Glutinous Rice Balls

I had a crave to make my own glutinous rice balls when I saw the ready-made ones while shopping with Arthur at Cold Storage on Tuesday. So, here's an entry about my little adventures with glutinous rice balls.

It began on Wednesday with Ah Ma emptying my packet of glutinous flour on the huge traditionally red plate. After everything was out, she asked, "Are you sure you've got the right flour? Not make cake one hoh?" Laughingly, I went, "Ah?! Isn't it abit too late to confirm that with me, now that you have poured it all out? Hahaha." Anyway, I got the right flour.

The both of us dirtied our hands and tried hard to make the dough, but she gave up in the end and decided to call Fitri for help. Thankfully for Fitri, she reminded us of the secret ingredient, called kuay-ar, that we had forgotten. Since it is the secret ingredient, I shall not divulge the methods of making of it. (Trust me. This is not Kung Fu Panda. There IS a secret ingredient to make the balls more chewy...) Anyway, this is how the dough looked when we were done:

(These pictures are taken from a re-enactment. This piece of dough is version 2.0, made by Daddy and me at home...)

Next, we 'plucked' out tiny pieces of dough and formed them into balls.

To make the dish look better, we added colourings to the dough. I wanted to do blue, green, yellow and black ones. But Daddy, the wise assistant chef, advised me against it because they might look very 'lah-tar' (Hokkien word for Yucky!). Since I don't want to finish the whole pot of glutinous rice balls myself, I decided to stick with the safe old red in the end.

Two teaspoonful of artificial colouring did the magic.

The grand chef, (a.k.a. me), mixed the dough well and the colours were evenly spreaded out.

Next, we prepared the syrup by adding 4 pieces of coconut sugar into a quarter pot of water.

Having boiled a separate pot of water with pandan leaves, we threw in the glutinuous rice balls for cooking.

How did we know that the rice balls were ready? They would soften, puff up and float when cooked!

Here is a pot of yummy rice balls! Soft and chewy!

We used a 'holey' scoop to remove the rice balls from the boiling water when they were cooked to the core. Ah Ma had a larger 'holey' scoop, while Daddy's was more secular.

We transferred them into the pot of syrup.

And, TA-DA~ The glutinous rice balls are ready to be served. Want to try some? Come to Ah Ma house on Saturday, 16 May 2009! Once in a lifetime chance to eat 'eEe' (hokkien word for glutinous rice balls) made by me.

This is a dish packed with symbolic meaning. For instance, balls represented the reunion of the family and the syrup represented the sweetness of family communion. I had fun forming glutinous rice balls at Ah Ma house during my childhood days and I'm glad to have learnt the art of cooking this dish. Meaning, especially for me.