“If it’s available all the time like the glutinous dumplings, no one will cherish it. Diao ren jia de wei kou (You got to get them hooked),” says Mdm Kit Lin Tai, in Mandarin. This is why she only cooks Savoury Ah Balling only once a year during the Winter Solstice Festival, a Cantonese dish she inherited from her grandmother. Unlike most Chinese who make their glutinous rice balls a sweet dessert, Mdm Kit’s version is meant as a main course. “No one else makes this, not that I’m aware of,” said the 58-year-old.

Preparing Savoury Ah Bolling is a tedious process that takes skills and patience. Mdm Kit has to make the stock the night before, and carry on with the rest of the cooking the next morning to get it ready by lunch time. But this is fast food compared to her mother’s time, when they had to mill their own glutinous flour.

Even though the entire family – her husband, daughter, son and son-in-law – adores this dish, Mdm Kit never accedes to their request to cook it more often, preferring to play hard to get. But last month, she made an exception for Makansutra when we approached her for the recipe. On the day she demonstrated the cooking, her son, Johnson texted us a thank you note, “Because of you, I get to eat my mom’s Ah Bolling twice this year!”

Dear readers, if you have any rare, traditional recipes you would like to share with us. Email us at contact@makansutra.com .

Stock

500g Pork Ribs

500 grams of Chicken breast meat together with rib bones

3 liters of water

3 tsp of salt

Method:

Add water into a large size claypot and bring to boil.

Add pork and chicken into the pot.

Once the water starts bubbling again (water temperature will drop when you put the cold meat in), turn down the fire to low heat and leave it to boil for 3 hours with the lid on, opened slightly.

Flavour the stock with salt and then turn off the fire. If you are preparing this the night before and prefer to leave it at room temperature, do not stir the soup after turning off the fire or it will turn bad. It’s grandmother’s wisdom.

Ingredients

2 chicken thighs

Steam the chicken thighs over high heat for 20 minutes.

Leave them to cool and shred (hand tear) the meat after that.

8 pieces of chicken kidneys

Method:

After washing, throw the chicken kidneys into the boiling stock prepared beforehand.

Turn down the fire to low heat and let them cook for one hour.

Turn off the heat. You can either leave the kidneys inside the stock or set them aside for plating.

5 pieces of chicken livers

Both liver and kidney come as a side dish at most chicken rice stall. If you can’t tell the different, kidney is the hard one, while liver is soft and powdery. That is why chicken livers need to be cook separately, or they will turn the stock murky.

Fill a pot with enough tap water to submerge the livers. Put the over high heat until it boils.

Throw in the livers and turn down the fire to medium heat.

Leave it to cook for 20 minutes and turn off the fire.

Remove the livers and cut them into quarters. Set them aside.

1 lettuce

1 bunch of Chinese celery

Chop off the roots and wash the vegetables. Dice the celery and set both vegetables aside.

Dough

350g of Glutinous Flour (she recommends Xiang Lan Tang Yuan Fen because it is flavoured with pandan leaves)

220g of water

Method:

A pinch of red powder colouring (similar to the ones used for Char Siew)

Pour flour into a big metal tray. Dig a hole in the middle and pour water gradually and knead.

The desired texture should be slightly softer than blue-tack. Add more water as needed.

After achieving the desired texture, continue to knead for another five minutes for additional springiness.

Scoop up the entire dough with your hand and mould it into a ball. Slam it against the tray like you are angry. Repeat the process once more. This step lends more texture to the dough.

Divide the dough into two portions and put one aside. This is to create red and white coloured balls.

Sprinkle the red colouring onto one of the dough and knead it.

Rolling the Ah Bolling

Pull out a small portion of the dough and roll it into a tube that is about 2cm wide.

Break them into smaller pieces, about 3cm long.

Quickly roll each piece into a ball between your palms. You should be able to feel the moisture of the dough while doing so. The dough will dry up and turn powdery if you take too long to do this step.

Cooking the Ah Bolling

Heat up 4 litres of water in a wok .

Prepare a large bowl of tap water on the side.

Once the pot of water boils, briefly roll the balls again before throwing them into the water.

Use a ladle to stir the water every now and then so that the ah bolling will not stick together.

The ah bolling rises to the surface when it’s cooked. Scoop them up with a ladle and drop them into the bowl of tap water immediately. This will keep them separated.

Be sure to cook the white ah bolling first because the red ones might dye the boiling water.

Remember to cook the ah bolling in the water and not in the stock, as it will affect the soup’s taste, density and colour.

Plating

Put some lettuce, ah balling, shredded chicken, chicken liver and kidney into a bowl. Add the hot soup and sprinkle chopped celery over it.