MUZIChinese Matrix
Lantern Festival · FFET10195
Glutinous rice balls for the 15th of the first lunar month: rolled in a basket in the north, wrapped as tangyuan in the south, with a Southern Song poem by Zhou Bida on cooking them.
A white porcelain plate holds round white glutinous rice balls in a small amount of pale-yellow liquid, with black sesame seeds visible and ginger among the balls, with wooden chopsticks resting beside the plate.
The full moon of the first month: a night of lanterns that closes the New Year season
Yuanxiao are glutinous rice balls eaten at the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first lunar month. Northern yuanxiao are usually shaken in a basket to build up layers around a solid sweet filling, while southern tangyuan are wrapped and served in broth or syrup. Volume 43 of the collected works of the Southern Song statesman Zhou Bida contains a poem whose title speaks of cooking floating dumplings on Lantern Festival night. The consulted text gives no year for it.
Yuanxiao are glutinous rice balls eaten at the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first lunar month. Northern yuanxiao are usually shaken in a basket to build up layers around a solid sweet filling, while southern tangyuan are wrapped and served in broth or syrup.2,3
Volume 43 of the collected works of the Southern Song statesman Zhou Bida contains a poem whose title speaks of cooking floating dumplings on Lantern Festival night and says earlier poets seem not to have written on this. The consulted text gives no year for the poem.1
The balls are eaten at the Lantern Festival across China. Ningbo has black sesame tangyuan made by the diaojiang method of water-grinding the rice.3
Southern black sesame tangyuan are made by toasting and crushing black sesame, mixing it with sugar and lard into a filling, chilling it until firm, wrapping it in glutinous rice dough and boiling the balls until they float.5,6
The round shape symbolizes reunion, and the opening lines of Zhou Bida's poem also speak of reunion.1,4
Tangyuan are also eaten at the winter solstice and at weddings, and related foods exist in Vietnam, Malaysia and elsewhere.2,3
Legend has it that under Emperor Wu of Han there was a palace maid named Yuanxiao who was kept from her family. A minister played a trick that made the emperor fear the God of Fire would burn Chang'an, and her rice balls were offered to calm the god. The Lantern Festival is said to come from this.
Told in: A tale of the Han court, told in the English Wikipedia article on tangyuan as a story behind the Lantern Festival; no dated original text was found.
Grandma Li
This is a simplified home version, not the traditional restaurant method.
This is the black sesame tangyuan I make at home. It is the southern tangyuan, wrapped by hand, and not the northern yuanxiao rolled in a basket; the two published recipes I looked at, by two different authors, are both southern black sesame tangyuan too. The filling mix of black sesame, sugar and lard, chilling it for about 15 minutes and the ginger in the syrup follow the recipe with a ginger syrup, while boiling until the balls float and then 1 to 2 minutes more follows the recipe whose filling includes peanuts. The glutinous rice flour follows the recipe with a ginger syrup, and the other amounts are my own choices at home, between the two recipes.
Allergens: sesame, milk
