Today's episode is a tale of palace intrigue,
scheming eunuchs, forged documents and of murder, mwahahaha.
That's right, today we are making yuanxiao, or
glutinous rice balls which are most often associated with the spring
lantern festival that closes out the Chinese New Year,
but the story of the source of our recipe
reads more like Game of Thrones. So today while I teach you how to make a 17th
century version of this well-loved dish, we will travel back to the twilight of
the Ming dynasty for one of the most sensational stories
of China's past, this time on Tasting History.
Today's recipe comes from the Zhuo Zhong Zhi by Liu Ruoyu,
a palace eunuch from the late Ming dynasty. Now I learned about this
document from watching Amanda Tastes which is a fantastic show
that really delves into Chinese cuisine. It''s all in Mandarin
but it's still worth watching even if you don't understand what she's saying
it's just beautiful, and there are of course
subtitles that you can watch as well so thank you to her and her channel for the
valuable insight into this recipe. Also a huge thank you
to Tasting History viewer Roy Chan for helping me with a lot of the
translations, really helping me with the history
research and for being so patient as he tried to teach me how to pronounce
all of this Mandarin. I didn't get most of it but I'm going to
try my best. "The cooking method uses glutinous rice
that has been ground into a fine powder. The filling comprises the flesh of
walnuts, and white sugar. Water is sprinkled on
the filling, and the balls are rolled around in flour
to form them. They are as big as walnuts. This is the
same as what the people of the Jiangnan region called
tangyuan." Now Liu doesn't actually give us the name of the dish, he only tells us
what people in the South call the dish so we can extrapolate that it is yunxiao
which is still served at the end of the Chinese New Year. Today
they're made with all sorts of fillings, but the most common are black sesame
seeds, red bean paste or peanut butter, and the
really only difference between the Northern version
and the Southern version are how they're actually made.
The ingredients tend to stay the same but in the North they're done as Liu
describes, and they're going to be rolled in rice flour to build up the outside
whereas in the South the rice flour is actually made into a
paste, and wrapped around the filling. There's actually a really great story
about the two names, it might not be true but it's just too
good not to share. So the first President of China in the
early 20th century was a man named Yuan Shikai, and he really
hated the name yuanxiao because just like in english
there are homonyms, and yuanxiao can refer to this food or
the festival, but it can also mean remove yuan,
who was him, as in remove him from office so he
really preferred people use the Southern term rather than the Northern,
but regardless of what you call them here is what you'll need to make them.
1 1/4 cup or about 140 grams of walnuts, one half cup or 100 grams of sugar, 4
tablespoons or 57 grams melted lard or melted butter, 4 cups or
450 grams of glutinous rice flour, and some water. Now
in her video Amanda actually talks about how often in
the Ming dynasty they would have used rose petals as
flavoring for things like this, and in her video she makes a wonderful
rose petal jam so if you want to i'll link to that
video, and you can go watch her make it and maybe put some rose
flavoring in these for yourself. I'm going to just follow the recipe as
is and keep to just the nuts and the sugar now if you have kids at
home really encourage you to make this recipe with them because
the process of making them is actually a lot of fun, and most of it is kid-friendly,
maybe not the boiling and maybe not this very first part but
everything in the middle. So first heat a pan over medium heat,
and toss your walnuts in to give them a little toasting.
You want to make sure to move them around fairly regularly because if they
stay in one place too long they can burn. Once they're lightly
toasted, just browned a little bit, take them out and let them
cool once they're cool you want to crush them up
almost to a powder. You can start with your hands, just making them into small
pieces but then you can either use a mortar and
pestle but I really suggest just using a blender if you have it, or a food
processor rather, it's going to save you a lot of time. Now
if you don't get the nuts all the way to a powder that's okay.
They do need to be fairly fine though because we're going to be making a paste
of sorts with this, and if they're big chunks it's just not
going to hold together. Now put the nuts into a medium bowl and add your sugar
and your melted lard or butter, and mix until you have a nice paste and
that's all you need to do for the filling it's way, way easy but
it's going to be almost impossible to form these into little balls right now.
so it's best if you put it either in the freezer for about 15 minutes or in the
fridge for an hour or two just so the fat can harden up a little
bit it's going to make it a lot easier to roll.
Once the filling is nice and firm take a piece and form it into a ball.
