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Musings. Family. Food. Stories. Cooking. Recipes. Eating. A recipe journal. From simple Filipino dishes to challenging recipes and exciting gastronomical failures. This is for my girls to look back on for comfort, memories, laughs, love and lots of food!

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Deep fried buchi (sesame balls) with purple yam filling





There's a lot of fried foods out there.  And I mean the unconventional types - not the usual foods that one would deep fry at home.  Thanks to the influence of modern fast food cuisines, we've had a lot of deep fried trends pushing through the boundaries of health conscious folks.  There's deep fried hamburgers, deep fried butter, deep fried coke, deep fried ice cream to name a few.


Filipinos have a lot of fried foods.  Sweets included.  There's banana-cue or banana fritters, camote-cue or toffeed sweet potato.  I guess because the frying pan is one of the cheapest and most accessible cooking tool.  For a country like the Philippines, where the availability of ovens in homes is not common, the frying pan is an important cooking gadget - where one can stir, fry and even steam.   And its simple to use - just to pull out a pan, turn on the heat and fry away.  Street food around Manila consists of mostly fried food.  And this is one of those.  Called "buchi" in Tagalog, it is very similar to the Chinese yum cha sweet sesame seed balls.  In the Philippines, these are usually sold stuffed with sweet mung bean paste and sometimes without the filling, called the "karioka".







For this month's Sweet Adventures Blog Hop theme of From the Fying Pan hosted by The Capers of the Kitchen Crusader, I am sharing this Filipino recipe which we love at home.  A simple deep fried sweet dessert or snack treat, consisting of 3 main ingredients: glutinous rice flour, sesame seeds and store bought purple yam jam (ube jam). If you want to take the longer route, you can always make your own sweet red or mung bean paste for the filling.



Glutinous rice flour or sticky rice flour, sesame seeds and purple yam jam can be bought from your local Asian grocer or Filipino shops



Mix together 3 cups glutinous rice flour, 85 grams caster sugar and 250ml water to make a dough.  The dough should be a little bit moist but not too wet.


To make this deep fried buchi (sesame balls), you will need:

3 cups glutinous rice flour

85 grams caster sugar

250ml water

1 cup purple yam jam (or any preferred filling)

1 cup sesame seeds

250ml vegetable oil or more for frying






Using a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar and water and mix with your hands thoroughly to make a dough.

Place the sesame seeds in a separate small bowl. Set aside. 

Divide the dough into 20 round balls or more if you intend to make smaller treats.

Using a rolling pin, flatten one ball then scoop a teaspoon of your filling into the disc.

Put the edges together and shape it back into round balls with your hands.

Roll the stuffed balls into the sesame seeds.

Repeat for all the dough.  

Prepare a deep skillet and heat with about a cup of vegetable oil.

Once the oil is hot, slowly drop the buchi balls into the hot oil and cook until golden.  

Scoop out with a spider (in picture) or a slotted spoon.

Drain on paper towels.




Tips:

* The thinner you can flatten the dough, the more filling you can put in the buchi balls.

* When cooked, the dough should have a translucent colour and a little bit elastic.  If the cooked dough is still white, it's not yet fully cooked.

* The oil should not be too hot as it will burn the outside but leave the inside dough still uncooked.

* Be careful when deep frying. A deeper pot is advisable, if you don't have a deep fryer.

* You can opt not to fill the buchi balls with anything.  Simply make smaller rounds or flatten them before rolling in sesame seeds then deep fry.

* You can buy sweet red bean paste from Asian shops or you can also make your own homemade paste filling. The Beancounter has a recipe here.



These are the un-stuffed buchi balls which the kids love to eat - no stuffing for them.  Simple and sweet!

















3 comments:

  1. Anna these sound fantastic - I don't know how I missed seeing your link up last month! :D

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just a few of my fave things - I love that you stuffed these with ube too - my FAVE!! yum!!

    ReplyDelete

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