Sweet Rice Dumplings with Palm Sugar and Coconut

I've always enjoyed the cuisines of Asia, but never really thought of trying to cook any dishes myself until about a year ago, when a few select cookbooks crossed my path and piqued my interest.  I'm not referring to authoritative tomes on the complete cuisine of this or that nation, and thank goodness - the intimidation factor with these sort of books is extremely high!  Instead, the cookbooks I'm talking about are aimed toward the intrepid western chef who, enjoying many of the tastes and flavors from their local Thai or Indian or Indonesian restaurant, decides to take baby steps toward them in their own kitchen as well.  Though perhaps not ultra-authentic, they are certainly more accessible to those who have never tasted tamarind or oyster sauce or even more than a tablespoon of a spice at a time.

For me, this has meant reading Leela's creative Thai recipes at the wonderful blog She Simmers, studying and practicing Pim's Pad Thai for Beginners, following Juanita's pandan leaf experiments with interest, copying pages out of the Wagamama Cookbook and an Indonesian cookbook my friend brought home from Bali, deciding that a ziplock of homemade jiao-tze should be a fixture in my freezer for lazy meals, sourcing Asian ingredients and shops all over Zurich, and exploring many of those new flavors and ingredients through Andrea Nguyen's comprehensive book Asian Dumplings and her matching blog Asian Dumpling Tips.

Most recently I made the recipe for Onde Onde, or Sweet Rice Dumplings with Palm Sugar and Coconut: a soft rice-flour based dough is flavored with pandan leaf, wrapped around a small ball of palm sugar, then briefly boiled and rolled in fresh grated coconut.

I found rich and dark Indonesian palm sugar (called gula djawa) at Thanh Hung.  Though packed into the plastic container, the sugar is moist and fairly easy to loosen with the tip of a knife. It can then be shaped into dense balls with your fingers or a measuring spoon.



Next, long and pointy pandan (also known as screwpine) leaves are washed and chopped up into 1-inch pieces with scissors and then zapped in a mini-chopper with some water to form a thick green mush.  After straining the mush through a paper towel into a bowl, you are left with a fragrant and bitter dark-green liquid which will become the flavoring for the dough.





Mixed with glutinous rice flour, the resulting pale-green dough is only complete once it has gone through the "mother dough" procedure.  A chunk is pinched off, flattened, and boiled for 2 minutes, then cooled and kneaded back into the larger mass of raw dough.  This improves the elasticity and texture and allows it to be shaped around the palm sugar balls without tearing or crumbling.





Each dumpling is dropped in boiling water for 3 minutes and then dredged in grated coconut (I used frozen fresh as the recipe specifies - dried would be too crunchy).



Though Andrea's notes say that the palm sugar should turn hot and liquid in the center of the dumplings, mine only melted partially.  Next time I might try boiling them for a little longer to see if they will "squirt lovely melted palm sugar into your mouth when you bite into it," as she describes.



Though a fair amount of work, these were a special and unusual treat and would be a lovely light dessert to finish off a Southeast Asian meal.   Andrea has requested that bloggers not re-post her recipes without permission, so unfortunately I can't share it with you here, but I can say that if you are at all interested in varied and delicious pan-asian dumplings, both savory and sweet (many are also vegetarian and gluten free, made with tapioca and rice flours), then her book should find its way onto your bookshelf soon!