hello hi everyone! Wesley here. Today we’re adding to our series on Bay Area restaurant hacks with an attempt at Jian Dui, or fried mochi and sesame seed rice balls, inspired by Gourmet Delite in Oakland. Sadly, like many of the restaurants here in Oakland Chinatown, Gourmet Delite did not survive the COVID-19 pandemic, but I still thought I’d take the opportunity to pay homage to a dim sum restaurant that I’ve been eating at for the better part of 20 years.

For those not familiar, a Jian Dui is a dough ball made from glutinous rice flour that’s coated in sesame seed, and filled with a sweet paste. It can be filled with many things, but most commonly you’ll find these filled with either sweet red bean paste, or sweet lotus paste (today we’ll be going with the latter of the two, cause I have some leftover from the mooncake recipe that we did a few months back). Hope you try it!

Bookmark the recipe here (out June 4th!), bookmark the stream here, and pick up the ingredients below if you want to follow along and cook dinner with me.

INGREDIENTS

• 1/3 cup brown sugar

• 1/2 cup boiling water

• 1 cup glutinous rice flour

• 1/2 cup lotus paste (or red bean paste)

• 1/4 cup sesame seeds

• 12 oz fryer oil