TTFeb: A favorite food from your childhood

[superborb]

forestofglory prompted: A favorite food from your childhood?

 

One of my favorite foods as a child was black sesame tangyuan. They're black sesame paste surrounded by a sticky rice wrapper (like mochi, but boiled), and my grandma served them with osmanthus flowers in the hot, slightly thickened water used to boil them.

 

Today is the Lantern Festival, when traditionally, tangyuan are eaten. (Date chosen on purpose, obviously.) In Chinese, one of the names for the holiday is Yuanxiao Jie; while technically yuanxiao are not the same as tangyuan, they're pretty similar. (Yuanxiao are formed by shaking the filling in the sweet rice flour to form layers of the outside; tangyuan are formed by wrapping the dough around the filling.)

 

As a small child, I didn't know what tangyuan were called, but I DID know the insides and outsides were distinct and the inside especially was delicious. So I called it 东西里的东西 'the stuff inside stuff'. (I also didn't know what nori was called, so I called it 绿的辣辣 'the green spicy'. I do not know why I thought nori was spicy?)

 

TBH, after several homemade batches--where objectively the elements are better than storebought, the sesame paste more roasty toasty, the wrapper more delicately tender--I've decided that I should probably just buy storebought because I think that's what I actually want. Possibly if I use the Nice Lard my mom renders, that would tip the scales? But I’m using butter in lieu of mediocre storebought lard, and it’s just so... buttery. I made the fillings here around half the size they ought to be to compensate.

Anyway, here is today’s tangyuan, black sesame filling with jiuniang and osmanthus soup:

 

And some in-progress pics:

 

 

 

 

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Comments

[chestnut_pod]

Wow, these look so tasty *_*

[nnozomi]

东西里的东西 is adorable lol, and those look wonderful. (I'm not a big fan of mochi/sticky rice dough, so I would probably end up eating all the black sesame paste before the 元宵 ever reached their final form...).

[adevyish]

I haven’t made sesame filling from scratch, but I have made azuki/mung bean paste where I substitute vegetable oil (rather than butter) for lard and it seems to work out fine?

[superborb]

They're so good!

[superborb]

Black sesame paste as a spread on fresh bread is... a form I've had it in before when I got too lazy to make another batch of dough and wrap them all ^^;

[superborb]

Unfortunately, I don't think it'd work-- unlike in bean pastes, here the lard/butter is serving a structural purpose (solid at room temp) and is a much higher percentage of the paste as a result.

[cortue]

The stuff inside stuff is so cute :D. And those look very tasty

[superborb]

<3!

[lirazel]

That sounds so good!

[superborb]

<3!

[forestofglory]

Those look delicious! I'm impressed!

[superborb]

<3!