Black Bean Paste

Recipe: Black Bean Paste黑豆沙馅

Yield: 700g (fine bean paste) & 480g (corse bean paste)

Ingredients

400g black beans 3 pcs. screwpine / pandan leaves (cut into halves) *optional water Seasonings For Fine Paste 150g sugar 2 TBSP Chinese rose wine *optional 4 to 6 TBSP vegetable oil

Seasonings For Coarse Paste 75g sugar 1 TBSP Chinese rose wine *optional 2 to 4 TBSP vegetable oil Chinese rose wine = 玫瑰露酒

Measurements: tsp. = teaspoon | TBSP = tablespoon

Preparation
1. Wash and rinse beans for a few times. Place the beans in a large bowl, cover with water. Soak beans for 6 hours or overnight.	2. Bring beans, screwpine leaves and the soaking water to a boil. Add water to cover beans if necessary. Then, reduce heat to medium low or low, cover saucepan with lid, and continue to cook until beans soften, about 40 minutes. Turn off the heat. Let the cooked beans stand slightly cool.	3. Remove screwpine leaves. Puree the cooked beans without much liquid (liquid that used to cook the beans) in a blender.
4. Add enough liquid to the puree, it will help straining goes smooth in step 5. Pulse to combine.	5. Strain the puree.	6. Cook the fine puree and the bean residue into bean paste separately. Ignore step 5 and cook the puree straigh away if you do not need a fine paste.
7. Put the fine puree in a saucepan. Stir in sugar. Bring it to a boil over medium high heat.	8. Reduce heat to medium low, stir in Chinese rose wine, stirring occasionally until the paste thicken (able to coat the back of a wooden spoon).	9. Reduce heat to low and keep stirring until the paste slightly dry. You will be able to see the bottom of your saucepan when you spoon up the paste at this point.
10. Stir in the vegetable oil and combine evenly. Turn off the heat.	11. Bean paste is ready now. Repeat steps 7 to 10 to cook the bean residue. Let the bean paste to cool completely before wrapping in cling wrap and store in an air tight container in refrigerator.

Notes

Bean paste can be stored in refrigerator for up to a week. Bean paste can be used as filling for pao, glutinous rice balls, Chinese biscuits etc. You can make bean paste using red beans too, but the color might not be as dark as black bean paste.