Happy Dragon Boat Festival - 端午节快乐

 端午时节粽子飘香

Today is the 5th day of the 5th month in Lunar calender, a significant day celebrated by the Chinese world wide (Duan wu jie) 端午节.

This traditional custom has long been practised annually for more than 2000 years in China, commemorating a famous patriotic poet Qu Yuan (340-278 BC). I am not going to elabroate the history, you can click here to read more about it.

I just wish to highlight the food that I'm going to introduce in relation to this festival. Yes, in general for almost every Chinese festival, it is usually accompanied by some sort of special food.

The special food for this special day is "Zong Zi" (Rice dumpling). I had introduced this rice dumpling before in 2010 - Bak Chang (Savoury Rice Dumpling) 咸肉粽子. Here, not only you get to have a very traditional glutinous rice dumpling recipe, you also get to watch the video on how to wrap rice dumpling.

Yesterday, Auntie Lan again demonstrated her cooking skill in the making of one of her signature dish - Rice dumpling. Since last Saturday, she had asked me to get the necessary ingredients ready. In fact, as long as a month ago she had started her preparation by making homemade salted duck eggs, to prepare one of the key ingredients - salted egg yolks.

Duck egg yolks - eggs soaked in saturated salt water for 30 days

After nearly a day of preparation and cooking, with 2kg of glutinous rice, Auntie Lan managed to make more than 40 rice dumplings.

When I came home from work yesterday, we had rice dumplings and rice porridge for dinner. With over 40 rice dumplings made, I reckon for the coming days, rice dumplings would be our main staple especially for my hubby who is crazy over rice dumplings!

Bak Chang (Savoury Rice Dumpling) 咸肉粽子

I just had another one for lunch today and the only word that I had to say was " Yummy!"

Key ingredients - Glutinous rice, salted egg yolk, peanuts, pork belly and mushroom