Once taro is cooked, pass it through a sieve or thoroughly mash with potato masher.Use a slotted spoon to remove dried shrimp and mushrooms after 10 minutes. While the taro is steaming, place dried shrimp and soaked mushrooms in the boiling water to cook through.

Steam sliced taro pieces until soft (~10-15 minutes).

3 spring onions chopped (the leftover green bits from before).

1 generous pinch of ground white pepper.

2 large dried Chinese mushrooms soaked for ~an hour.

200g mince meat (either pork or chicken works, but pork is more commonly used).

3 spring onions chopped (white part only).

If you follow the recipe though, you will get a greener finish than what I photographed.

Apologies in advance for not having more photos of the process, but you’ll have to appreciate that it was rather hard taking photos when your hands are covered in dough! Also, my picture of the completed dish doesn’t look as green as it should have, that’s because I ran out of spring onions and only had a measly bit of coriander left. This is after trialing the more common 2:1 ratio and finding that I wanted a richer taro fragrance and taste. In any case, my below recipe uses a 3:1 ratio of taro to flour and I follow Poh’s lead in using 2 parts tapioca starch to 1 part glutinous rice flour. If someone could shed some light on this, it would be much appreciated.

I believe that (rightly or wrongly) the glutinous rice flour might be there to induce a chewier texture while maintaining a higher taro content. To complicate things just that little bit more, Poh’s recipe also uses glutinous rice flour in the mix, however in spite of this, she maintains the common 2:1 taro to flour ratio. The more starch you use, the chewier and more dense your beads will be. The more taro you use, the more fragrant and delicate your beads will be. The ratio of taro to starch can vary quite a bit from one recipe to the other, but generally recipes seem to follow a rule of 2 parts taro to 1 part flour. In terms of making the beads, the dough is usually a mixture of mashed taro and tapioca starch. If you’re as much of a taro fan as I am, then you will find these an absolute delight in any way they’re served. To break away from the mould, you could always treat the abacus beads like you would a noodle and serve it in a broth. For the sake of easy reference, they’re quite similar to gnocchi, and are usually cooked then stir fried with mince, mushrooms and the like. They are essentially taro dumplings and are named after those old school calculator beads they are said to resemble. So enough of the brief Chinese lesson, what are these abacus beads and how are they even edible? I assure you that edible, they are. And thus this goes some way to explain Poh’s affinity with this renowned Hakka dish. In fact, the Hakka group are the second largest Chinese dialect group in Malaysia and as expected, many of their cooking styles have been incorporated into what is more generally regarded as ‘Chinese-Malaysian’ food. Like the Cantonese, the Hakka make up a large amount of many overseas Chinese, with many of them settling in South East Asian countries including Malaysia. Hakka speakers are generally from the south eastern parts of China and were believed to originate from central China. Translated literally, ‘Hakka’ means guest houses. What is Hakka? It’s a Chinese dialect and a sub-categorisation of Chinese people who speak the dialect. It has become one of my favourite dishes to cook, even though it is quite process intensive whipping this up for a mid week dinner! Now, I daresay I’ve mastered the dish enough to reproduce it for your judging.Ībacus beads is a famed and much loved Hakka dish. Since Poh first cooked abacus beads in her Masterchef audition back in 2009, I have been meaning to replicate the dish at home.

Abacus beads