IT
WOULD BE EASY to mistake a
picture of a bowl of the Chinese
tangyuan for our very own rosogolla. In
appearance, there is little that
differentiates one from the other. Like
the rosogolla, the tangyuan too
comprises small dough balls — as small
as a marble or as large as a ping-pong
ball — submerged in a syrup. And yet,
the two dishes are very
different.
This becomes
apparent when you consider what the
tangyuan is made of — glutinous rice
flour kneaded gently with a little warm
water. This is just the outer wrapping,
which takes on a soft, chewy and
slippery texture when cooked. The water
in which the tangyuan is boiled is
usually a thin, ginger and rock
sugar-infused syrup.
The tangyuan
wrappers are mostly white in colour, but
the rice flour can be kneaded with food
dye or natural colours (such as from
beetroot juice or pandan leaves) added
to the dough to impart a delightful
range of hues to the dumplings. These
colours too hold certain significance:
white means kinship, red stands for joy,
pink - love, yellow for wealth and green
for health, blue for professional
success, and purple for wisdom.
Beyond the
dough wrapper, the tangyuan contains its
true treasure within: a sweet, nutty and
semi-liquid filling. The most common
fillings have either peanuts or toasted
black sesame seeds mixed with a helping
of sugar and lard. However, variations
abound as people have moved towards
fruits, jam, chocolate, pumpkin seeds,
red bean paste and a whole lot more for
their tangyuan fillings. Its consistency
is key, so tangyuan is always served in
a bowl with a spoonful or two of the hot
syrup it has been boiled in: in this
way, the filling remains gooey as you
eat it.
Tangyuan
needn't always be sweet: they can be
savoury too. In which case, the filling
uses horseradish or meat, and the
dumplings are boiled in a delicately
flavoured soup or broth. This harks to
the direct translation of "tangyuan"
into English: "soup balls". However, in
Chinese, the pronunciation for tangyuan
is a homonym for the phrase (tuan
yuan) that means "togetherness"
or "reunion", and so the dish occupies
pride of place at festive celebrations
like the Chinese New Year and Lantern
Festival in February, but also other
joyous occasions like
birthdays and weddings,
as well as during Dongzhi in December —
the winter solstice festival.
There are a
couple of origin stories tracing the
tangyuan's early iterations. One fable
credits the sweet's present status to a
young maiden who lived during the Han
dynasty, and was pressed into service at
the imperial palace. She yearned to
visit her family, residing in a
far-flung province, but according to the
palace's rules, this seemed well nigh
impossible. A kindly minister at court
observed her homesickness and suggested
a solution. He advised her to prepare
the best possible tangyuan she could and
serve it to the Emperor and Empress. If
they were impressed with her dessert,
they might be inclined to grant her
leave to visit home.
The maid —
whose name was Yuan Xiao — followed the
minister's advice and prepared a batch
of beautifully formed, coloured and
flavoured tangyuan. The Emperor was
pleased with her efforts, and told Yuan
Xiao she would be granted a wish. When
she expressed her heartfelt yearning to
return home, she was immediately given
royal permission to do so. And so it is
that tangyuan became synonymous with the
idea of homecomings, family and
togetherness.
Now, there is
a dish that is actually called
"yuan xiao", which is considered the
tangyuan's northern sibling (or
according to some sources, the very same
dish). However, it differs from the
tangyuan in preparation, fillings and so
on. An apocryphal story holds that the
Chinese leader Yuan Shikai decreed that
the name of the sweet be changed from
yuan xiao to tangyuan, as the former
sounded too similar to "remove
Yuan" in Chinese.
Yet another
origin tale ascribes the dish's
existence to the Qing era, when Emperor
Qianlong lost his way during a journey
south of the River Yangtze. Separated
from his entourage, he stumbled into a
village and sought assistance at an old
woman's hut. With only a little
glutinous rice flour at home (and some
black sesame), the woman was at a loss
until she hit upon the idea of wrapping
sesame paste in a dough made of the rice
flour. These dumplings she boiled in
water and served to Qianlong. When the
Emperor asked the old woman what the
dish was called, she responded:
"tangyuan".
***
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