Tomorrow is the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival (5th of the lunar 5th month). I don’t really celebrate it, but we do eat the traditional food for the Dragon Boat Festival, which is Zong zi (sticky rice dumpling). It is a glutinous rice ball, with a filling, wrapped in fragrant corn leaves. The fillings can be egg, beans, dates, fruits, sweet potato, walnuts, mushrooms, meat, or a combination of them. They are steamed. There is also the Nonya version which has all meat in it, with a sweeter taste than its traditional counterpart.
Somehow I have craving for sticky rice. There is another type of glutinous rice which I like, which is sprinkled with peanuts on top. Sometimes I take it for breakfast. Yet another type of glutinous rice is a small cup of the sticky rice mixed with a piece of chicken and occasional mushroom (“Luo Mai Kai” in Cantonese).
I think glutinous rice is somehow a comfort food for me - simple, fragrant, chewy, reminiscent of childhood days of seeing grandma hanging loads and loads of these dumplings on bamboo sticks in the huge kitchen of her attap house, with the smell of the dumplings permeating throughout the house. Heaven!
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