More than a Recipe: Bak Chang/Chinese Rice Dumping (肉粽)

Bak Chang is one of those Chinese delicacies eaten just once a year during Duan Wu Festival, also called Dragon Boat Festival.  Do note that this does not mean you eat only one dumpling a year, just that it is made around this period of the year.  Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month and in 2013, it falls on June 12 on the Roman calendar.

The focus of the celebration is eating rice dumplings.  This festival is believed to have originated in ancient China (as do many things...) and among the many stories of its origin, the one I know best and which is most commonly known is that it commemorates the death of Qu Yuan, a famous poet who died around 278 BCE.  A descendant of the Chu royal household, Qu Yuan served in high offices.  When the King decided to ally with the increasingly powerful state of Qin, Qu Yuan was banished for opposing the alliance and was accused of treason.  Twenty eight years later, the state of Qin conquered the capital of Chu and in despair, Qu Yuan committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month.  Legend has it that local people who admired Qu Yuan, who while in exile wrote poems aplenty, dropped sticky rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves into the river to feed Qu Yuan in his afterlife.  They are wrapped in bamboo leaves so that the fish won't eat the rice meant for Qu Yuan.  The locals were also thought to have paddled out in boats, either to drop the dumplings, scare the fish away, or to retrieve Qu Yuan's body, and probably that's the origin of dragon boat racing.

In my life, the best dumplings are made by my two now deceased grandmothers, and my mother-in-law.  My mum can't make it, but like me she enjoys it.  To many of my generation, making rice dumplings is almost a skill/art that seems to rest with the previous generation.  It is very difficult to make.  Every family has its own recipe, and this is passed down from grandmothers to mothers/aunts to whoever is interested in learning...which isn't me.  I just want to eat.  However, to be able to make rice dumplings is to be admired.

Again, as you know, gluttony has motivated me to set up another kitchen experiment and attempt to make some for us. My mother-in-law, excited by the idea, also sent us some essential spices and hemp strings for knotting the dumplings.

By this time, I was feeling quite stressed.  I'm a kitchen klutz and my best dishes are simple stuff like shepherd's pie, lasagne, pasta with sauce, miso cod fish, and whatever dishes I manage to dumb down for me.

Instructions conveyed over Skype and via my husband from my MIL, plus online research and YouTube tutorials, resulted in a pretty successful first attempt.  

 

Nicely formed shape without cinched waist. 

Preparing all the ingredients took a lot of time.  You need to be really committed to doing this.  Wrapping the rice dumplings was a b%$#ch.  My first attempt FAILED and the dumpling came apart in my hand.  However, by the time I was making the 3rd dumpling, I figured a way to use the tabletop to help me.

My hands weren't steady and I couldn't keep the dumpling firm.  Using the tabletop helped a lot.

Probably by the 17th dumpling, I could do without the tabletop.  And by the time I made my last and final dumpling, Dumpling #28, I had found the trick to keep it all together, tie it well and even trim odd ends so everything looks neat.

It's still a b%$#ch to make, but I would do it again, and now without stress :o)

Ingredients

Aromatic

10 shallots, thinly sliced

1. Fry shallots in a cup of oil until crispy brown.  Set aside.

The shallots here are huge, almost half an onion. If using tiny shallots, double quantity.

Pork Stuffing

400g pork belly cut into 1cm cube or strips (I use boneless country ribs because they don't sell pork belly here)

4 tablespoon of oyster sauce

1 tablespoon of light soya sauce

1 tablespoon of dark soya sauce

1 teaspoon of sesame oil

1 teaspoon of cooking wine

1 teaspoon of white pepper powder

1 tablespoon of Chinese five spice powder

1. Marinate pork with seasonings and let it sit either overnight or for a few hours.

2. Heat wok with 2 tablespoons of the shallot oil you made earlier and 1/2 those crispy shallots. 

3. Add seasoned pork and stir-fry until cooked.  Set aside.

Sticky Rice

1kg of glutinous rice 

5 tablespoon of oyster sauce

1 tablespoon of dark soya sauce

1 tablespoon of light soya sauce

1 teaspoon of sesame oil

1/2 teaspoon of white pepper powder

1. Soak rice overnight or for at least 5 hours.  Thereafter, drain away water.

2. Heat wok with a tablespoon of shallot oil and half of the remaining fried shallots.  Remember you already used half for the pork?

3. Add rice.

4. Add seasonings to rice.

5. Stir-fry until rice is smoking.  This won't take long.  You do not want to cook the rice. It should still feel hard like before you added it into the work, just fragrant and seasoned now.

6. Remove rice from wok and set aside.

Mushrooms

12 dried Chinese mushrooms

2 tablespoon of light soya sauce

1. Soak mushrooms until soft and rehydrated.

2. Slice into strips.

3. Heat wok. Add rest of shallot oil and shallots into wok.

4. Add mushrooms,soya sauce, stir-fry until cook. Set aside.

Dried Shrimps

Half a cup of dried shrimps

1. Soak for a couple of hours.

2. Drain and fry in wok with a bit of canola oil until fragrant. Set aside.

Bamboo Leaves

60 bamboo leaves (half a packet)

1. Soak overnight.

2. If you've hemp strings for knotting the dumplings, soak them too.

3. Remove from water, wipe dry.  Ok to be semi-dry.

4. As you're wiping them dry, look out for those with holes and discard them.  That's why you need 60 leaves.

Note: I sort mine into 3 piles - (i) perfect; (ii) some tears/holes; (iii) hopeless and for discarding.  Pile (iii) is for backup.

Put something heavy on the leaves so that they are weighed down and won't float.

Wrapping the Dumplings

1. Organize your work top so that you have all ingredients and leave within reach.

2. Take two leaves, smooth side up, and overlap them in opposite directions, i.e. tip of leaves should be pointing one left and one right.  Make a cone by folding in the center.  Do a Youtube search for "How to wrap bak chang" and you should find some helpful videos.

3. Add in a tablespoon of rice and make a well. 

4. Next add in a few pieces of meat, a few slices of mushrooms, and a couple of dried shrimps.  These should take up the next third of your dumpling.

5. Cover with more rice, fold the long ends towards you and into a triangular parcel.  Tie with strings.  You really have to watch a few videos and practice to figure this out.

6. Boil a pot of water and when water is boiling, drop in each bundle of dumplings.

7. Cook for 1.5 hours with water bubbling away.  When water level drops, add more boiling water so that the temperature of the cooking water does not drop.

8. When done, fish them out and hang each bundle up to drip dry.

You're now all set!  Undo one and enjoy!  Truly satisfying. Caution: do not eat too many at a go because you'll get belly ache.  Glutinous rice is heavy and hard to digest...