Happy Duanwu Festival!

I have never been a very traditional Chinese, not celebrating many Chinese festivals and only unknowingly participating in eating the foods prepared during these times. Although, I've got a feeling that having a housemate from China will change that! ;P

Today is the Duanwu festival, also known as the Dragon Boat Festival and according to Wikipedia, it is a public holiday in mainland China. Laura, my dear housemate from China very excitedly attempted to make bak-zhang (this is in Hokkien. In Mandarin, it's zong. My pronunciation for any word in any Chinese dialect is flawed. Best ask my housemate, Laura!), a traditional Chinese glutinous rice dumpling with fillings such as pork or chicken, boiled peanuts, and Chinese mushrooms, slow cooked in boiling water while wrapped in bamboo leaves. According to Laura, she usually makes the sweet ones which (according to Wiki, yet again) is the Northern style of cooking zong.

The first attempt wasn't successful (although it tasted quite nice, it didn't exactly taste like real zong) and today we decided to try again. Kai cooked and prepared most of the ingredients while Laura and I helped wrap them up!

This time round, the zong tasted AMAZING! Almost exactly like the ones that we usually have in Malaysia! :D But of course, the recipe cannot be credited to ourselves, it was taken from here!

I strongly recommend this recipe to anyone who wants to try making this. The blogger comes from Malaysia if I'm not mistaken and that is possibly why the recipe ended up tasting very much like home. :)

If you managed to make your own zong, share it with me! :) Happy Duanwu Festival, everybuddeh!

Note: Dragon brush used on the photos is from here.