Me recounting my memory how to fold the bamboo leaves
Rice Dumpling Festival, started with a really sad tragic history into something that people celebrate with love ones. I tried officially learning how to make rice dumplings from my mom a year ago, and even though I am still not as good, we had fun this year helping others wrapping rice dumplings instead; because not many people are really good at this wrapping skill, no matter how good their cooking is.
This made the whole process 30% easier when someone else chipped in the cooking, and we do the other 70% with certain ingredients preparation, wrapping, cooking and delivering back, with all the ingredients covered for mom’s preparation.
Of course, the major ingredient that takes at least 48 hours to prepare got to come from my mom's side because of the unique taste; however it is still a lot easier than to "fry" the glutinous rice before wrapping.
Our friend who needed our help to wrap the dumplings is actually a good cook; just that she is never good at wrapping the rice dumplings. So she did the frying of the 1kg worth of rice with heavy garlic and soy sauce fragrance, while we did the rest.
My grocer doesn't have the best quality of salted egg yolks. Often times there's always 1 that is either rotten or the process didn’t complete well.
She even bought the salted duck yolks up front, but because the ingredients were gigantic, we had an overflow of 7 additional dumplings to wrap, and I got to get extras. Fortunately I had a grocer downstairs that saved the day. Though we had a mishap of a rotten egg (which we cannot return because we already opened it and raw goods like this are non-returnable), the rest were perfectly for the size.
I wished I remembered to take the picture of the yolks, but I forgot, except having this taken during the "salt removal" process, which can be pretty messy if not careful.
Using a cover to keep the dumplings from "dancing all over" while cooking. Mom said it was the Holy Spirit's idea. Gotta give credit when credit's due.
It took us around 5 hours from start to finish, with 4 hours of cooking time because we didn’t have a huge pot to put in all 27 dumplings.
They are not small, a little larger than an average girl's fist, so splitting into a few batches will ensure all the dumplings were properly cooked.
After a good 40 minutes' drive, the delivery was successful.
Why all the fuss?
Since we are not professional sellers?
It is because this round what we did was not for our profit, but for my friend's niece whose late mom used to make for her every year around this time. However, due to covid, her mom died in ICU fighting for her life in 2021 and she never get to taste any proper rice dumplings since then.
This niece left for Australia for studies after her mom's passing to keep her promise that no matter what happens, she must not give up in life and keep working and studying, and my friend, who's the deceased sister, really wanted her to taste some good home-cooked rice dumplings since this is her first time flying back during this time of the year.
I can feel their grief still, from the voice of my friend, as she was praying for someone who could help her accomplish this dream, and we are just very fortunate and bless to be part of the blessing for the niece, and remembering a fighter, prayer warrior, who is now in Heaven.
if you have a skill that could help someone in times of healing, as simple as cooking, would you help?
Besides, outside selling would have caused double the price with Al that was counted in.
Until Then
Stay healthy, stay curious and learn new things, and stay happy!
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