Students cook at Asian Culture Center

Sarah Zeng left her seat in the audience, walked to the table and peered into the small electric frying pot.

“So, even though you push it, it stills comes back round shaped?” said Zeng as she looked down at the sesame seed balls.

Zeng, a junior, is one of several IU students who participated in the IU Asian Culture Center’s cooking demonstration Friday at the Asian-American Association.

Pushing down on the sesame seed balls while they fried helped them expand while maintaining their round shape, sophomore Gordan Lin explained.
Sesame balls are a common dish in China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines.

They are prepared with various fillings, AAA President Becca Sun said.
AAA is a student organization which promotes cultural understanding of the Asian-Pacific American experience, according to its website.

It also aims to close the gap between Asian Pacific Americans and all other people at IU, the website says.

Four AAA students chose to participate in the demonstration, including the president and vice president of the organization.

Sesame seed balls originated in China during the Tang dynasty, sophomore Angie Nguyen said.

Nguyen said they chose to make this particular dish both for its cross cultural ties and its timeliness.

Sesame balls are commonly consumed in China at this time of the year in anticipation of the lunar New Year.

Sophomore Kevin Cao explained each step of the process, first taking the dark brown sugar and mixing it in small bowl with water.

“What I did here is I accidentally added too much water,” Cao said as he combined the sugar water solution with the glutinous rice flour. “It’s more like a goop. This is not what you want. The consistency of it is really fine.”

Cao corrected his mistake by adding more flour and continued to knead the mixture into a ball, completing the recipe until the sesame seed-coated ball was ready for frying.

Fourteen people attended the event, talking among themselves as they snacked on the steady supply of sesame balls Lin fried.

Normally, sesame balls are rotated and compressed with chop sticks with a basket at the bottom of the frying pot to keep them from floating to the bottom and burning.

Lin had neither the chop sticks nor the basket, and instead used two spoons.

“Alright, give me the next one,” Lin said to Cao, continuing the demonstration.

Cao grinned.

“This big one?”

The sesame ball was much larger than most of the others.

“Challenge accepted,” Lin said.

By the end of the one-hour demonstration, Lin had managed to fry all of the sesame balls.

The AAA plan on having their next event in April.

Called “Taste of Asia,” it will include other student organizations in anticipation of Asian-Pacific American Heritage month.