冬至

It was a fine Saturday afternoon when someone (that would be me) realized this day, 22 Dec, signifies the "start of winter". As Chinese, we ought to somehow celebrate this day even though OZ is at the southern hemisphere where winter is still another 6 months from now. 22 Dec is also the day with the longest period of daylight, known as the Winter Solstice.

We decided to make 汤圆 from scratch. As we hunt for our ingredients in Box Hill market, we accidentally came across a stall that sells nice 奶皇包 and 莲蓉包. Box Hill was so crowded with Chinese that it felt like KL or HK in some way. We had a hard time finding the glutinous flour as there were only a few packs left and they were covered with the overloaded goods next to it. Eventually we were all satisfied with the main ingredients including some pandan-flavoured green colouring as well as the pink colouring.

We started kneading the flour, added the colourings and molded them into different shapes and objects. I did one with spiderman head (photo below), a dice with fallen dots (numbers), Ern did a pyramid while NH molded a white object-not-to-be-named. But most of the 汤圆 I made were stuffed with crushed peanuts and sugar.


Important ingredients in making 汤圆: Glutinous flour, gula melaka, peanuts, sugar, water, ginger, colouring and the dough kneading skill


There are two ways of serving 汤圆, one with the ginger + gula melaka soup, and the other served dry sprinkled with chopped peanuts and sugar. The latter seems to be a variation of Mochi 麻糬, only it is not as sticky. Perhaps we will try making a different type filled with sesame paste and/or using black sesame soup for 元宵 i.e. first full moon after Chinese New Year. Maria will then again have the honour of tasting our experimental products which we believe will again be better than the frozen, ready-made 汤圆 she got from the Asian supermarkets.