umami-mummy taught me how to wrap zhong last weekend. A good thing to learn because nowadays people just cannot be arsed to make their own anymore. Takes too much time and effort.
Click here for some folk story about zhongs.
First, procuring the ingredients- not easily available in supermarkets or wet markets. Mummy had to ask people to buy it from dried goods wholesalers.
Second, the prep takes at least two days. Cutting up the meat, washing and soaking the bamboo leaves, removing the skin from chestnuts etc. Easier if there is help, it is a lonely job picking out the jasmine rice that sometimes gets mixed into the glutinous rice.
So, to the ingredients. All ready and laid out when I arrived just a little after noon.
Left: Glutinous rice and mung beans. The rice has been mixed with some rough-chopped garlic and shallots.The mung beans are an essential ingredient in our family recipe- there must be lots and lots of it, definitely more than the rice. Mummy usually makes a bunch for Daddy that has extra beans.
Right: Red beans and rice. Mummy is not Cantonese, so she has never quite acquired the taste for the mung bean version. She prefers red beans, there is therefore a red bean version.
The fillings, or stuffings.
Next important ingredient is pork. Must be fatty pork. Seasoned with dark soy, oyster sauce, salt, pepper and sugar. A little five-spice powder too, but only a bit, because we don't really like this weird powder. Fifth brother likes his zhongs with extra pork.
Right: The yolks from salted eggs. Mustn't leave this out or people will complain too. Sometimes there are two pieces inside, ooh.
Other ingredients: dried shrimps, dried chestnuts lightly cooked with oyster sauce, stir-fried shitake mushrooms. The chestnuts this year was not very tasty, but the mushrooms made up for it with its distinctive fragrance and succulent chewiness. I suggested to Mummy maybe next year we should add dried scallops.
I remember we had dried oyster in the recipe at some point too, but somehow it has dropped from favour.
The wrapping:
Filling
Make a pyramid pocket. If the leaf is too small, use two. The stem end should be pointing away from you- if not it will fold funny, like what happened to me.
Spread rice scantily on leaf. Layer with beans and the rest of the filling ingredients. Mummy likes to layer rice-beans-filling-beans-rice, I deviate a little from this by scattering beans in between the fillings too.
Everybody is scared of carbohydrates and prefer the fillings and beans anyway so there isn't much rice in each dumpling, compared with commercially available ones. I manage to get away with just 1.5-2 dessertspoons of rice per piece.
Pack as much as possible. Mummy is the expert here.Just for comparison, see the picture on the right? The ones I made were in the bunch on the right. All were at least half the size of hers.
Folding
Here is where the art lies. Mummy packed so much into the dumpling, but still nothing spilled out. It takes a bit of practice, especially the first fold, and it is important not to squeeze or wrap too tightly or the rice would either not be evenly cooked or leaks out during boiling.
Tying is also a little tricky, but it was quite a doddle for me. My expensive education finally paid off-with the versatile surgical knot-tying skill I could tie them dumplings safe and secure.
The dumplings got boiled in a big vat of salted boiling water for 2-2.5 hours depending on size. Then they cooled by the window.
Dumplings ready to eat. Mung bean and red bean versions.
Maternal grandma makes a gorgeous kan-sui (lye water) zhong stuffed with red bean paste, but they scheduled the wrapping on the day I went back to Singapore. Maybe there will be one or two in the freezer when I next visit.
Bon appetit! Happy Dumpling eating!
