February 9th is the Lantern Festival and signals the end of the Chinese Lunar New Year. It falls on the fifteenth day of the first month of the lunar year when the full moon hangs in the night sky like a giant, glowing ornament.
As is true with every Chinese festival there is a special food that accompanies the celebration. On Lantern Festival we eat small glutinous rice balls known as yuan xiao or tang yuan.
The white rice balls hold sweet fillings made from either sweet red bean paste, white or black sesame paste or ground peanuts. The rice balls are boiled in water and served hot in the water in which they were cooked then garnished with, you guessed it, candied osmanthus flowers. The rice ball’s round shape and white color resemble the full moon and symbolize togetherness and happiness.
Frozen rice balls are readily available in Chinese markets. Some are imported from Taiwan or China and come in a variety of flavors, mostly sweet. They are very easy to prepare, simply drop them,frozen (no need to thaw), into boiling water and when they float to the surface they are ready! Serve them hot.
My personal favorites are the ones filled with peanut paste and I’m going to have a bowl of them tonight.
Happy Lantern Festival!
Copyright 2009 Helen Chen. All rights reserved.
ABOUT HELEN CHEN
Like so many of us, Helen Chen learned to cook at her mother's side. But few of us had a mother like Joyce Chen. Helen grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her mother prepared the authentic dishes of her native Shanghai and Beijing with the sort of regularity the rest of us came to expect of macaroni and cheese or meatloaf.
"I remember when I was little, watching my mother prepare meals for family and friends. I once wrote a list of my favorite Chinese dishes," Helen recalls, "I came up with 150 recipes. I do not have one or two favorites. All the dishes on the list are traditional and all are ones that I learned from my mother. That is what I love most about Chinese food: its variety. Taste, texture and color all come into play, as does personality and culture. I think this is what cooking is all about."
Soft spoken and intensely intelligent, Helen Chen was born in Shanghai and moved to the U.S. with her family while still a baby. Helen grew up, as she describes it, in a traditional Chinese-American household. "When I was young I wanted to be totally American," she remembers. "It wasn't until I was in high school that I realized how lucky I was to have two cultures."
Today, Helen Chen is a widely acknowledged expert in Chinese cooking. Besides her role as an educator and cookbook author, she also is a corporate spokesperson and business consultant to the house wares industry. In 2007 she created and developed a new line of Asian kitchenware under the brand name Helen’s Asian Kitchen®, expressly for Harold Import Company in New Jersey.
Having been born in China and raised and educated in the United States, Helen brings the best of both worlds to her approach to the art of Chinese cuisine. She understands the needs of the American cook as only a native can, yet she is intimately knowledgeable in the culinary practices and philosophy of China.
In her active role as a teacher and educator, Helen teaches Chinese cuisine at Boston University; and, through the Anderson Foundation’s enrichment program ‘Cooking Up Culture’ she teaches Boston area school children from grades 1-12 about Chinese cuisine and culture. She also teaches Asian cuisine in numerous cooking schools across the country.
Helen has lectured to various professional and culinary organizations such as the International Association of Culinary Professionals, Boston University Seminars in the Arts and Culinary Arts, Oldways Preservations and Exchange Trust, Small Business Development Center, The Culinary Historians of Boston, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs and the Culinary Guild of New England. In addition, she conducts culinary tours of Boston’s Chinatown and is a frequent guest chef at cooking schools around the U.S.
Helen is the author of Helen Chen’s Chinese Home Cooking (Hearst Books, 1994), Peking Cuisine (Orion Books,1997) and Helen’s Asian Kitchen: Easy Chinese Stir-Fries (John Wiley & Sons, 2009). A second book in the Helen’s Asian Kitchen series, Helen’s Asian Kitchen: Easy Asian Noodles is scheduled for publication in January, 2010.
February 9th is the Lantern Festival and signals the end of the Chinese Lunar New Year. It falls on the fifteenth day of the first month of the lunar year when the full moon hangs in the night sky like a giant, glowing ornament.
Frozen rice balls are readily available in Chinese markets. Some are imported from Taiwan or China and come in a variety of flavors, mostly sweet. They are very easy to prepare, simply drop them,frozen (no need to thaw), into boiling water and when they float to the surface they are ready! Serve them hot.
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