Now according to the original recipe after adding the flour
these are supposed to be about the size of a walnut so you want the filling to
be quite a bit smaller than tha,t just bite
sized. So once you get the filling formed into little balls i got about a dozen
out of this, it's time to start the laborious but fun
process of adding the flour to them. I think
this is the part that the kids are going to like because
I really had a great time doing it and I tend to like what kids like,
so yeah. So the original document says to sprinkle water on the filling and then
roll it in the flour but recipes back then sometimes not
terribly great as we know, so i'm going to follow the modern method
because sprinkling didn't work. The modern method you dip them in water
and it worked. So you'll need two large bowls
and to make life a little easier it's good if you have either a slotted spoon
or a strainer. Then fill one bowl with water and fill
the other with your glutinous rice flour. Then place the balls in the
flower and roll them around until they are well covered.
Now on the streets in China they make these,
and they have these huge round things that have just a little bit of flour on
the bottom, and they swirl them around so if you
have one of those way cool it looks like a lot of fun,
I didn't so I did it in a bowl, but gosh if you have one of those big round
things use that. Once they're covered in the
flour either place them into the water like I did or if you have a strainer
probably easier. I actually forgot to use a strainer but the easiest thing is
going to be to put the balls in the strainer and
then dip it in the water, and then you can just get it out. Otherwise I had to
use a slotted spoon which worked just fine. Now
you might think well this is going to wash off all of the rice flour and it
seems like it but it's so sticky that a little bit stays on there,
and we're gonna do this seven times, maybe more if you need it
but seven was enough for me. Seven times building up the outside a
little bit at a time. So once you take them out of
the water put them back in the rice flour and roll them around again,
and then back in the water they go. Like I said
seven times, and by that seventh time you should have a nice coating
of rice flour around the filling. You shouldn't be able to see the filling at
all. So it's going to take a little while but
that's great because that means it's time for history.
First our cast of characters: our villain Wei Zhongxian or Wei for short; his
scheming sidekicks Madame Ke and Li Youngzhen, the dim-witted
Tianqi emperor and the less dim-witted
Chongzhen emperor, and our hero and author of our recipe
Liu Ruouyu or Liu for short. Now let us begin our
story where so many wonderful stories begin
with an evil and scheming eunuch, Wei Zhongxian. So something to know about Chinese
history is that eunuchs were an incredibly
important part of imperial life. They were often the most
powerfu,l trusted or mistrusted people serving
the empero. In fact when the emperor put a call out that he would need
eunuchs thousands of men would have themselves
castrated in the hope that they could then go serve the emperor.
Unfortunately they usually didn't need that many so you know a lot of people
didn't get the job. It's kind of like that time that I got a really
short buzz cut for an audition and still didn't get the part.
It's just a little more permanent, but it hurts nonetheless.
And that's what happened with Wei Zhongxian, he had himself castrated
to enter imperial life. Though there are stories of the reason that he did it was
actually to get away from gambling debts, so not a
very auspicious start, but regardless of why he did it he did
pretty well for himself getting to be in the inner circle of the imperial family,
and even becoming a sort of father figure to Zhu Youjiao who at the tender
age of 15 became the Tianqi emperor, and that's when things took a
bit of a turn for the worse. Worse than the self-castration even
because Wei and the emperor's wet nurse Madame Ke
ended up taking over the court, and not in the most pleasant of ways.
Madame Ke imprisoned the emperor Zhu's concubines, and starved them to death
and Wei forced one of the emperor's closest advisors to commit
suicide. Then the pair made sure to keep the emperor illiterate,
keeping him busy with things like hunting and woodworking rather than
matters of state while they took over control of the
government. Wei installed all of the most loyal eunuchs,
loyal to him, into high positions of power
and he created a eunuch private guard. He also took over the Eastern Depot
which was kind of a secret police with inquisitorial powers
based in the Forbidden City. Anyone who dared stand up to Wei was put on trial,
and almost always found guilty and executed,
or sometimes they were just beaten to death because who has time for a trial?
Then with the help of eunuch groups with cool names like the Five
Tigers and the Ten Dogs, he had all of the academies around the kingdom
shut down and those were the places that fostered free thinking and political
discussion, didn't want any of that. Instead he
endorsed people building shrines to him, good times. It's in this climate
that the hero of our story Liu finds himself
rising in the ranks of the palace eunuchs. See at the age of 16 Liu had had
a strange dream. That's all that we know, just a strange dream
that caused him to castrate himself or have himself castrated, it's unclear,
so he could enter palace life. I've never had a dream that has caused me to do
something so dramatic, but you know teenagers.
