Tag: food

Tong Yuan (Dongzhi)

Tong Yuan is a must have recipe during the Northern winter solstice that falls around 22 Dec. It signifies family cohesiveness.

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-ingredients

  • A cup of glutinous rice flour
  • 1/4 cup of warm or boiling water

-method

  1. Add 1/4 cup warm or boiling water to the glutinous rice flour
  2. Knead until consistent and not sticky to hand
  3. If not enough water, add sparingly.
  4. If too sticky, add flour
  5. Pinch off a bit and roll into a ball
  6. Place it on a tray
  7. Repeat
  8. Prepare boiling water on a saucepan
  9. Throw in kneaded balls into boiling water
  10. Let it cook in boiling water
  11. Dongzhi is cooked when they are floating in water

Malt syrup

Malt syrup is derived from concentrated pre-fermented germinated/malted barley wort (i.e. liquid extracted from mashing process).

Process involves

  1. Sprout grain, e.g. barley
  2. Mill
  3. Mash
  4. Mash separation
  5. Wort boiling
  6. Flavoured with hops
  7. Concentrate
  8. Sterilized before storage

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Fig. 1 Flavourful malt syrup (pic from joepastry.com)

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Fig. 2 barley sprouting increases sweetness (pic from thefreshloaf.com)

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Sprouting sweetens grains because of the breakdown of carbohydrate into smaller sugar molecules (nourichedkitchen.com).

Use of malt syrup or extract in beer brewing (beerandbrewing.com).