Jong Tz Party (Sticky Rice Dumplings)
Well, another Dragon Boat Festival has come and gone, and I’m sorry to be so late posting up on it, but I’m also behind on a lot of other posts now, as well (long story). At any rate, instead of rehashing what I posted last year, you can just go check out Dragon Boat Festival for yourself and save me the trouble!
For this year, we took a different approach, and decided to give you all a treat - a sticky rice dumpling treat to be exact. A local community center had a dumpling-fest, and we decided to take the Teaboy along and make it a family outing. We were told it was a free event, and all we had to do was pick up the ingredients, do the basic preparations at home, then bring the rice, filling, and bamboo leaves to the center for wrapping. What we weren’t told was that we were preparing 5kg of materials for all the other neighbors to share, and that we were only allowed to keep 6 dumplings for ourselves. Despite not getting to keep enough dumplings to make more than a snack for the three of us, we did have a lot of fun, and the people were very friendly.
The basic procedure is as follows:
Fold 2 bamboo leaves into a pocket.
Spoon in some rice (uncooked).
Add meat or other filling.
Then a bit more rice.
Fold the top down, pinching the leaves together (makes a ‘wedgie’ - (snicker)), and then fold the leaf around one side to seal it.
Tie the dumpling together with a string.
After preparing the dumplings, they are steamed or boiled until the rice is cooked, then eaten. Yummy!
Here are a few more photos from the event - the Teaboy and myself giving it our best shot, and some of the more ‘professional’ grandmas and aunties in attendance. You’d have thought they were baking pies the way some of them were going at it. Enjoy!
