My home-made sticky rice dumplings just came out wonderfully this year, especially the pork belly meat stuffing one. It is really worth my every effort to make them and I am very proud of it.

Though it took me almost the whole day, from soaking the rice, cutting, washing and boiling the leaves, marinading the meat stuffing, preparing the thread, then seasoning the rice, wrapping them, boiling them…..till they are ready to be served, it’s such a rewarding journey that I was actually too scared to get my hands onto them in the past two years.

Last year this time we were in southern China on a tournament of dragon boating race, so I didn’t need to worry about it too much. But this year, I feel like eating them. We went to the Dickson Asian grocery shops yesterday. They are selling Jia Xing Zong Zi with like $5.50 for only two. Even though Jia Xing Zong Zi is my favourite style of Zong Zi, the best that I had ever eaten so far is still my mom’s Zong Zi version. So if I could master even a little bit of my mother’s skills, I probably can manage to ease my craving this year

Actually, the part that I always struggled is just the step of wrapping. But this year I changed my strategies a bit. I tried to take it easy on wrapping but put more energy on preparing other stuff properly. The outcome was surprisingly good. The shape of my Zong Zi is probably still not the best but I found no problem of wrapping them at all. The rice just stay well in leaves when boiling and the subtle flavour of marinated pork belly meat in soy sauce and other spices, the slightly greased and browned rice with the fresh smell from reed leaves mixed together and made the beautiful combination and truly reminded me my mom’s Zong Zi.

I wouldn’t go into the details for the instructions. Different people have different ways to do it and prefer different flavours. You can google it on the net (like this one), but trust me,  none of them is as easy as it looks like. I think there seems no shortcut to learn how to make them, but practise, practise and more practise.