While getting back home, the farmer started to think about what food he should bring to Chen. Accidentally, he stepped on a clump of wormwood and slipped down. After he got up, he saw his hands and knees were covered with something green and glittering. Suddenly, he got a great idea. He picked up some wormwood back home, washed and boiled them completely to get the liquid. Then he added the liquid from the wormwood into some glutinous rice flour and made some green rice dangos (mi tuan zi, something similar to rice dumplings). Next, he took those green rice dangos covered with some green grass to Chen, dodging the soldier’s check. Chen Taiping ate the dangos, and thought that they tasted very delicious and chewy, but not sticky with teeth. At night, Chen returned safely to Taiping army. Afterwards, Chen Taiping told his superior about his experience and the dangos. The superior thought it very helpful, and therefore made a command which required all soldiers to learn how to make the green rice dango (which is now called qing tuan) for self-protection. Thus, the tradition of eating qing tuan becomes widely spread.
Recipe:
Ingredients:
Wormwood (ai cao) 500g
Red bean (hong dou) 500g
Glutinous rice flour (nuo mi fen) 250g
Peanut oil (hua sheng you) 30ml
Rock candy (bing tang) 50g
Leaf (zong ye) 10 pieces
Dietary alkali (shi yong jian) 5g
Salt (yan) 5g
- Wash the red beans and put them in a big bowl. Add enough water (exceed the surface of the red beans about 3 cm) and soak for 10 hours.
- Add a sufficient amount of water in the skillet (the ratio of water to the red beans is about 3:1). Add the soaked red beans. Boil the water with high heat. Once the water gets boiled, turn to small heat and boil it for another 40 minutes. Be sure that you need to add water only in one step. The quality of the red beans will be affected if you add water during the process.
- Add the rock candy, put the lid on it and cook it for another 20 minutes.
- Wait until the water in the skillet is almost dried out. Take away the lid, and slowly stir the red beans with a spoon to avoid the red beans getting over cooked. When there is little water and the red beans become soft and completely boiled, turn off the heat.
- Pour the boiled red beans into a blender and make them into red bean powder, and then pour them into a bowl.
- Put 30ml peanut oil into the pan to make the pan slippery. When it gets 60 percent heated, add the red beans and stir-fry them until the water gets evaporated and the red beans become paste.
- After the fried red beans get cooled down, rub them into small dumplings with approximately diameter 2.
- Wash the wormwood. Add about 1000ml of water and salt into the skillet and boil it.
- Add the wormwood and boil them for a while to remove their bitterness.
- Put the wormwood into a juicer. Add 250ml of water. Squeeze the wormwood into a kind of green juice.
- Add the green juice into the skillet. Add 5g dietary alkali. Boil it.
- Put the glutinous rice flour into a big bowl. Add the boiled green juice to the flour and stir them.
- Knead the mixture. If the paste feels sticky, add a little more flour and rub them together until it is no longer sticky.
- Add enough water to the steamer. Place a piece of wet gauze on the layer of the steamer.
- Wash the leaves. Cut them into 5 cm long. Evenly place them on the layer.
- Get some oil on your hands. Make the paste into smaller pieces.
- Take one small piece, rub it into a ball. Use your thumb to press a pit.
- Put a red bean ball inside and seal it. Softly rub it into a ball again.
- Coat some oil on the surface of the finished ball, and softly place it on a leaf in the steamer.
- Repeat steps 17-19.
- Steam it for about 7 minutes using high heat.