Patron Exclusive Recipe #20 Savory Sticky Rice Ball Soup with Chicken and Shiitake Mushroom (咸汤圆/咸丸)

Hey, guys. Happy Lunar New Year. It turns out to be a highly unusual new year holiday with the current event... But life goes on and luckily we're well stocked up at home with cooking ingredients. (Btw, I'm trying to record everything we made during this period and see what we end up whipping up, I think it'd be a fun project given that there's not much else to do in this situation. I'll post to Discord and/or Instagram.)

So I made this dish with the idea of using up leftovers from Lunar New Year along with our recent Diabo video. This dish is a classic around some PRD cities, like Dongguan, while especially popular in the coastal area west of the Pearl River estuary. Like many other home-cooked dishes, there're many variations of this dish. I'm making the version that's from my grandma's ancestral hometown, Dongguan, using leftover salt-baked chicken, pork, shiitake mushroom as the main base for soup.  
Some other variants would use siu yuk (Cantonese roast pork), reconstituted dried squid, some other random dried seafood or vegetables, etc. The essence of it is using what's available after the big feast of Lunar New Year's eve.
Let's begin.

 **Ingredients** (Serves two)

1. A quarter of a salt-baked chicken, cut into 1-2 inch chunks. You can use white cut chicken, roast chicken, or even some turkey. 

2. Pork loin, about 50g, cut into slivers.

3. Four medium-size shiitake mushrooms, rinse then reconstituted with 3 cups of water for 2-3 hours, cut into strips. Keep the soaking liquid.

4. Four dried scallops, reconstituted, press and break into strings. (Reconstituting dried scallop is very fast, 1 hour would be sufficient. I usually just be lazy and toss it in with the mushrooms.)

5. The saved mushroom and scallop soaking liquid, about 3 cups.

6. Napa cabbage, 1 small head, about 200g-250g.

7. Garlic, 3 cloves. Crushed.

8. Ginger, 1-inch piece. Smashed.

9. Sticky rice flour, 80g.

10. Rice flour, 20g. (If you don't have rice flour, you can use straight-up sticky rice flour and it still won't be overly sticky given the small size of the balls. In this case, just use 100g sticky rice flour in total.)

11. Water. For making the sticky rice ball, 85g.

10. Seasoning: 1/2 tsp salt, 1tsp sugar, 1/8 tsp white pepper powder, a touch of MSG or fish sauce. 

  **Process**  

1. Cut the pork into slivers, marinate the pork with 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp sugar, 1/4 tsp soy sauce, 1/4 tsp Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing wine, 1/4 tsp corn starch. Mix well and coat it with 1/2 tsp oil. Set aside. 

(Coat with oil after mixing in the marinate)

2.  Cut the chicken into chunks, all the other ingredients into strips, and cut and separate out the napa cabbage's white part and the softer yellow part. 

(Separate the white and the yellow of the napa cabbage, the white needs a longer cooking time)

3. Now all the ingredients for the soup are prepped. We can start cooking. First, long yao. Get your wok pipping hot, shut off the heat, add in the oil, give it a swirl to get a nice non-stick surface. Now add in the garlic and ginger, quick fry till it smells very nice.

4. Add in the pork, quickly spread it out into one even layer. Let it cook on one side for half a minute, then flip and quickly cook the other side for another half a minute.

(Fry the pork slivers for half a minute on each side)

5. Scoop the pork to the side, add in the mushroom and dry scallop, quick mix, swirl in some Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing wine alone the side of the wok.

(Swirl in Liaojiu, a.k.a., Shaoxing wine)

6. Add in the three cups mushroom soaking liquid. 

(Carefully add in the clear liquid and toss the sediments at the bottom. Top with a touch more water if you end up tossing too much liquid with the sediment.)

7. Add in the poultry, bring the soup to a boil. Then turn it to a light simmer. Cover, let it go for 20 minutes.

(Poultry in, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer on medium-low for 20 minutes.)

8. While the soup is simmering, let's make the sticky rice balls. Again, we need to mix well the two kinds of flour. If you're using sticky rice flour, you don't need to do this.

9. Slowly drizzle in the 85g water and stir it in with the flour. It may start to be difficult to stir as more water gets in, just switch to your hand.

10. After all the water is in, starting kneading it into a dough, this will take 2-3 minutes. We're looking for a texture that resembles our earlobe. Add a touch more water or flour if your dough ends up a bit too dry or too wet. But this amount of water should be about right.

(The dough texture resembles the touch of our earlobe)

11. Now on a rather smooth surface, roll the dough into a log, separate the dough to 3-4 pieces, roll them into logs with a diameter of ~2 cm. Then cut them into ~2cm long pieces. And these are ready to be cooked. 

(Roll the dough into a log, then separate the dough into 3-4 pieces)

(Roll each piece into a log with a diameter of ~2 cm )

(Cut them into ~2cm pieces)

12. After the soup has been simmered for 20 minutes, add in the white part of the napa cabbage. Let it cook for 2 minutes to softens up and release some flavor.

(Cook the whites first)

13. Push the ingredients to the side of the wok, create a poll of soup, add in the sticky rice balls carefully into the soup, do it a couple of pieces at a time so that they don't sticky together. Gently stir and push the balls to be submerged by the soup. 

(Create a soup pool to cook the balls)

(Cook the sticky rice ball)

14. After adding in the balls, add in the yellow leaves of napa cabbage. Give it another gentle stir. Let it cook for another minute. (Cook it for less time if you like it to be crunchy.)

(Yellow part of the cabbage in)

15. As it's cooking and you can see the sticky rice balls start to have a sheen and mostly floating, add in the seasoning:  1/2 tsp salt, 1tsp sugar, 1/8 tsp white pepper powder, a touch of MSG or fish sauce. Give it a stir, heat off, finish it off with a drizzle of toasted sesame oil.

(The cooked sticky rice balls will have a nice sheen, it'll be time to season)

(Finishing with toasted sesame oil)

16. And now, this savory and umami sticky rice ball soup is done. 

• Note on cooking the sticky rice ball:  They're usually cooked with the soup directly to absorb flavor, and it'll thicken the soup a bit and make it cloudy. If you want to maintain a clear soup, you can cook the balls separately by adding them in heavy simmering water that's seasoned with 1 tsp salt, take them out and put them into the soup once they've been floating for about half a minute. (Or put them in a bowl of water and set aside if you're making the soup later.)

That's it for this week. See you next week, with either a coconut chicken hotpot recipe or the oyster and lime fried shrimp my dad made.  

And wish you all a healthy and prosperous Year of Rats!