanxiao is a ball, which also match the meaning of "Yuan". Since the glutinous rice ball is sweet, we usually eat it as desert. We eat Yuanxiao or Tangyuan not only for the Yuanxiao Festival, but also for Dongzhi, the Winter Solstice Festival. You might be curious why I put two pictures here. It is not because of the different flavors, while actually they are two different types of rice ball. In the South of China, they call it Tangyuan, and in the North of China they call it Yuanxiao. Yuanxiao and Tangyuan look and taste very similar, even I cannot distinguish them well. But they do have differences, the biggest difference is the way they been made. Let's see what are the two different ways to make it. Basically Yuanxiao or Tangyuan is made from glutinous rice flour mixed with water so that can be formed as ball, usually it has fillings, commonly with black sesame or red beans. Then cooked in boiled water, and eat with the soup. Tangyuan—--the wrapped ball The way of making Tangyuan is similar to dumplings, wrapping fillings with flour wrappers, but the wrapper for Tangyuan is much more thicker than dumpling's wrapper. Mix the glutinous flour with water and make wrappers. Then put fillings at the center of the wrapper and roll it into a ball with both hands. Lastly just cook them in boiled water until them floating on the water. Yuanxiao—--the rolling ball The point of making Yuanxiao is to roll the filling, which is formed as a ball, in glutinous flour, so that the filling ball can be coated with flour. Then take out the balls and steep them into water for seconds. After this you need to put them back into the flour and roll them again. Take out and steep into water...Roll..., repeat the two steps at least 3 times. If you want thicker wrapper, you can repeat few more times. Then at the last time you did rolling, you finished making process, you just need to put the rice balls into boiled water until them floating on the water. Due to the different making ways, Tangyuan tastes much more soft and has more fluent fillings. But they both delicious. We also have different flavor for the wrapper. You can choose carrots, spinach, sweet potato, or many other ingredients. For example, press vegetables into juice then add into the flour, so that you can have colorful wrappers. Thank you for your time! Hope you like this traditional festival desert!
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There are many differences between Chinese and American food culture, while it is hard to list all the differences. Let's start from the first meal of the day - Breakfast! Chinese start their busy day early in the morning around 6am for job or school. Thus it is a big problem for them to have time to cook breakfast at home. The way Chinese eat breakfast is distinctive than American. It is easy because Chinese can buy various types of breakfast at street shops, while it is not easy because most of the breakfast dishes are not easy to make. Rice congee is the mainstay diet of Chinese breakfast. It is common and simple to make at home. With enough water that more than you use for cook rice, cook the rice for a long time until the rice get soft and thicker. It is great having warm and mild meal to start a nice day! Of course, you can add other ingredients to make various flavors. It can be sweet or salty with what ever you want, meat, vegetables, or seafoods. In addition to the variety of congee, we also have Tofu Pudding as one of the important diets for Chinese breakfast that you may never heard before. It is a kind tofu that is very soft and tastes like pudding that made from raw beans. While, depend on deferent regions in China, people like different flavor of tofu pudding. Generally, people from the North prefer salty tofu pudding, while people from South prefer sweet tofu pudding, besides, the tofu pudding also can be spicy, especially people from Sichuan love Spicy. Usually, we don't eat congee or tofu pudding alone, we have various side dishes to eat with. One of the traditional and typical snack is deep-fired dough slice. Just like its name, it is deep-fired sticks of dough. And it is great to eat with some soupy dishes, such as congee, tofu pudding, and soymilk. Another type of side dish that I love is steamed buns. It also has different flavors for you to change your choice everyday. Steamed buns are made from wheat flour. After fermentation, the buns have a spongy feel. The basic steamed bun (without any fillings) is called Mantou. It can be white made from wheat flour, brown made with wholemeal flour, or yellow made from corn flour. In addition to steamed buns, another famous Chinese cooking way is pan-frying. For example, the pan-fried buns called "Shengjian" and pan-fried dumplings called "Guotie" have crisp browned bottom, also have more juicy fillings. Shaomai is one of my favorite buns. It has thinner wrapper and different fillings than the buns that I have mentioned above. The most common fillings of shaomai are sticky rice, shiitake mushroom, and minced pork. Sticky rice as the basic ingredient of shaomai, you can replace the pork with other meat or seafoods, or you can make vegetarian shaomai. These are not all the dishes we eat for breakfast, there are many other delicious dishes such as various flavors of noodles, wonton (another type of dumpling), spring roll, egg pancake, and so on. Now, you know how different the Chinese breakfast and American Breakfast. Would you try Chinese breakfast? These video will teach you how to make these at home. Go to my Youtube page find the Chinese Breakfast playlist! Or you can just find a Chinese Restaurant to order these delicious dishes!
Thank you for your reading. See you next week! Happy Lunar New Year! January 28, 2017 is the first day of Lunar Calendar of the rooster year. In China, people start celebrating the most important festival-Spring Festival. Even I cannot celebrate it with my family, but I cannot miss one of the important cuisines during Chinese new year. That is dumpling! In Chinese we call it Jiao Zi "饺子“, which is a homonym for ”交子” meaning the moment of the transferring to new year. Thus, people always eat dumplings to celebrate the coming of new year. In addition, there is another explanation of eating dumplings: the shape of dumpling looks like gold ingots, thus it also symbolizes wealth. Nowadays, dumpling becomes a cuisine not only for festival, but a common daily dishes. Now, let's learn how make delicious dumplings! Depending on your taste, different fillings can be used to make dumplings. Today I am going to introduce you the dumpling with pork and cabbage I made with friends for the celebration of Chinese New Year. Ingredient: 1.5lb minced pork 6 leaves of cabbage,chopped dumpling wrappers minced ginger minced scallion, light soy sauce salt oil First Step: Make fillings: well mix pork, cabbage, ginger, and scallion all together (according to your taste, add appropriate ginger and scallion) Add 3 spoon of soy sauce Add half spoon salt Add half spoon oil Well mix the fillings again Second Step: Dampen the edges of the wrapper with water, scoop appropriate of filling on it. Then, click the following file to download a short video to learn how to wrap! Third Step: Put your beautiful dumplings on a large plate or container, remember to put powder as a base on the plate so that the dumplings will not stick on the plate, also do not put dumplings close to each other, avoiding them sticking on each other. Fourth Step: Put dumplings into boiled water and stir slowly with the back of a ladle. Once the dumplings float on the water, continue to boil about 1 minute using low heat. Then scoop out dumplings. Last Step! Enjoy it! Usually I like to eat it with vinegar, you also can make sauce depend on your taste. Thank you for your reading!
Visit my YouTube, click the playlist of "How to make dumplings", you will find the full video from CiCi Li to follow making dumplings. (The second video from Maggie Zhu will teach you how to make dumpling wrappers). |
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April 2017
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