Anyway in his early years at the palace his main focus of study
was the search for immortality. Immortal Eunuch,
a new fragrance by Calvin Klein. And while he would never achieve immortality
in the way that he thought he would achieve it through his writings
because of Liu's upbringing in a military family
he had something that very few eunuchs had, literacy. And it was
this facility with calligraphy that got him to where he was but it also
stirred the ire of some jealous people including Weu
Zhongxian himself. Liu ended up being demoted to
work in the stables and that's when he gave himself the moniker
Ruoyu which means "The Dumb", because he figured
staying silent and not showing off too much
was probably a better way to get ahead. And it did serve him better because a
few years later Wei recalled him to put him under the tutelage of his
right-hand man Li Youngzhen, and that is where poor Liu really made his
fateful mistake. See it seems that Li Youngzhen had come
into possession of a number of documents that had the emperor's seal on them but
that's all that they had on them, nothing else they were blank. It would be
like having a bunch of letterhead from the White House with the president's
signature on it, and nothing else. You could fill in the
blanks however you wanted, all the better for Wei to govern without
the emperor's consent, and Liu knew this and
probably helped to fill out some of these
documents because he was so good at writing.
And that's all hunky-dory until the emperor dies a few years later,
and a new and a little bit smarter emperor takes the throne.
After a few months on the throne the new Chongzhen emperor found Wei
guilty of numerous crimes, and banished him
but because Wei had become so powerful, I mean this eunuch
kind of ruled the kingdom, the emperor thought you know what you could probably
stir a revolt against me so how about come back to the Forbidden
City, and i'm going to imprison you. Wei was not having that so instead he
committed suicide and his body was mutilated and put out
on display by the emperor. Madame Ke was whipped to death
and Li Youngzhen was executed, and Liu was supposed to be executed
as well but for some reason he ended up just going to prison,
and he was there for at least 12 years while he wrote the Zhuo Zhong Zhi.
The first part of the document is written as sort of a mea culpa.
Kind of a oh my gosh how could I be naive, I didn't know what was going on
you guys *nervous chuckle misunderstanding. Even though he probably
did know what was going on because he was a really smart guy, but you know
he got to write his story so he's the hero,
but it's the rest of the document that really gave Liu Ruoyu his immortality.
Emulating the style of Sima Qian, author of the Shiji
and father of Chinese history Liu documented
life in the Forbidden City like few others could, or
few others ever did. Daily rituals, clothing,
ceremonies and of course recipes just like our glutinous rice balls
which should be all formed and ready to boil.
So once the balls are all covered in flour go ahead and put a large pot of
water on the stove and set it to boiling. Then put the balls
in five or six at a time depending on the size of your pot.
They're going to swell up just a little bit so make sure to have plenty of room.
Leave them boiling until they float up to the top, takes about two or three
minutes. Then add a cup of cold water to the hot
water which will help keep the skin intact.
The balls will sink down just a bit and the water will probably stop boiling
so let them go for another couple minutes until the water boils again,
and the balls float to the top. At this point you can take them out,
and they're ready to eat. It's good practice to put a little bit of the
water in with the balls especially if you're not going to eat them right away
just so they don't dry out. And there are our yuanxiao. I think
they're so cool looking. They kind of puff up a little bit.
The Southern version where they're wrapped they tend to be much smoother
but I kind of like the the puffiness of of these .
I'm sure they're both very good and they should probably taste pretty much the
same. I'm using chopsticks to pick mine up
because they're very, very sticky. I tried with my fingers and um
my fingers just kind of got stuck in with the balls so
if you have chopsticks great, if not use a fork.
That is so fun.
What a wonderful little dish, I love it. The kids are gonna love these.
The sticky rice, they are STICKY. Even inside my mouth it's like it's
gooey, and wonderful, and definitely eat them warm. You know eat
them right away. Absolutely fantastic. So the flavor is
wonderful. You know I mean, you can't really taste the rice so
it's really walnuts and sugar. What's not to like? But what's fun is the
texture, that outside the they're really, really,
really, really stick. My mouth is like hmmm. The outside has this
sort of skin like I mentioned that you don't want to break because
it's fun to break it with your teeth. There's some, there's some give to it,
and then it just kind of snaps and then
the inside is so different because
it's it's kind of smooth, but it's also a little gritty because of the sugar and
the and the nuts, and everything. I think if
you use some of the more modern in inserts. Inserts? Some of the more
modern fillings, they're going to ooze more. This
is not really oozing. It's warm and it's soft but it's not like
flowing out, I hate that i've just said ooze so many times because that's
kind of gross. Whether you have kids or not you've got
to make these. They're so much fun to make, they're so much fun to eat.
They're delicious. I need to find a good Chinese restaurant around here
who who has more fillings because I want to try all the different kinds.
Yeah, wonderful. Now if you haven't subscribed already
please do so I can see you next time on Tasting History.