You Can Have Zongzi Anytime Of The Year (2007-10-29)
Who says you can only eat zongzi in Dragon Boat Festival (Duen Ng)? I can't remember the last time I had a zongzi, the savory glutinous rice with fillings wrapped in bamboo leaves, but I've always loved this specialty food. It is dense, heavy and full of fatty pork belly and salted yolk in the filling which I'm sure won't do much good to your cholesterol and triglyceride levels. But zongzi is too tasty to pass up, everything in moderation is ok, right?
When I saw news about zongzi in June around Duen Ng, I just had such
a craving for them rice snacks. However I didn't have salted yolk
then and I didn't want to spend all that effort and make half-ass
zongzi. So I started to make salted eggs in order to harvest the
yolks. The process of making homemade salted eggs is very simple
(I'll post the method tomorrow), it just takes so darn long, six weeks
for
the size of the eggs I use.
After a long, long six weeks, I could finally set out to make
zongzi. The process of wrapping it isn't too labor intensive but
perfecting the skill is hard. Most of my zongzi won't win any
Miss Zongzi Pageant, but they do taste great! If you've never
tried making your own, it isn't that difficult to do. I found
that even if you didn't wrap the rice perfectly, it still won't lose
its shape or fall apart in the boiling process. You just won't
end up with a perfectly shaped zongzi on the plate, that's all.
Zongzi is also freezable which makes it a handy and tasty frozen
meal.
Points in making zongzi:
Wash and soak bamboo leaves at least an hour (or overnight), then boil
them for 15
minutes. Cool and lightly dry them.
Soak grains for 3 hours, drain and season them with salt, bit of sugar
and oil.
Marinate shiitake with sugar, salt, soy sauce, wine, oil and corn
starch.
Marinate pork (preferably overnight) with salt, soy, sugar, wine, five
spice powder.
Smaller zongzi need shorter boiling time (medium heat). Cool
zongi in the cooking water before removing them.
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