Henglong finds...

I've been shopping at Henglong for as long as I can remember... it's like a more quaint (small-scale) version of my favourite supermarket T&T. Being that it has most of the things T&T has (and lots more) at very reasonable prices I love Henglong just as much. I remember the days when my mom and dad would take the five year old me to this market, and they always treated me to my favourite treat... an ice cold red bean (and sometime durian) popsicle. Henglong use to be the only place you could find this treat, and then T&T rolled around stealing some of their business :(

I still enjoy buying bakery goods from Henglong that are usually only found if you go to Vancouver's Chinatown... seeing as how gas and bus fare is super expensive the only way to get the authentic nonya/chinese goodies are from Henglong. Here are some of the treats I purchased the other day...

Colorful Bak Tong Goh... with salty coconut cream sauce

Sweet, green, mungbean-filled rice cakes... with salty coconut cream sauce

Carioca... I had never heard of this one before and was interested to try it. They described it as deep fried sticky-rice flour, so I was expecting something like Jin Dui.

It was very much like Jin Dui, but had no redbean... the melted sugar syrup on top was delicious and tasted like gooey cotton-candy.

Tangyuan

As I said before, and I never go back on my word, I am now posting about my Tangyuan adventures. I got the recipe from chowtimes.com and only made a few adjustments. Since I did not have any instant black sesame powder I decided to use unsalted, crushed peanuts... worked great. I also used a few more nobs of ginger (I love the intense taste) and added some longan to the mix.

Here's a picture of the filling, sitting next to it's glutinous rice flour covered sibling. Look at the size difference! I probably dipped the filling in the water and glutinous rice about 10 times to get to become doubled in size... exhaustive work I tell you.

The almost finished product... 7 beautifully round tangyuan balls that are ready to be boiled and eaten. Oh, I can hardly wait!

Next I made ready the ginger syrup, it's basically just water, sugar and ginger... simple eh? Drop in a few longan and add the boiled tangyuan and you are ready to settle down and enjoy this deliciously warm and spicy dessert. My parents really enjoyed it... sadly my sister couldn't eat it as she is allergic to nuts... but she was appreciative of the dishes beauty. And enjoyed chowing down on the mochi that I had made (mainly just for her).

As you recall me saying, I had ended up with 7 tangyuan balls, and to be fair in serving the dessert I gave each of the three bowls 2 longan and 2 tangyuan balls... meaning that I had one left over. I decided to not let it go to waste; so I boiled it and rolled it in dessicated coconut. I left it on the table for the rest of the family to fight over... but they were all so nice that they decided since I went to the trouble of preparing dessert, I would be the one to enjoy the special coconut ball... they're so sweet :P