Making Bak Zhang

A day before the Duan Wu Jie (端午节), Snowy had learned how to make "Bak Zhang" from her beloved auntie. Phew! It was fun making the dumpling. Snowy was introduced to two different types of dumpling by her auntie; the traditional China Bak Zhang, the Hockkien used to called it "Tyng Sua Zhang", and the "Nyonya Zhang". Each type of dumpling has its own speciality and unique in taste!


The ingredients of the making the Traditional China Bak Zhang, locally known as "Tyng Sua Zhang" is shown below:-

First the bamboo leaves, imported from the mainland China. The bamboo leaves is socked in boiling water overnight.

The glutinous rice, soaked overnight then drained

Ha, here comes the most important ingredients, the filling comprises of belly pork (removecskin), garlic, dried prawns and dried mushroom fried with dark soya source adding with a little bit of Chinese five spice powder.

This is how the glutinous rice is fried.

Adding the "Lau Teck Kee" brand dark soya source.

stir fry...

adding the Chinese Five Spice powder.

adding some mineral salt.

Ha... this is how it looks like, brownish in color after adding in the seasoning.

Now here comes the wrapping process. First, take two bamboo leaves, make them overlap slightly and fold into a conical shape (as shown in the picture above). Put the rice (roughly about 1 table spoon) into the funnel base. Then, add 2 pieces of pork, mushroom, chessnuts, garlics and dried prawns. Cover with some more rice.

Arranging the ingredients nicely....

After that, fold the leaves over the rice to form a triangular prism.

Tying the "Bak Zhang" with raffia string after wrapping.

Now the bundles of dumplings is dropped into the large pot for boling.

It takes around half an hour to boil over medium slow fire.

Boiling.... Boiling over medium slow fire.....

Here comes the cooked dumplings.

This is how its look like... Yummy....:)

Now, here comes the "Nyonya Zhang"

Instead of the bamboo leaves, the "Nyonya Zhang" is wrapped with the Pandan leaves.

Then, the pandan leaves is cut, approximately 1 meter in length.

As the pandan leaves is tough in nature, the leaves is soaked in the boiled water. This will help to soften the leaves, its enable to leaves to be folded.

As you can see the glutinous rice used in Nyoya Dumpling is white in color, the rice is just fried planly on the frying pan adding a little bid of seasoning.

The ingredients used in the Nyonya Dumpling is slidely different compared to the traditional China Dumpling. The belly pork (remove skin) is fried with the winter melon (chopped into small pieces). It's sweet in taste. Of course, the dumpling must have chessnut inside!!!

Here comes the end product!!! Yummy.....

• To my fellow friends in oversea, the virtual "Bak Zhang" is specially dedicated to all of you. I am sure you miss them soooo much!!! *Sorry to make you guys homesick*

• Tintin is the first one who get to taste the dumpling. Yummy, Tintin loves the Nyonya dumpling, lovely indeed!

• Joe had the dumplings as his Duan Wu Jie's breakfast. If you miss them, the virtual "Bak Zhang" blog is dedicated to you! If you miss them, feel hungry, just visit this blog... click it and eat it and chew it... yummy....:)
• Kuku, Thanks for the cooking lesson, I really enjoy the day, it was fantastic!