Sweet Potato Balls

Being not a big fan of sweet potatoes (aka kumara), it took me quite a while before I am again seduced by its abundance at the Sunday market.

I bought two yellow fleshed and one orange fleshed sweet potatoes, having a vague idea of what I am going to do with them.

Although I am not a big fan of sweet potatoes, they deserve credit for being a poor man's marzipan. I used to hear stories from our grandparent generation about how the tubers were their staple during the turbulent second world war years when food was scarcity.

Three simple ways of cooking sweet potatoes are: 1) steamed on its own. having piping hot steam sweet potatoes is perfect on a cold day; 2) cooked with plain rice porridge; 3) boiled in ginger + sugar syrup to make a clear sweet soupy dessert.

So with two of the sweet potatoes I've bought, I've tried (2) and (3). For (3), it is very straightforward. Using two different types of sweet potatoes, diced them into cubes. Boil them together with 2 slices of ginger and enough sugar until soft. Adding a pandan leaf tied into a knot enhances the taste significantly.

My third experiment with sweet potatoes is to make a sweet snack, that I had tried years ago at Maxwell market. The steps for sweet potato balls are like making onde onde, except that the dough is deep fried with a variety of different fillings.

Being lazy to experiment, I had ready-made red bean paste bought from the Asian grocery store, that we had intended to make steamed buns (paos).


Sweet Potato Balls 番薯担

1 sweet potato (both the orange or yellow fleshed variety can be used. In fact, I had mixed both together)
approx. 1 cup glutinous rice flour
white sesame seeds

Filling suggestion:
red bean paste, or roasted crushed peanuts tossed with sugar, or lotus paste or yam paste or black sesame paste etc.


Boil the sweet potato in boiling water until it's soft. Peel and mash the flesh.

When it's cool enough, start to knead the sweet potato into a dough by adding the flour. Add the flour slowly, until you get the consistency you fancy. It may be possible to not use flour at all, if you prefer a full sweet potato texture.

I've seen some recipes adding sugar to the dough, but I find sweet potato sweet enough. Furthermore, the filling is also sweet. So sugar is quite redundant, I feel.

Flour your hands so that the dough doesn't stick to them. Pinch some dough and roll into roughly a ping pong ball size. Flatten and put fillings inside. Roll back into a ball. Repeat until you've finished the dough.

Roll the balls with sesame seeds.

Heat oil for deep frying. Fry them until golden brown. They are very nice when eaten warm, freshly fried. But you can also snack on them when they're cooled.

Tips:
If you're like me and don't like deep frying, make smaller balls. Instead of filling a pan full of oil, use a wok, add about 3mm depth of oil for frying the sweet potato balls, just have to turn them on all sides manually until all sides are cooked and golden brown. Soak up excess oil on kitchen paper.