Alkaline Rice Dumpling with bean filling 简粽

This is a followup to an earlier post on meat dumplings :

http://hakkafood.blogspot.com/2008/12/rice-dumpling-with-meat-filling-zhong.html



Here's the nostalgic alkaline, chewy, soft and sticky glutinous rice dumpling with mung bean filling, drizzled with brown or yellow syrup. In Hakka, it's called "gun shui joong". A good dumpling is uniformly soft in texture. This demands meticulous sorting of random long grain rice from the glutinuous rice before mixing the ingredients and cooking them.

Rice Dumpling with Meat Filling - Zongzi

Pronounced as "joong" in Hakka, these dumplings could be stuffed with all sorts of meat (commonly chicken or pork), mushrooms, brow beans, mung bean, dried prawn, dried cuttlefish seasoned with soy sauce and five spices.

I bought these at a Taiwanese food fair. Unlike commercially sold dumplings at stores and restaurants, these dumplings are nicely wrapped, hence, the rice is soft and retains its integrity but not soggy. They are generous with the filling.

Hakka Steamed Rice Cake : pronounced Bun

Cao Pun

A Taiwanese Hakka rice cake

Glutinous rice dough mixed with fragrant "ai cao" herb.

A savoury filling of yam bean, salty radish and dried shrimp.

Soon Pun

My friend's mum used to make this traditional steamed pun to sell. Unlike the typical "soon kueh" of Hokkien extraction, Hakka "soon pun" is made with yam flour, hence it's greyish rather than white color. The filling is the product of your imagination and creativity : shredded yam bean, wood fungus, bamboo shoot, carrot, dried shrimp, peanut, ...

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