MADAM LING’S RED BEAN BUNS
Or the Art of a Feel-Good Story
Moving to a new office after you have left your old job brings with it an initial feeling of dislocation. More so, when you’ve established your butt print on the chair in your old office for a goodly number of years.
But now you’ve moved on.
You’ve got your new lanyard.
You’ve stepped into a new office. From here on, you’re in unfamiliar terrain. Worse, you’ve been given a barely legible map. With cautious steps, you find your way. You must adjust to new routines. Acquire an entirely new set of colleagues. You try to find your place in the office jungle. Try to get a sense of tribal politics, who you should befriend, whom you should not antagonize. Where are the lines that should not be crossed?
It can get a little stressful, but only for a short while. Once you’ve acclimatized yourself to the office weather, so to speak, and once people in the office are accustomed to your entrance in the morning, you will sail past those stressful moments, and begin to enjoy fresh horizons of learning.
Your perspective is widened. You make new friends who open your eyes to new vistas of knowledge you would never have glimpsed had you stayed on in your old job. What knowledge you may ask? I can sum it up in three words.
Red Bean Bun.
A LITTLE BUN HISTORY
Red bean paste is made from a Japanese bean known as Adzuki. Monks in Japan were vegetarians and needed to find a substitute for red meat. They made dishes from Adzuki beans because the red color resembled the color of meat. Originally, salt was added to the red bean paste. But when someone decided to go off the beaten path, culinary-wise, and added sugar to the paste, it was as if a Eureka button had been pressed.
Sweet red bean paste became a hit!
In Asia, it is common to find red bean paste in desserts and dumplings. I’ve had red bean dumplings for many years but usually only because all the meat dumplings at the shop had sold out. Even though I have had no unpleasant encounters with red…