The Art of Making Chung










Chung in the Cantonese dialect refers to the bamboo leaf-wrapped steamed/ boiled dumplings of glutinous rice cooked with various ingredients. Comfort food steeped in tradition and history, it is wholesome, tasty and essentially a summer delight. The southern Chinese versions feature mushrooms, pork cuts, beans and more - all doused with flavourful marinades of soy sauce to give colour, preservation and principle.

These dumplings tell a story of holding upright principles in feudal China and are linked to the annual celebrations of the Dragon Boat races in most of eastern Asia.





















Each bamboo leaf has to be culled and thoroughly washed with warm water and scrubbed. The aromatic infusion of these leaves add to the cooked flavour, and they are not merely used for wrapping.














Glutinous rice is pre-cooked even before being used as fillers in bamboo leaf wraps.














The various ingredients are set out before filling in the triangle shaped delights. Time is of the essence, as there are various stages of preparation, patience and cooking time required. In 2010, the Dragon Boat Festival of the lunar calendar falls on 15 June. This event recalls how a high-ranking minister, disillusioned with the corrupt conduct and politics of his day, threw himself into a raging river and how his loyal subjects tried to divert the fish from eating his drowned body. This was how dragon boat racing and the chungs came into being.












Mushrooms galore, a much valued ingredient in Chinese cuisine.
















The steamer, kept snugly down by a stone cap, especially effective during the process.











The Straits Chinese or Peranakan version of the chung offers a more dessert sweet dimension in taste, compared to its original mainland China roots. They offer nutty flavours instead of savoury, and include fanciful blue natural colouring of the rice to reflect integrated cultural influences of the Malaysian peninsular.


















(Kindly Yours acknowledge the making of the chung process above to Mrs Ellen Moay and Mrs Charmaine Wan of Sydney)

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