One of the most celebrated festivals by the Chinese community in Malaysia

is the Dragon boat festival or also known as 'zhang' festival

The word 'zhang' comes from a 'hokkien' word which is a Chinese dialect

That is from the word 'ba zhang' which means meat dumplings

Meat dumplings are widely known across Asia and you can find various types of them

Even in Malaysia, on this special festival, you can find different types of meat dumplings

So, today I'm going to show you a very special one from the 'nyonya cuisine or the 'peranakan' cuisine

That is the 'nyonya zhang'

It's special because of the spices that we used in it

So, how this festival came about?

It is said that this festival is used to remember the sacrifice that is made by a Chinese poet

who jumped into a river and drowned himself because he wanted to show that he was against corruption

So, the locals made these rice dumplings and threw them into the river

so that fishes will not feed on the body of this Chinese poet

So today... this is a legend

I'm going to show you how to prepare your own 'nyonya zhang' at home

We are going to go through a very exciting list of ingredients

So, let's begin now

The list of ingredients begins with the bamboo leaves

These are the bamboo leaves that I got from the Asian market

They are dried, sold in a pack

and within the pack...along with the pack, it comes with the bamboo strings as well

If you don't find the bamboo strings in them, you may also get hemp strings as well

It works perfectly fine

Then, what I have here is also 'pandan' leaves, glutinous rice,

some oil, fermented bean paste or 'taucu' and some black pepper

Over here, I have some minced mushrooms, minced garlic, coriander powder and some chicken breasts

The next ingredient that I have here is to add some sweetness to the 'nyonya zhang'

This is the sweetened melon bar

So, these are actually eaten just as it is, as sweets

Over here, I'd chopped them up

It is known that it has medicinal benefits as well

The most exciting ingredient on the list is these butterfly pea flowers

These flowers are known to give some colour to the food that we cook

It is very well known in the 'nyonya' cuisine as well

So, I have these flowers dried and they were sent to me by my parents

They plucked them fresh, dried them in the sun and sent them to me through the mail

I don't think so you can get them at the Asian market, unfortunately

If you don't have this, you have to skip it

Because these bamboo leaves are dried, we're going to soften them first

What we have here is that...

I have a pan here filled with water

I'm going to boil the water and then soak these leaves into this pan of water

So, this will soften the leaves and then we're going to leave them aside

After taking the bamboo leaves out of the pan, remember to rinse them really well

Now, I'm going to just wipe it dry using a paper towel

After this, do not forget to also put in the strings because they're slightly hard at the moment

We're going to soften them by putting them into the pan

When softening the strings, all you want is to make sure that these strings are manageable

so they can be twirled because they will be used to tie the dumplings later on

Using a glad wrap, I'm going to cover this bowl

We're going to leave this aside overnight

The next thing is to work on the chicken breasts that we have here

So, we're going to blanch this in a pot of hot water

You do not need to cook this chicken hundred percent

We're just going to blanch it and make sure that the outer layer is white and then, bring it out

By blanching the chicken, we are actually getting rid of the poultry smell that we get from the chicken

Besides that, it is easier when we want to mince the chicken

So, do not worry that it is not fully cooked because we are going to fry it later on

We're going to start by mincing the chicken over here

We're going to leave it aside in this bowl here

We can finally begin to cook

So, with a bit of oil, I have this pan heated up here

A very tiny bit of oil

A bit of garlic... few quick stirs

This is when we're going to add in the mushrooms

Once you smelled that it's fragrant, it is time to scoop it out and put it into a little plate or a bowl

Once again, with a tiny bit of oil... very little

a little bit of garlic

I'm going to put in this black pepper

Just give it a few quick stirs and then, once it's fragrant, we're going to bring it out again

Lastly, I'm going to add the rest of the garlic

Also remember to add a bit of oil if the pan is not oily

Then, I'm going to add this fermented bean paste

So, we're going to add the coriander powder but before that, add a bit of water to create a paste

Then, we're going to pour it into the pan

Add the black pepper back into the pan together with the mushrooms and the minced meat

Also, do not forget the sweetened melon bars

Add about half a tablespoon of water

Less is more, as usual

The only thing that you need to do now is just to saute this mixture to let the chicken cook

Then, also add some salt to taste until the excess water is all dried up

Do not cook it too long because you don't want the meat to be fully dried

This is ready right now and I'm going to scoop it into a bowl here

This smells really good... aahh...

