All Easy Recipes. Cook all that you can cook. Pearl Balls
(Chen - Chu - Jou - Wan)
 
What You Need:            (To Serve: 4 as main course or 6 to 8 as Chinese Meal)
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  • ½ cup glutinous rice
  • 4 dried Chinese mushrooms, 1 to 1½ inches in diameter
  • 1 pound lean boneless pork, finely ground
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
  • 1½ teaspoons salt
  • ½ teaspoon sugar
  • 1 teaspoon finely chopped, peeled fresh ginger root
  • 6 canned water chestnuts, drained and finely chopped
  • 1 scallion, including the green top, finely chopped

  • How To Cook:
    PREPARE AHEAD:
    1. In a small bowl, cover the rice with 1 cup of cold water and soak for 2 hours. Then drain the rice through a sieve, spread it out on a cloth towel and let it dry.

    2. In a small bowl, cover the mushrooms with ½ cup of warm water and let them soak for 30 minutes. Discard the water. With a cleaver or knife, cut away and discard the mushroom stems, and chop the caps fine.

    3. Combine the pork, egg, soy sauce, salt and sugar in a mixing bowl. With your fingers or a large spoon, mix together until the ingredients are thoroughly blended. Then add the ginger, chopped mushrooms, water chestnuts and scallions, and mix thoroughly again.

    4. Scoop up about 2 tablespoons of the mixture and, with your hands, shape it into a ball 1 inch in diameter. Repeat this process with the remaining pork mixture, moistening your hands from time to time with a little cold water. Arrange the balls side by side on a strip of wax paper.

    5. Roll one pork ball at a time in the rice, pressing down gently but firmly as you roll so that the rice grains adhere to the meat. Set the rice-coated balls back on wax paper.

    TO COOK:
    1. Pour enough boiling water into the lower part of a steamer to come within an inch of the cooking rack (or use a steamer substitute).

    2. Choose a heatproof plate about ½ inch smaller in diameter than the pot so that the steam can rise and circulate around the pork balls as they steam.

    3. Arrange the pork balls on it. Place the plate on the rack, bring the water in the steamer to a boil, and cover the pan tightly.

    4. Keeping the water at a continuous boil and replenishing it if it boils away, steam the pork balls for 30 minutes.

    5. Set the steaming plate on a large platter and serve at once.


     
     
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