After a long day of sick kids, cancelled plans and one truly awful dinner (made by yours truly), Lo Gung and I both deserved something tasty (and filling..since dinner was so nasty). This is what came to mind. I had a few sweet potatoes in the refrigerator, and some ginger that was only getting spicier by the day. Sweet potato dessert soup (fan syu tong seui) is kind of a perennial staple around here. However, I am an absolute sucker for anything involving glutinous rice flour, so I got fancy and threw a few fresh tong yuen into the mix. The result was tasty, satisfying…and almost made us both forget about the long day we had just survived.
Aunt LoLo’s Sweet Potato Dessert Soup with Tong Yuen
Makes 2-4 servings
Ingredients:
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1” pieces (fan syu)
3-4” knob of ginger, peeled and cut into 1/2” chunks (geung) (fyi – ginger is super easy to peel – scrape it with a spoon)
1 lime-sized chunk of Chinese rock sugar (bing tong)
1/2 of a dried satsuma peel (chaang pei)
15-20 plain glutinous rice dumplings (tong yuhn) (recipe here) (to make 15-20 dumplings, you will need approximately 1/2 cup glutinous rice flour and less than 1/4 cup water)
Water (4 rice bowls full)
1. Put your water, ginger and satsuma skin into a medium sauce pan, cover, and bring to a boil.
2. Add your chopped sweet potato, reduce heat to medium, and simmer until potatoes are almost fork tender.
3. Meanwhile, prepare your tong yuen. When the sweet potatoes are about 2 minutes from being done, drop your tong yuen into the simmering water. Continue to cook until the tong yuen float, then add your rock sugar and stir to melt. Taste the broth, and add more sugar if necessary.
Enjoy!
