Tang Yuen

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Tang Yuen with Palm Sugar Soup + Pandan Leaves + Ginger


Tang Yuen literally means round (glutinous rice) balls in a soup and Malaysian Chinese usually make and eat Tang Yuen during Dong Zhi/Winter Solstice Festival around December 22. When I was younger, my mom always make this soup a couple of months before Chinese New Year, and told me that I'll be one year older after eating Tang Yuen. I still don't understand why I'll be one year older after Dong Zhi, but I just love eating them.

There are alot of different varieties of Tang Yuen - there are the ones with peanut fillings, black sesame fillings or red bean paste fillings. I like my Tang Yuen plan and simple, but I have to have them in palm sugar soup with Pandan leaves (screwpine leaves) and ginger. My mom reminded me over the phone yesterday that I have to prepare Tang Yuen, so I made some today. Happy Dong Zhi Festival!

2 comments:

Rachel Eva Barcelona said...

Hi Sarah,

It's so cool to see a fellow Malaccan starting up a food blog like this. I really enjoy reading all your blogs and food & restaurant reviews all over the world. Your interest and passion in food is so addictive. I am starting to plan my holidays around food restaurants now :) And you definitely have the talent in photography also. All your pictures look so scrumptious and delicious. It's bad whenever i visit as it makes me miss Malacca even more but it also has the other effect of making me wanting to travel more around the world to all those places and restaurants where you have tried and tested those food :)

Saz, i have a question regarding your tang yuen recipe. I am looking at making some soon and wish to ask for a few pointers- Firstly, with your dough, do you just mix it with water from the tap or do you need semi-warm water? And do you add sugar to it or a dash of oil? I help my nanna made them ages ago and all i can remember from the experience was just how fun it was and being a kid, my cousins and i were moulding the dough into animal shapes rather than balls *LOL... I didn't pay much attention into what goes into the dough unfortunately. And do you just slice up some palm sugar and add it to the boiling water with screwpine leaves and also ginger?

I would appreciate your advice on this :) Thanks.

p/s: you can email me at lauryn.j@gmail.com

Otherwise, i'll be sure to check this blog for your response :)

Sarah and Gan said...

Hi Rachel, thanks for your kind words for our blog! It is our pleasure to be able to share our passion for food with you and our other readers!

For the Tang Yuen, I use hot tap water to prepare the dough (yeap, it hurts abit, but the dough will turn out nicer) -- mixing glutinous rice flour with hot tap water slowly until the dough is created. I don’t add anything else other than the red coloring on half of the dough and kneading it until the color is evenly mixed. For the “tong sui”, I melt about a block of Gula Melaka in a small pot over low heat with some water, a few slices of ginger and some screw pine leaves.

Hope this helps, Rachel! I think I might make some too, having cravings for Tang Yuen now!

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