Abacus Beads (Suan Pan Zi)

I always wanted to make Abacus Beads (Suan Pan Zi). Which I thought very difficult to make, but I was wrong they are so simple to make. Don’t have to spend $3.00 for 1 small portion of abacus beads anymore.

Made Abacus Beads (Suan Pan Zi) today. Using Jingle’ recipe although they don’t looks appetizing but they are very tasty. Especially the yam balls I loves the texture very much very chewy it has a strong flavor of yam.

Okay let talks about the "look" of the suan pan zi. It my fault recipe asks for slice meat but I used minced meat and the dried shrimps should be roughly chopped but I put it into a grinder and finely grind!!

In fact I had make the Yam Beads too big and it look like I got more ingredients than the yam beads. Oh in my suan pan zi you won’t able to see any mushroom cause I forget to buy mushroom!!



Yam Beads (Suan Pa Zi)
Serves 2 – 4

Ingredient 1:
300 gm yam (steam & mashed)
75 gm tapioca flour

Ingredient 2:
120 gm pork meat
50 gm dried cuttlefish (soak & cut into strips)
50 gm dried prawn
8 pieces of dried mushroom (soak & cut strips)
1/2 tbsp chopped garlic

Garnishing:
1 stalk of parsley (cut out the leave then soak in a bowl of water)
1 stalk of spring onion (cut into small pieces)


Gravy: (Mixed all these in a bowl first)
8 tbsp of water
1 tbsp of fish sauce
1/2 tbsp of oyster sauce
2 tsp of sugar
1/4 tsp of pepper


Method:
1. Cut the yam into pieces and steam for ½ an hour. The yam will be soft, ready for mashing
2. Mash it while it still hot, add in tapioca flour & ¼ tsp salt to knead until it not sticky.
3. Divide the yam into 2 portions, cover the 2nd portion of the yam while you use the 1st portion of yam. This is to retain the yam temperature.
4. 1st portion of yam, take out a small portion then roll it like a ball (just like tang yuan), then you use your thumb to slightly press in the center, it will look like abacus seed. Note: If your palm too dry, damp your hands then you can start to roll the ball
5. Once you have finished the 1st portion, put all on the plate & cover it.
6. Do the 2nd portion of the yam, same as method 4.
7. Once the 2nd portion of the yam had been completed.
8. Boil water once you see bubbles, put in the yam ball into the water.
9. Then when it float, scoop it up then put it into a pot of cold water for a while, this is to get rid of the starch in the cooked yam.
10. Then drain them, and then add oil to mix them, so they will not stick together. Put them in a plate to set aside
11. If you wan to keep, from method 10, you can keep some of them in the fridge to freeze, if you think you cant finish eating them all.

12. Prepare Ingredient 2: cut the pork meat into strip then mixed them with 1/2 tbsp of tapioca flour to give a smooth surface.
13. Dried prawn wash, and drain dry, chop a bit.
14. Dried cuttlefish soak water for 10 minutes. Take out the center hard skin then cut into strips.
15. Heat 2 tbsp of cooking oil, add garlic, cuttlefish to fry
16. Once fragrant add mushroom, dried prawns, add 1/2 tbsp Chinese Hua Tiao Wine.
17. Add gravy: water, fish sauce, oyster sauce, sugar & pepper to fry.
18. Until the gravy is well mixed, add meat, fry until the meat is cooked.
19. Then add abacus seed and fish sauce to fry until there is no more gravy. Then it is cooked.
20. Dish up and garnish them with onion and parsley for serving.