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Recipes with dried bamboo leaves

3 recipes that use dried bamboo leaves, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Nyonya bak chang, takes 180 minutes. It is most often cooked with glutinous rice, kitchen string and neutral oil.

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Jiaxing zongzi (pork belly rice dumplings)

Jiaxing in Zhejiang, an hour south-west of Shanghai, is China's zongzi capital: at the Dragon Boat Festival, and all year round at the station kiosks, people buy long pillow-shaped parcels of soy-brown sticky rice wrapped round a chunk of pork belly that melts into the grains during hours of boiling. The rice and pork marinate separately, overnight in the fridge. The mistake is lean pork: it turns dry and stringy, while belly bastes the rice from inside. The pork is fully cooked after the long boil, well over 71 °C. A little Shaoxing rice wine goes in the pork marinade; it cooks away, and you can leave it out. Chef's tip: tie them firmly; loose zongzi let water in and the rice turns mushy.

240 minChineseRice & Grains
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Jianshui zong (alkaline rice dumplings)

When the Dragon Boat Festival comes round in early summer, kitchens in Guangdong and the Jiangnan region boil batches of these plain, amber zongzi in bamboo leaves; they are chilled and eaten with syrup or sugar as a cooling sweet. Alkaline water turns the glutinous rice golden, springy and almost translucent, with a faint mineral taste. Food-grade lye water is strong, so keep it away from children, wear gloves and never taste the raw soaked rice. The mistake is wrapping too tightly: the rice swells a lot, so leave a little room. Chef's tip: boil them fully submerged under a heavy plate the whole time, or the tops stay hard.

240 minChineseDessertsVeganGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Nyonya bak changPork rice dumplings

Every year in the run-up to the Dragon Boat Festival, on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, Peranakan aunties in Singapore's Katong set up long tables and start wrapping. Their chang differ from Hokkien rice dumplings: the glutinous rice is part-tinted a soft blue with butterfly pea flowers and scented with pandan, and the filling of diced pork is sweet with candied winter melon and warm with ground coriander and white pepper. Cut open, each pyramid is speckled blue and white, sticky and fragrant, and is eaten warm or at room temperature with a dab of sambal or simply on its own. A common mistake is tying the dumplings too loosely, so water seeps in and the rice turns mushy; wrap tight and tie firmly. Chef's tip: fry the filling until it is fairly dry before wrapping, as any excess liquid makes the rice around it soggy.

180 minSingaporeanRice & GrainsGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Goes well with dried bamboo leaves