Abacus Seeds (算盘子)

Abacus Seeds or 算盘子 is a traditional Hakka dish, eaten during auspicious occasions like birthdays, weddings, and also during festivals like the Lunar New Year, Qing Ming and Winter Solstice; the small round discs symbolises completeness, wealth and prudence.

Homemade Abacus Seeds 

Abacus seeds are made using mashed yam, tapioca flour and water, and then shaped into small rounds, with an indentation at the centre, and then boiled in water. Then, these little cute discs can be cooked in 4 ways - sweet, sour, savoury and spicy.

I'm not Hakka, but it doesn't stop me from enjoying this dish. And nope, there was no special occasion, we made this today just because there were too much of yam at home, harvested by Uncle A at his garden the other day. Too much yam and we were at lost of what to do with them .... so we decided to make some Abacus Seeds.

Mom mixed 250g of yam paste with 125g of tapioca flour and about 80 ml of water ..... and once the mixture was done, we moulded them by hand into little round discs, with indentation at the centre. Then we boiled them in hot boiling water till they floated. We drained the water and then tossed them in a little bit of oil so that they did not stick.

Next, we sauteed garlic and shallots in a wok, and added in the minced meat, mushrooms and black fungus shreds, pounded dried prawns, pan-fried beancurd. Seasoning included light soy sauce and 1 tbsp of oyster sauce. Then it was ready to serve.

The abacus seeds were chewy, and tasted faintly of yam, and the accompanying ingredients were fragrant and textural ... Quite yum, only that it was quite a lot of work preparing the dish. :P