"Tang Yuan" or "Kuih Ee"

Its the time of the year again where you can see aunties at home making small round Tang Yuan (glutinous rice) by rolling little pinches of glutinous rice flour into round balls of red and snow white hues. The children normally will try to help but ending up messing the whole house with white flour,.............. its Dong Zhi or the Winter Solstice Festival. We Melaka Peranakan (Baba & Nyonya) call it "Kuih Ee", literally means round cake.

Dong Zhi is the second most important date in the Chinese Calendar, after Chinese New Year. It is also the day of the longest night and shortest day, signaling the start of winter. While we don't have winter in Malaysia, the Chinese here still celebrate this festival. The downside of this festival is one is considered 1 year older when you eat the Tang Yuan, as the elders believe.

White tangyuan

The size of the white tang yuan is bigger than the red one.

Basically there are 2 types of tangyuan, the sweet and the salty one. For the sweet type you put the white & red tang yuan in a bowl before you pour sweet syrup in. Gingers were added in the sweet syrup to add some spicy taste and pandan leaves for its aroma.

The smaller red tang yuan.

I believe it is for auspicious reason that the Chinese put in red tang yuan to mix with the white ones. Newly weds are supposed to eat sweet kuih-ee on their wedding day too, for good luck and sweet marriage i suppose.

As for the salty type, only the white tang yuan was used and it was cooked like a normal soup. Beancurd, chicken or pork slices were added in the salty tang yuan.

I prefer the sweet type though....it brings back fond childhood memories!

Nowadays tang yuan comes in many types of fillings, kiwi paste, strawberry, peanuts.......i have not seen durian fillings though. Besides that the tang yuan are also very colourful nowadays ranging from blue to yellow.

If you have no clue on how to make tang yuan, no worry, you can just drop by any supermarkets and pick up instant tang yuan. Go home and just boil them.

Dont find excuses for not celebrating.....you will still get older whether you eat tang yuan or not!