Rice dumplings..... 包粽子

It is going to be Duanwu Festival (端午節/端午节) or otherwise known as Dragon Boat Festival tomorrow.. Since I am around to help out, my mum decided to make rice dumplings or zongzi (粽子) last Sunday..

So my mum went and bought all the necessary ingredients..
which includes glutinous rice, dried Chinese mushroom, dried shrimps, white beans, pork and chestnuts.. of course, not forgetting the important dried bamboo leaves..
First, we had to "cook" the dried bamboo leaves in hot water.. like this..
so that the leaves will turned into these.. green in color and "supple" enough to be used..
All the ingredients (the glutinous rice, pork, chestnuts, mushrooms and dried shrimps) are slightly precooked.
Now that everything is ready, let the wrapping begin!

First gather 2 bamboo leaves and make a shape like this..
Put some glutinous rice first, then add in the other ingredients..
then cover it with more glutinous rice..
then come the most tricky part.. making the "required" tetrahedral shape.. I am not able to take any picture of it as both my hands are needed for the wrapping.. once the shape is formed, tied it with a bamboo string.. and the end product is like this..
Once a few bunches of these zongzi are ready, it is time to cook them.. boiling them the traditional way, using charcoal!! :)
After about 70-80 minutes, the end product is like this..
Ever since I went to Singapore, I have not been able to make it home for this festival since as this festival is not high in importance in our family.. and luckily my skill in wrapping rice dumplings was still intact.. and none of my zongzi fell apart during boiling.. :P

This time round, we wrapped around 60 rice dumplings in around 2 hours.. Other than the ones that are filled with pork, we also made some 20 smaller Jianshui zong (碱水粽) which has no fillings..