People in the world only use tangyuan glutinous rice to make skin, but few people have ever tasted lotus flour dumplings! Complex and exquisite treasures!

Chinese like to eat tangyuan, which means reunion. Tangyuan can be roughly divided into two kinds of filling and solid, and "hollow soup dumplings" have long become a folk saying, indicating that there is no result in boasting about Haikou. The world only uses glutinous rice as a skin, but few people have tasted lotus flour balls. The layers of lotus powder wrapped outside the filling heart turn into a tea-brown translucent gelatin after being blanched in hot water, crystal clear, exquisite and lovely, and the taste is even smoother and more extraordinary. Whether as a staple of a wedding feast or a casual snack, lotus flour dumplings are a rare delicacy.

Legend has it that the inventor of the lotus flour dumplings in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the imperial chef from the lake stack, developed this exquisite and beautiful lotus flour dumpling according to the local food customs, which was well received by the emperor and was designated as one of the imperial meals of the court; after the imperial chef returned to his hometown, he brought the production technology of the lotus flour dumplings back to his hometown, which was widely spread in his hometown and loved by the people. Lake stacks are located in jianhu county in today's Yancheng city, Jiangsu Province, lotus flour dumplings as a specialty of Jianhu has been well-known in Jiangsu Province for a long time, frozen lotus flour dumplings are sold throughout the country, but northern Jiangsu people prefer to make their own lotus flour dumplings, from the filling to the lotus flour used are very exquisite.

The traditional lotus flour balls, the kumquat cake, sesame crisp, peanut kernels, walnut kernels, dates, pine nuts, red and green silk and other nuts chopped and crushed, and then with white sugar and osmanthus marinated lard for a week to make sugar plate oil cubes, the raw materials are mixed, glued with sugar plate oil dice, kneaded into a cinnamon round core size ball, coded on the table, is for the filling. There are also osmanthus filling, five kernel filling, date paste filling, bean paste sesame filling, the taste is relatively simple. Lotus flour needs to choose a good quality variety, which is the key to affecting the final taste of lotus flour balls.

Prepare a pot of boiling hot water in advance and keep it boiling at all times. The lotus flour is crushed into a fine powder with a rolling pin, spread in the dish, the filling is placed in it and gently sieved, so that the lotus flour is evenly wrapped in the filling, the nascent lotus flour balls are placed in a colander, put in boiling water for 30 seconds, drain the water, and then placed on the lotus flour plate to sift, evenly powdered and then blanched in boiling water, if it is about 5 times, the lotus flour balls will be formed. If you want to store it for a long time, you can use plastic wrap to separate the lotus flour balls one by one and place them in the refrigerator freezer.

Lotus flour balls must be served with osmanthus soup. Put an appropriate amount of water in the pot, put the boiling lotus flour balls into the boiling time, boil and roll for two minutes, until the lotus flour balls slowly float, you can put the balls with soup, add osmanthus flowers and sugar in the bowl, a bowl of steaming lotus flour balls is completed. The two or three golden osmanthus flowers on the soup noodles emit a faint sweet fragrance, the tea brown rounds floating in the water are the size of ping-pong balls, and the translucent surface is faintly revealed with a dark brown filling mixed with various kinds of debris. Carefully blow away the heat, the smooth taste when biting down is amazing, the filling mixed with various nut aromas and osmanthus aromas is not very sweet, there is no lack of surprises in the delicacy, and the aftertaste is endless after eating, full of aftertaste. Never thought that a round ball could be so tense.

Gu Zhong, a Qing dynasty, wrote in the first article of the "Powder" record of the "Yang Xiao Lu": "Lotus powder, soaked in water with lotus knots, grinds on a rack cylinder, rubs with lotus, pours pulp into the cylinder, twists and filters the silk bag, and dries the water in the sun, and every twenty pounds of lotus can become one pound." It can be seen that the production of lotus flour itself is very labor-intensive and costly, but its sweet and flat sexual taste is particularly suitable for the frail and sick people to eat, and it has the functions of "benefiting the stomach and spleen, nourishing the blood and replenishing the spleen, and stopping diarrhea", plus its special taste, which is deeply loved.

A humble small shop on Qibao Old Street, with only three or four tables, is the only shop in Shanghai and Suzhou that eats lotus flour dumplings. Unlike many shops that sell small dumplings in lotus flour soup, it is true that the filling is wrapped in lotus flour as a skin. The boiled lotus flour balls are placed in a large pot, and the osmanthus and sugar are placed in one bowl after another, and the guests order a bowl, which is very fast. The taste is not amazing, but it is also fresh, and I am happy to think that this is the only place where I can eat lotus flour dumplings.