When I waked by a food booth on the street, I found a another traditional Chinese food out there for sale, which brings me up that the lantern festival is coming, so I bought 25 rice glue balls for dinner. The lantern festival is not a public holiday, but it is considered as a holiday for the end of the whole lunar new year celebration. Taking the rice glue ball is one of the tradition as well as showing the lantern and guessing the riddle. As modern or young people is very busy, the latter activity was de feto obsoleted in first tier city, only taking the food of rice glue ball was left because you can easily buy a rice glue ball product in the supermarket.
The rice glue ball, AKA, sweet dumpling, is a dessert like food, but with soup and hot boiling cooking way, the stuffing inside the rice glue ball can be various, but in general, it is sweet flavor, the usual stuffing would be Chocolate, assorted nuts powder with sugar, black sesame with sugar and mashed haw, etc.
The rice glue ball also have two varieties, which is, in northern China, the shell of ball would be made of rice powder, while in southern China the shell would be made of thick flour liquid. also the rice glue ball from northern China is bigger than from southern China. Check out the picture I take, which is the northern China style, usually the southern one is twice smaller than this.
Actually I don’t think it is tasty personally, because of way too sweet than I can take usually, but it can strongly remind me of the festival though, so when the festival coming, I always take some as a tradition.
How to cook it ?
Figure: A basin of water to heat
Figure: Boiling the water
Figure: Put the rice glue ball into the boiled water
Figure: It would take about 10 mins to make the ball float, at the mean time, you have to make a stir to the water to keep ball from charing at the bottom
Figure: There we go, put them into a bowl
Figure: Inside out looking