Saving my culinary heritage... one recipe at a time This time it's Ondeh - ondeh

Delicious Plate of Jade Green Ondeh Ondeh

Whenever we move to a new country, the locals assume that because we look "chinese" therefore the food we eat must be "chinese" aka fried rice, dim sum etc... But we're not from China! We're from Singapore! Our food roots come from South East Asia - Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, yes and also China, since we are ethnically chinese.

OK, enough ranting - so - we had some friends over for dinner and we decided to serve something "local" - Laska Lemak for mains. Then given a choice between making "appies" or dessert - the latter won. Now, I could easily whip up a decadent creamy sherry trifle or a sea -salt caramel apple crisp, but that wouldn't have been an appropriate sweet ending to the meal. After searching through our library of recipe books, Ondeh-ondeh came up tops. These scrumptious little balls have a lovely jade green colour and when coated with soft fragrant finely grated coconut, a mound of these on a plate look almost festive, Christmassy - like a little pine tree covered with snow.

Ondeh-ondeh (or onde-onde) are little balls of sweet potato / glutinous rice flour, filled with melted palm sugar and coated with grated coconut. They should have just enough chewiness in the dough to avoid being stodgy, yet enough"give" that when popped into the mouth and given little squish with the tongue, they pop, filling one's mouth with aromatic sweet palm sugar syrup. Mmmmmm!

There seem to be 2 distinct groups of recipes for Ondeh - Ondeh. Those that use sweet potato and hardly any glutinous rice flour and those that use only glutinous rice flour (plus a smidge of tapioca flour). The former I find too soft and not toothsome enough. The latter can be quite rubbery, especially if there is too little filling in the dumplings. After a bit of experimentation I've came up with a compromise, which I'm posting today.

The key to this recipe is to make "test balls" as the humidity, water content of the sweet potato will affect the final consistency. Don't make up a whole batch of dumplings only to find that they don't meet texture / consistency expectations once cooked.

Some of the instructions and ingredients are appropriate for cooks in places without Asian grocery stores. Fresh Screwpine leaves and grated fresh coconut is ideal when available, but Pandan flavouring paste by Koepoe Koepoe (easily bought online from Amazon.com) and desiccated coconut works well. The panda paste is intensely fragrant and dark green, so no further colouring is needed. Dark demerara sugar or muscovado sugar if you cant get hold of palm sugar or gula melaka (coconut sugar)

Pandan Paste

Ondeh-Ondeh
(makes 36 dumplings)

Ingredients:
1 medium sweet potato - white / pale fleshed is best - about 400g
1.5 Cups Glutinous rice flour
approximately 1/3 Cup water
1 tsp pandan (screwpine) essence
1/3 - 1/2 Cup finely shaved palm sugar / gula melaka (coconut palm sugar)
200g finely shredded desiccated unsweetened coconut
1/2 tsp fine / table salt

Rehydrating Desiccated Coconut:
Mix the desiccated coconut with salt, spread on a 9inch pie dish and steam over boiling water for 10minutes. Let cool completely before use.

Make the dough:
1. peel and cut the sweet potato into 1cm cubes
2. steam / microwave for 5min till cooked and soft.
3. mash (and sieve if you are really finicky) and let cool completely
4. mix in the glutinous rice flour, panda essence and enough water to make a dough that has the consistency of plasticine or "playdoh"
5. Cover with cling film to prevent the dough from drying up

Making a well in the dough

Cook the dumplings:
1. Bring a pot of water (about 1.5L) to boil and keep simmering on low heat
2. Make batches of dumplings - about 10 at a time
3. Pinch off enough dough to make small round balls of dough about 2.5-3cm diameter
4. Use a finger to make an impression in the ball and work the dough to create a little well for the sugar. With practice, the wall of dough becomes really thin ideally about 2-3mm thick and leave room for lots of sugar !
5. Carefully place 1/2 tsp sugar into the well and close the dough over it, gently roll the ball in your hands and set aside. Repeat process till you have 10 little filled dough balls
6. Gently lower the balls one at a time into the simmering water (they will sink)
7. Once the dough balls are cooked, they will float
8. Remove the balls from the water with a skimmer / tea strainer / slotted spoon
9. Set aside on a non stick mat / baking sheet to drain briefly
10. Transfer to the pie dish with rehydrated coconut and roll to fully coat.
11. Set aside and repeat steps 3-10 till all the dough is used up

When dough is cooked, the balls will float 

Roll cooked balls in coconut

Dumplings are best eaten at room temperature - they will keep, covered in the 'fridge for a day or two, but let them come to room temp before eating. When eaten warm, they tend to be too soft.

Coconut sugar oozing out...

Enjoy... keep lots of Kleenex handy to catch drips! Mmmmmmm....