Hakka Abacus Beads 客家算盘子

Cooked this traditional Hakka's snack 算盘子 yesterday for lunch. This snack gets its name as the little yam balls are intentionally indented with the fingers to resemble small little abacus beads. Look at the picture below, they do look like little abacus beads that little kids used in 珠算 class, agree? :)

Hubby is from the Hakka dialect group and MIL used to make this as a snack years back. I missed the snack ever since she stopped making it due to old age as it is a time consuming process to make it. Although on and off, I still come across some hawker stalls that sell this snack but some how they do not taste as good as home-made. Hence, about 1.5 years ago, I started searching for recipes to make this snacks by my own. Besides being able to eat it as a home-cooked snack as and when I crave for it, it is also a mean to  preserve some traditional custom of my hubby and daughters' Hakka root.

The 2 girls love this snack very much and will pester me to make it for them on and off. I also remember the first time when I brought the snack to my MIL's place for a family gathering, my MIL was impressed with it and praised the look and taste of my abacus beads. FYI, my MIL is one who does not praise her DIL's cookings. Hence, I can still remember that in that particular evening, I was in cloud nine :P

As usual, Reann loves to render her assistance to me whenever she can. Hence, she was so excited when I told her I am making Abacuses. She helped me to make all the indentations with her little fingers after I rolled them into small balls. She also helped me to drops the raw abacus beads into the boiling water to pre-cook them. before I further cook them with black fungus (黑木耳）and minced pork.

Other than this Hakka Abacus Beads, there is also another traditional Hakka snack that my MIL used to make them, that is, 客家菜板. I have attempted once but did not manage to do it well yet. I will definitely try again so that my daughters get to eat this authentic Hakka's snack.