Jian Duy
By: Jenny Richards
Published: Wednesday, December 9, 2009 - 10:05pm

Ingredients




1/2 package glutinous rice flour
 cup water
2 sticks ‘brown candy’ (raw Chinese sugar)
1 cup water
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
Hot oil for frying

Preparation

1 Put the rice flour in a medium bowl and ‘divide’ into quarters (use your fingers to mark the flour into 4 quarters). 2 Take out 1/4 of the rice flour and mix it with ~1/3 c water – enough that it comes together but is still very sticky. Set aside. 3 In a saucepan, combine ~1 c water with the 2 sticks of brown candy. Boil until dissolved completely. 4 Using your fingers, pull the sticky dough into little strips and poach them in the dissolved sugar water. Cook them for 5 – 7 minutes. 5 Meanwhile, add 1 tsp granulated sugar to the remaining rice flour and stir to combine. 6 Add the cooked and sugared dough to the dry ingredients and use your hands to combine. Add the remaining sugar syrup to bring the dough together. If you think you’re going to need more water, add water to the syrup and mix it lightly before continuing to add it to the dough (make sure you’re not adding plain water to the dough). 7 The resulting dough should be fairly dry but pliable. You can add a little water if it’s too dry. Cover with a moist towel for the rest of the steps. 8 Shape the dough. 9 Take a small ball of dough and shape it into a little bowl. 10 Try hard to keep the thickness of the dough consistent. 11 Gather the sides of the bowl to create a purse or balloon shape. Blow into it and pinch it shut immediately. Remove the excess dough. 12 Fry the ball in hot oil until golden brown. You can push the ball down into the hot oil (which will make it look like it’s deflating), but it will re-inflate unless you puncture the dough. Turn frequently – you should be able to tell which side of your balloon has thicker walls, because the ball will try to settle in the oil onto that side. You have to keep turning it or basting it with hot oil.

About


On the dim sum carts, you’ll see fried sesame balls, and sometimes other deep-fried pastries filled with pork and black mushrooms. The outsides are crispy, but the dough is chewy, almost akin to mochi, if you know what that is. Well this pastry uses the same dough and it’s deep-fried too, but instead of being filled with red bean or lotus seed or meat, it’s actually hollow and inflated like a balloon before it’s fried. When it actually hits the hot oil, the air trapped inside expands and it inflates, thinning the walls of the pastry to form a still-chewy but not-so-gummy structure.
This recipe and technique came from my grandmother. She'd only made it once in the past 30 years and I was afraid my generation wouldn't know how to do this once her generation was gone. This recipe is used for very special occasions, and I'm told that to get the shape wrong spells bad luck, so that's why she didn't make it very often.