It's Dragon Boat Festival. In all honesty, that it a terrible translation of the actual Chinese name, " 端午節" or a better translation would be the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. However, that's too long and too boring. This holiday is most noted for the dragon boat races and rice dumplings that commemorate the death of Qu Yuan, a minister and poet.
This article is about the famous dumplings that are popular around this festival. They are connected Qu Yuan and the dragon boats, but not the origin of the festival. Basically, Qu Yuan (respected minister and poet) drowned himself. The people wanted to prevent the fish from eating the body, so the people made these dumplings and threw them into the water. Then they rowed dragon boats to scare away the fish. Here's a link to Wiki with the full explanation.
Okay back to the preparing of this delicious and filling rice dumpling. The ingredients are:
Baked egg yolks.
Braised pork.
Long grain gluttonous rice mixed with fried purple onions.
Dried Chinese radish with dried shrimp and pork.
Steamed peanuts. We also add steamed chestnuts, but the picture disappeared....hmmm. Creepy.
These are bamboo leaves and they are used to wrap the rice in their unique triangular shape.
Now for the hard part, putting everything thing together. We had three occasions to prepare these. The first was helping my mother-in-law prepare some for friends and family. The second was helping my sister-in-law who taught a whole school (about 1000 students) how to do them. And our small school's Dragon Boat Festival activity (about 75 students). So the pictures kind of jump around. My wife was kind enough to pause as she prepared some.
The first is to hold the bamboo leaf, as in the picture, that creates a cone shape.
Now that you have the primary shape, put in a scoop of gluttonous rice.
Add some peanuts, ground pork, and tiny shrimp.
Add an egg yolk.
Add a steamed chestnut and a piece of braised pork.
Add another scoop of gluttonous rice on top. Then shape the bamboo leaf around the dumpling to create the signature triangular shape.
Tie the dumpling and hang it. The reasoning behind this, according to my family, is this way it is easier to group them together and give people. So if you were to give some to a friend, they are easier for them to carry home. For environmentalist, just think of all the plastic bags not used. There might be a traditional reason, but I have yet to find it.
Above is our makeshift dumpling table at our school. The students had fun making them, but they also had difficulty. It takes time to learn the skill to get the right shape. It's really harder then it looks.
Before eating the dumplings should be steamed and served hot. This style of dumpling is traditional for Hakka Chinese. Different ethnic groups have slightly different ingredients and sometimes even shapes.
Enjoy!
*all images taken by me with iPhone 14
