Rice Dumpling Festival

Qu Yuan was a Chinese patriotic poet who serve the emperor in Chu Kingdom in ancient China. He was a good minister and was well loved by the people. However, bad evil court officials were jealous of Qu Yuan's abilities and they successfully influenced the weak-minded emperor to dismiss and exile him.

Feeling disheartened and angry, Qu Yuan tied himself to a rock and jumped into the Mi Luo river in Hunan province in order to protest against injustice and corruption. When the people get to know of his death, they rowed their boats to the river to look for his body. When they failed to find his body, they started beating their drums and making loud noises in the river hoping to scare the fishes and sea creatures away so that they will not eat his body. Others started making rice dumplings to throw into the river believing that the sea creatures and fishes will eat their dumplings instead of Qu Yuan's body.

Since then, the 5th day of the 5th month was set as Duan Wu Jie, to remember the incident.
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Main Ingredients:

40 pieces dried bamboo leaves, soaked for at least 12 hours, drained
String for tying the rice dumplings
1kg glutinous rice, soaked overnight and drained
300g lean pork, cut into small pieces, marinate it in light soya sauce, dark soya sauce for 1 hour
2 tablespoons oil
A pinch of salt
10 Chinese mushrooms, soaked and thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic finely chopped

Optional Ingredients:

200-300g red beans, soaked and drained/ground peanuts
4 salted egg yolk, mashed
10g dried prawn

1. Heat the oil, fry the chopped garlic until golden brown.
2. Add in the pork, fry until cooked. Set it aside and let it cool.
3. 4. Take 2 pieces of dried bamboo leaves, line one on top of another, fold them from the middle and twist both ends up to form a cone/triangular pouch.
4. Fill half of the pouch with glutinous rice, add in a bit of mushroom, pork, and other optional ingredients.
5. Fill the rest of the pouch with glutinous rice until it is full.
6. Hold the pouch tight and close and twist the leaves. Tie it with the string to make sure the dumpling is securely wrapped. If you do not do this step properly, your fillings will be spill when you boil your dumplings.
7. Repeat step 3 to 6 until all the ingredients are used up.
8. Use a big pot that is big enough for all your dumplings. Put all your wrapped dumplings into the pot and fill it with water. Make sure that the water cover all the dumplings.
9. Bring the water to boil. Keep it boiling for 3 to 4 hours.
10. Take the dumplings out from the water. Hang your dumplings up to dry.

You can keep rice dumplings in your fridge for 3 days. You can put your dumplings in a microwave oven for 2 minutes and they will be ready to eat.

Last but not least, I will like to wish everyone a happy rice dumpling festival.

PS: This lens has been awarded a purple star on 10 July 2009.