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I absolutely love red bean (also known as "Azuki bean") paste. I like it in ice cream, I like in fried dumplings, I like it in boiled dumplings, and I love it in mooncakes. This recipe, taken from <a href="http://beckyblog.com/">Becky Blog</a>, a Chinese food and recipe journal, walks you through the recipe for making red bean paste soup with glutinous rice flour pearls. <!--more-->

<img src="http://chinesereadingpractice.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/20110203-INLINE-red-bean-paste-soup.jpg" alt="Chinese Reading Materials: Recipe for Red Bean Paste Soup" title="Chinese Reading Materials: Recipe for Red Bean Paste Soup" width="100" height="100" class="imgborder alignleft" />If you've never been to China, you've probably never had this dish. The soup is thick and a bit starchy, and flavored with red bean and sugar. The "pearls" are boiled rice balls with a texture something between gummy and sticky, like huge tapioca balls. 

I had a considerable amount of trouble with the phrase "水淀粉勾芡", but eventually found the answer <a href="http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/41527200">here</a>, on the Chinese equivalent of Yahoo! answers. Essentially, this is a recipe-specific phrase describing a kind of thickening process similar to adding corn starch to a jelly; the cook sprinkles starch on hot water, simultaneously stirring with the other hand until the starch dissolves into the water. The starchy water is then stirred into the main dish.

I don't want to cut into Becky's 'net traffic, so I'm not posting her pictures here, text only. In the original post, she snaps photos of each step of the cooking process, so you might want to check out the original post to get a good feel for the dish.

<a href="http://beckyblog.com/read.php?229">See Becky's original recipe</a>
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<div class="postintro">
<h4>Click to Listen</h4>
浸泡 - [pinyin]jin4 pao4[/pinyin] - Soak
高压锅 - [pinyin]gao1 ya1 guo1 [/pinyin] - Pressure cooker
气阀 - [pinyin]qi4 fa1[/pinyin] - Steam valve
舀 - [pinyin]yao3[/pinyin] - Scoop (verb)
拌机搅 - [pinyin]jiao3 ban4 ji1[/pinyin] - Blender
勾芡 - [pinyin]gou1 qian4[/pinyin] - Thicken
呈现 - [pinyin]cheng2 xian4[/pinyin] - Appear, emerge
撮 - [pinyin]cuo1[/pinyin] - Bring together, gather up
</div>
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<div id="chinesetext">甜点一道，竹笋的大爱。

这道甜点不是来自网络的菜谱，而是我们这个周五去星星家吃饭，她的妈妈做了红豆珍珠圆来当甜点。就是用红豆/红枣煮好再加入小小的实心汤圆， 很好吃，我和老公一人吃了一大碗， 回家自己发挥了一下，有了这个甜点。原本只给了竹笋一勺，没想他一声声喊着“还要”，一人居然吃了三小碗，我们担心他吃坏了就不给了，但是儿子这么喜欢吃，做妈的心里还是有点小得意，赶紧整理菜谱，大家一起分享。
<ol>
	<li>红豆<strong>浸泡</strong>过夜</li>
	<li>一份红豆，三到四份清水一起用<strong>高压锅</strong>煮，上汽后改中火压十分钟即可。</li>
	<li><strong>气阀</strong>落下后，将红豆<strong>舀</strong>出，红豆汤依然留在锅中。</li>
	<li>将红豆加少许红豆汤一起用<strong>搅拌机</strong>搅伴成糊状。</li>
	<li>再将红豆糊倒入红豆汤里，加热，并加糖调到自己喜欢的甜度。 我加的是冰糖。</li>
	<li>加入一碗水淀粉<strong>勾芡</strong>，使得红豆糊<strong>呈现</strong>粘粘的奶昔状,关火。</li>
	<li>事先准备好糯米粉加水<strong>撮</strong>成小的糯米粉圆。</li>
	<li>水烧开，加入糯米粉圆，粉圆浮起就算煮好了。</li>
	<li>在红豆糊里加入小的粉圆，就是成品了。 我不直接用红豆来煮的原因是这么处理后，汤羹很有红豆沙的感觉，配上糯糯的汤圆，非常可口。</li>
</ol>
</div>
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My little one [lit: bamboo shoot] absolutely loves this dessert.

I didn't find this recipe on the internet. On Friday, we went to XingXing's house to eat, and her mom made Red Bean Paste Pearl Soup for dessert. It's made by boiling red beans or red dates and then adding little soup balls. It's delicious - my husband and I each ate a large bowl, and after we'd gone home, I made a dinner myself that featured this dessert. We originally just gave our little one one spoonful, I didn't expect the constant cries of "More please!" He ate three whole bowls by himself, and we worried that he'd make himself sick, so we didn't give him any more, but making something that her son loves to eat fills a mother's heart with pride, so I quickly tidied up the recipe to share with everyone.
<ol>
	<li>Soak the red beans overnight.</li>
	<li>Take one part red beans and three to four parts water and boil them together in a pressure cooker. When steam comes out, adjust to medium heat, and let cook for another 10 minutes [lit: 10 minutes should do].</li>
	<li>Once you depressurize the pot, scoop out the beans, leaving the soup liquid in the pot.</li>
	<li>Put the beans and a dash of the soup liquid into a blender and blend into a paste.</li>
	<li>Pour the paste from the blender back into the pot with the soup, add heat, and add sugar to taste. I used rock sugar. [lit: ice sugar - a common form chunky sugar sold in Chinese grocery stories that looks like pieces of rock candy.]</li>
	<li>Add a bowl of starch, and turn off the heat when the soup appears to have the consistency of a milkshake. [Word "consistency" doesn't actually appear in the Chinese sentence, but it is implied].</li>
	<li>Prepare the pearls by mixing glutinous rice flour with water and shaping it into balls.</li>
	<li>Bring water to a boil and add the glutinous rice balls. They're done when they float.</li>
	<li>Add the glutinous rice balls to the red bean paste soup, and you're done. I don't add whole boiled red beans to the soup, because it makes the red bean flavor is too strong, but the sticky rice soup balls make it very tasty.</li>
</ol>
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