Fried Sesame Rice Balls 炸枣

Fried Sesame Rice Balls (炸枣) are deep-fried balls of glutinous rice dough around a sesame or bean filling, a New Year food of Tong'an (同安), a district of Xiamen (厦门). The Xiamen press counts them among the 'three treasures of Tong'an' (同安三宝).

How it is made

In Puqian (铺前) village in Tong'an, Ye Zhiyong (叶志勇) pinches off a piece of glutinous rice dough, turns it into a cup, and fills it with black sesame paste. Mixing the dough is heavy work, and the men of the family are the main zhazao makers. His mother drops the balls into hot oil and rolls them gently with a slotted ladle until they turn golden. Sweet potato is cooked and worked into the dough, and sesame and bean fillings are both used. An ordinary zhazao needs only two to three minutes in the oil.

Flavour and texture

Fresh from the oil, the balls are crisp outside and soft and sticky inside. For Ye Zhiyong, the taste of the New Year is their sweet, glutinous chew.

Where it comes from

The Tong'an local historian Yan Lishui (颜立水) links the snack's popularity to farming in the area, which supplies sweet potatoes and glutinous rice. The name plays on zao (早, 'early'), a wish for an early birth of sons, and families make zhazao for important days. At Dongshan (东山) old temple in Tong'an, villagers fry giant zhazao of about 3 kg each for the Jing Tiangong (敬天公) festival on the eleventh day of the first lunar month. Temple records tie the custom to 1522, in the Jiajing (嘉靖) reign, when Japanese pirates attacked Tong'an and were driven out; the celebration that followed included giant zhazao. The giant zhazao had not been made for about 60 years when residents revived them in 2018; each took three people to make and about 20 minutes to fry in a pan one metre across.