The Rice Dumpling Festival (Duan Wu Festival) is a widely celebrated festival amongst the Chinese community. Days or even weeks before this festival, you'll see more of these Rice Dumplings being sold everywhere especially places with higher Chinese population. These Rice Dumplings comes in a few shapes (usually in the shape of a pyramid), sizes and in many different types of fillings.
The origins of Rice Dumplings are traced to the legend of Quan Yu, a famous Chinese poet. The legend involves a really long and complicated throne-fighting war and political history. But to make the long story short: Qu Yuan was also an important minister back in Chu Kingdom in ancient China. Known for his patriotism, Qu Yuan tried unsuccessfully to warn his king and countrymen against the expansionism of their Qin neighbors. However, His Majesty had not taken Qu Yuan's advice seriously, and he eventually got himself trapped and captured in a foreign land by his enemies, which then lead to his own death.
Sad and angry at the corrupted, dying Kingdom, Qu Yuan tied himself to a big rock and threw himself into the Miluo River. According to legend, the people then made rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves and threw them into the river. They believed this would stop the fish from eating Qu Yuan's body. Some would even row down stream in a boat, beating drums and shouting out loud in the hope to scare the fish away (it was believed that it is how the Dragon Boat event is related to the festival.
Since then, the 5th day of the 5th month in the Chinese calendar has been set as Duan Wu Festival to remember the incident. Another version of the legend states that the dumplings were made to placate a dragon that lived in the river.
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| - Qu Yuan - However, I do not understand the Chinese characters written in the picture. |
The Rice Dumplings are glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves. However, the leaves of lotus, maize, banana, canna, shell ginger or pandan leaves are sometimes used as substitutes in other countries. Each kind of leaf imparts its own unique smell and flavor to the rice.
The fillings for the dumplings vary from region to region. Fillings may be sweet, such as mashed yellow beans, or savory, and may include pork, sausages, Chinese mushrooms, salted egg, and chestnuts. Some types of Rice Dumpling contains no filling at all, in which case they are usually eaten with sugar or syrup.
Wrapping a dumpling neatly is a skill which is passed down through families, as are the Chinese recipes. Dumpling-making is usually a family event with everyone helping out.
The dumplings need to be steamed or boiled for several hours and one superstition says that dumplings will never cook if a pregnant woman enters the kitchen whilst they are being steamed. Dumplings may also be frozen for later consumption, but must be boiled instead of steamed when stored in this fashion. The salty Rice Dumpling is easy to cook when compared to the most difficult and hardest Rice Dumpling, the red bean (sweet). The red bean Rice Dumpling takes many hours to prepare. The red bean used to make the filling must be slowly cooked and simmered for at least 12 hours to turn the hard beans into a soft sweet paste. Disruption of any kind in the cooking process will end up producing in a Rice Dumpling that is sub par.
I personally do not know how to make them but love to eat them...only the savoury ones though. My favourite would be the simple Rice Dumplings with fillings containing green or yellow beans, pork, salted egg and chinese black mushroom. I'm not sure whether a family Rice Dumpling recipe is available within my family and that's simply because I've never seen my mother nor grandmas making any. However, my mother in-law makes them every year for this festival and I love the ones made by my brother's mom. They are simply DELICIOUS and I'll be having some tomorrow, yeah!
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Today, I had 2 super delicious Rice Dumplings made by my brother's mom for dinner. I was told that someone offered to buy the last four from her but she turned it down simply because it was saved up specially for me and my husband, Ken. Thank you so much!
This is a once a year occassion and it's too bad that I only get to eat this once a year.
Today, I had 2 super delicious Rice Dumplings made by my brother's mom for dinner. I was told that someone offered to buy the last four from her but she turned it down simply because it was saved up specially for me and my husband, Ken. Thank you so much!
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| Homemade Rice Dumplings - SUPER YUMMY! |
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| The fillings were simply heavenly! |
1 comment:
Indeed very informative. Well written. Enjoyed reading it.
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