Longevity buns with homemade red bean paste

Rinse 250 g adzuki beans, cover with water about an inch over the beans and soak overnight.

Cook the beans with one liter of cool water and a quarter teaspoon of sodium carbonate over a medium-low flame for one hour, stirring now and then so they do not scorch.

Rinse the paste through a strainer into a cloth bag, pressing with a spoon, until only shells remain in the strainer; discard the shells and squeeze the bag dry.

With the flame off, mix 100 g oil into the paste in a pot.

Add 50 g granulated sugar and 100 g brown sugar, cook down over medium low, stirring constantly, 10 to 15 minutes, until it thickens to a smooth paste that resists the spatula and stands without sliding back.

Split 110 g water between two bowls; dissolve 10 g sugar in one and 2 g yeast in the other.

Mix 200 g flour with half a teaspoon of baking powder, then add the sugar water and the yeast water bit by bit for about a minute until shaggy.

Knead on a work surface about eight minutes until the surface is smooth.

Knead in 4 g lard for another two minutes.

Set aside 12 g of dough for the leaves and refrigerate the rest so it does not rise.

Work the tiniest drop of green food coloring into the 12 g by splitting and recombining the dough until even.

Roll the green dough to a log, cut six even pieces, halve each, roll into a cigar, flatten with a bench scraper and press lines into it to look leafy; hold the leaves under plastic wrap.

Pass half the dough at a time through a pasta maker on the thickest setting, folding in half between passes, seven times total, to drive out the air.

Roll into a log and cut into six 50 g sections.

Mix one drop of red food coloring with three tablespoons of water; brush it through a tea strainer with a toothbrush to make a red mist.

Portion the bean paste into 20 g balls, one per bun.

Press a section flat smooth side down, pull the edges to the centre into a ball, twist it tight on the work surface, press flat again into a saucer.

Put a ball of paste in the middle, push it down while pulling the edges up, gather the excess at the top and twist it closed, then pinch and roll the seam away.

Pinch a tip on the smooth side and press a seam about two millimetres deep with a bench scraper.

Mist the bun with the red colour through the strainer, dip the leaves in water and stick them on, and set each on a square of parchment.

Proof until the dough slowly bounces back from a gentle press; in a subtropical kitchen they were ready without proofing.

Steam over bubbling water on medium high for eight minutes, then shut off the heat and leave them two minutes more.