Zongzi

Glutinous rice and pork tied up in bamboo leaves and boiled for hours, where the fold is the only thing stopping it unpacking itself.

Pork, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains pork.

Ingredients

For soaking

• 1 kg glutinous rice
• 40 dried bamboo leaves
• 20 dried shiitake mushrooms

For the filling

• 800 g pork belly, in 3 cm cubes
• 10 salted egg yolks, halved
• 60 ml dark soy sauce
• 30 ml light soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons Shaoxing wine
• 1 tablespoon five spice
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 teaspoons white pepper

To tie

• kitchen string

Method

1. THE FOLD IS THE DISH. Everything inside is simple and forgiving; the parcel is not. A leaf cone with a gap at the point leaks rice for three hours and comes out half empty and half raw, and there is no stage after boiling at which a bad parcel can be rescued. Make the first three badly, accept it, and keep going.
2. LEAVES AND RICE BOTH NEED A FULL NIGHT and neither can be hurried. A dry leaf splits at the fold; under-soaked rice stays chalky in the middle however long it boils.
3. Bamboo leaves covered in water and soaked overnight, then boiled 10 minutes to soften them and wiped both sides with a cloth. Trim the hard stem end off each.
4. Rice soaked separately overnight and drained well.
5. Shiitake soaked, stems off, caps halved.
6. Pork belly tossed with the soy sauces, wine, five spice, sugar, salt and pepper, and left to marinate at least 4 hours or overnight. Keep the marinade.
7. Drained rice turned through the leftover marinade until evenly brown. This is where the rice gets its colour and most of its salt.
8. To fold: take two leaves overlapping, make a cone about a third of the way along with NO GAP AT THE POINT -- hold it up and look through it before filling.
9. Two tablespoons of rice, a piece of pork, half an egg yolk, a piece of shiitake, then more rice to cover. Press down firmly but leave a finger's width at the top; rice swells, and a parcel packed to the brim bursts its own leaves.
10. Fold the leaf tops down over the opening, fold the sides in, and bind tightly with string -- tight enough to hold its shape when swung by the string.
11. Into a deep pan, weighted with a plate so they stay under, covered with water by 5 cm.
12. BOILED 3 HOURS, topped up with BOILING water as it drops. Cold water into the pan drops the temperature and the rice in the middle stops cooking; that is where a chalky core comes from.
13. Lifted out and hung to drain 20 minutes before any is opened. They keep a week in the fridge and reheat in 20 minutes of steam.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under China · All recipes