We'll leave this aside and this will be the filling for the dumplings

As for the glutinous rice, what are we going to do with it?

So, I have another bowl here

All I'm going to do is to take 1/4 of this glutinous rice

and I'm going to soak it in the water that has these butterfly pea flowers

So, you can imagine some of it would be blue and some of it would be white

We're going to soak this glutinous rice overnight

and it must be soaked for at least 8 hours before we can use it

As for the rest of the glutinous rice, I'm just going to pour water onto it and we're going to soak it overnight

The only ingredient that I did not work on is the 'pandan' leaf

I'm going to show you what I'm going to do with it tomorrow

Till now, we're taking a break

We're going to put everything aside

Put this minced meat into the refrigerator as well

Do not forget that

So, I'll see you tomorrow

Hi guys, this is Day 2

Today, we are going to wrap the dumplings

As to what I did with the strings here is to just tie a knot and make sure there is a place for you to hook

Using an 'S' hook, I'm just going to hook it here and look for something like the handle of a cabinet

So, like for example, over here

Over here, I have the glutinous rice ready and this one is dyed in blue colour

As for the 'pandan' leaf, I'd cut it into length of about 3 to 4 cm each

So, we have a few

This 'pandan' leaf... we'll slip it into the dumpling so that it'll give extra fragrance to the dumplings

To wrap one dumpling, you'll need 2 pieces of the bamboo leaves

So, remember to take 2 and have the shiny part or the smooth part of the bamboo leaves facing you

That is where the filling will be, in the bamboo leaves

Place them both overlapping each other and then, we're going to make a cone out of it

We'll now start with filling in the blue coloured glutinous rice

So, what I like to do usually with the filling is to just grab a bit and shaped it

These are minced meat and if you do not shape it and when you put it in, it will mix with the glutinous rice

and then you know, it'll all fall apart

Then, the white glutinous rice

After that, just take a 'pandan' leaf

As you can see, we have a very beautiful cone and the 'pandan' leaf is sticking out

So, I'm just going to push this down and then we're going to fold this closed

Then, take the tip and fold it either left or right

It's up to you

Now to tie, take one string and then go over the dumpling

Try to tie it as tightly as possible

There you go... the first dumpling

So, when you'd tied all of them, then you can put them into a pot of boiling water

We're going to boil them for about 2 1/2 hours to 3 hours

Now, the problem is, there are many tragic stories

whereby these dumplings might just opened up during the boiling process

and that's it

You can't pick the dumplings up

It cannot be eaten

So, because we want to avoid that as we are not professional dumplings wrappers

What I like to do is to secure it with a different string

You may use a hemp string, of course

What I'm just using here is a normal red colour string

Now, I can be quite sure that these dumplings will not fall apart during the boiling process

So, I have the dumplings here all wrapped

While I was wrapping these dumplings, I boiled some water here in a pot

Now that it's boiling, they're ready to go in

So, we're going to boil this for about 2 1/2 hours to 3 hours

Leave it there and as time passed by, if you feel that the water had gone down,

you can always add boiling water to it

Do not add cold water because it will disturb the temperature of the boiling process

That's what we do not want

So, I'll see you guys in a while

Now, it had been about 2 1/2 hours to 3 hours

So, we're going to take them out

They're ready

We're going to leave them here so that the excess water will drip off

Then, once it's slightly drier, we can start eating

So, I'll give it another 15 to 30 minutes

We'll just hang these up

Now, I'm going to pick one and we're going to cut it off here

Normally back home, my mom will make a big bunch... like 50 of these dumplings

to give out to friends and family members

Now, I have one to myself

We're going to open it to see how it looks like inside

So, you can see there's the shade of blue color on the top and below is the white colour

If you want a darker shade of blue, add more (butterfly pea) flowers

so you'll get a darker shade of blue

So now, it's time to try this

So...

Hmmm...

It was a mouthful...

I just love the filling of this dumpling

I told you earlier, 'nyonya' dumpling has this kind of taste and it's because of the coriander powder

That is why this is so special...and also because of the fermented bean paste

You can't really taste it that strongly but it's there

There's a hint of it

The sweetness from these melon bars is really one of its kind

It's not like when you use sugar

It's different

So, try this recipe if you love dumplings, this is one recipe that you should try

Once you'd tried it,

as usual, instagram photos, please

I would love to see them

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As usual, I hope to see you in the next video

Happy Cooking!