糭子 for Dragon Boat Festival

端午節 Dragon Boat Festival is on 28 May 2009 this year. Auntie and Sa Sa asked us to go and make the rice dumpling (zong) together on Sunday 03 May.

I was very looking forward to it. I had never make zong before and always wanted to know how it is made. It was a early start. We arrived at the Auntie's kitchen at 07:15. Chef Jimmy had already started wrapping. The savory zongs were made first. All the ingredients laid out on the workstation. They were:

• Glutinous rice (soaked and seasoned)
• Skinless mung beans (soaked)
• Pork belly pieces (seasoned and cooked)
• Chinese sausage (cut in chunky pieces)
• Chinese mushrooms (cut in pieces, seasoned and cooked)
• Salted duck eggs yolks (cut in pieces)
• Chestnuts (peeled and soaked)
• Dried Shrimp (seasoned and cooked)
• Dried small scallops
• Bamboo leaves (soaked and cleaned)

Jimmy showed me how the savory zong was made with two bamboo leaves. It was fun and not very difficult. However, it takes practice to be able to make the zong to form the perfect shape. I have to say the ones I made were not in perfect shapes at all. My aim was to make sure everything stayed inside and leaves.

Zongs wrapped with two leaves

Sa Sa used a different wrapping method as she used four bamboo leaves to wrap. This is the method her mum shown her. This method makes bigger zong.

I wrapped two zongs with Sa Sa's method. They are on the right of the photo shown below. You can see they look so different from the others that Sa Sa made.

Zongs wrapped with four leaves

Next we made the sweet zongs, Jianshui zong (碱水粽) "alkaline water zong". The ingrendients were:

• Glutinous rice (soaked and seasoned) mixed with lye water
• Red bean paste
• Bamboo leaves

Here is a video to show how it is made.


Chef Jimmy was showing us how to wrap Jianshui zong (碱水粽) "alkaline water zong".

I was making the 碱水粽

The way to cook the zongs are boiling them in water. The two leaves zongs took two hours. The four leaves zongs took three hours. The one leaf zongs took a hour.

Cooked zongs

Yummy!!!


Click here for more photos.


To find out more about Dragon Boat Festival (Mandarin: Duanwu Jie 端午节; Cantonese: Tuen Ng Jit 端午節). Click here.

To find out more about rice dumplings (Zongzi 粽子 / 糭子 or Zong 粽 / 糭). Click here.


Links to our other postings:
Floating Islands - Ile Flottante - French Dessert
BHF London to Brighton Bike Ride 2007
Salty Duck Eggs 鹹蛋