Taiwanese Rice Balls

A while back my ex-boyfriend told me about some Taiwanese rice balls that he absolutely loves, but can only find in Taiwan.  Although we broke up some time ago, trying to be a nice friend, I offered to try to make them for him if he would find me a recipe that was of course in English.  He, being the overly supportive guy that he is, insisted that there was no way I could ever make them.  Me being the tenacious girl that I am, decided that I wanted to make them, just because he said I could not.  It has taken me months, but with the help of my very supportive boyfriend, Wenhao, not to be confused with my ex, I have rounded up all the needed ingredients, and have finally made Taiwanese rice balls!  

This was one of the most difficult dishes I have made to date.  Even though the majority of the ingredients come already prepared, it was building the balls where the difficulty came.  

Ingredients: Pickled cabbage, you tiao (chinese fried dough), pickled turnips, shredded pork, and sticky rice.  

First I fried the you tiao.

I ended up chopping up the turnips and you tiao into smaller pieces before mixing the ingredients together. 

I mixed the ingredients together.  

Here is where it got tricky!  The rice was extremely sticky, and as I tried to form the balls, the rice stuck to every part of my hands!  Every time I tried to get the rice off of my hands, and onto the ball, more rice just stuck to my hands, which caused the rice balls to fall apart.  Refusing to let sticky rice be my demise, I decided to out smart it!  Here is a trick if you ever have to deal with sticky rice using your hands...simply wet them.  This allows you to handle the rice without it sticking to your hands, but will instead stick to itself, and form nicely.  The first ball I made took me about 20 agonizing minutes to form, but after I figured out to wet my hands, the rest were done within minutes!  :-)

Btw...I really am not too fond of this dish, and I honestly don't think he has anything to do with how I made them, but rather because I don't particularly like the ingredients in the center.  But now I can say, I have indeed made them :-)

Over time this project developed from being something I wanted to do simply to prove my jerk ex-boyfriend wrong, into being something I did for myself, and for Wenhao.  After not being able to find any recipes, or even pictures of this dish online, I had pretty much given up.  That was until Wenhao told me how much he missed eating rice balls from Taiwan, so I decided I wasn't going to allow something like not knowing the ingredients or having a recipe stand in my way.  Through the process of gathering all the information I needed to make this dish, I discovered that I am truly blessed to have the boyfriend I have now.  He is a stark contrast from all other guys that I have dated.  Both encouraging and supportive, he helped me through every step of this process, translating ingredients, asking his aunt for advice on how to make sticky rice, and finding me pictures to follow.  If he ever had any doubts, he never let me know it.  I am a lucky girl!