八宝饭 Eight Treasure Rice
Celebrating Chinese New Year
A family staple
The Year of the Rabbit comes once in 12 years, and this is my 5th本命年. Legend has it that I should be wearing red to ward off the evils. When I spoke to my mother recently, she said a nurse had asked how we celebrate the Chinese New Year in the U.S. “Not much and no atmosphere” was my response. Yet year after year, we have settled to a few family rituals: lucky hangings on the door, a hot pot with salmon, shrimp, scallops, assorted tofu varieties, and fresh greens, and Eight Treasure Rice 八宝饭.
I was never a fan of 八宝饭 growing up in China. All I remember was biting into disgusting lard pieces and recoiling at the overly sweet and gooey tapioca sauce. Of course, my kids never saw any of that. I have developed a “reformed” version using butter, little added sugar, and no sauce. Recently, I have also been tinkering with increasing the ratio of whole sweet rice, using more brown and black and less white. Eight treasures usually refer to 8 ingredients (other than rice) to this dish for good luck. My ingredients far exceeded eight. More good luck I guess.
Ingredients:
130g sweet rice
100g brown sweet rice
120 Taiwanese black sweet rice
80g millet
20g dried lotus seeds 莲子
20g dried jujube dates 红枣
80g Jacob’s Tears 薏米, not to be confused with pearl barley
550g water
Assorted dried fruits (raisins, cherries, mango, apricot, goji berries, etc.)
2-3 tbsp butter
2-3 tbsp sugar
1/2 cup Japanese Azuki red bean paste (slightly mashed whole beans and very sweet)
Instructions:
Soak lotus seeds and Jacob’s Tears overnight and cook in pressure cooker for 20 minutes
Wash and soak rice overnight
Cook rice with 550g of water in “sweet rice” mode in rice cooker, adding cooked lotus seeds and Jacobs Tears, and pitted Jujube slices about 10-15 minutes before rice finish cooking
Mix in butter and sugar with rice paddle while rice is still hot
Butter two deep round bowls (I prefer small glass mixing bowls so you can see the pattern at the bottom)
Layout dried fruits in a decorative circle at the bottom
Press 1/4 of rice into bottom of each bowl, be careful not to disturb the dried fruit pattern
Add red bean paste in the middle before heaping on another 1/4 of the rice mixture, press hard to level the rice
Refrigerate rice for several hours or you can freeze the bowl at this point
Steam rice in bowl for at least 40 minutes, invert bowl, and enjoy!
Post-script: This year’s version is made of mostly sweet rice and the texture of the rice is quite sticky. I like it better when some of the rice kernels are distinct and not so mushed. I do remember adding regular non-sweet rice in previous versions and will try it next year. I do like the less sweet rice mixture be supplemented by the sweet Japanese red bean paste. Don’t be afraid to add enough of it in your Eight Treasure Rice.
Our lucky charm