The dumpling festival is a widely celebrated festival amongst the Chinese, to pay respect to the patriotic poet, Qu Yuan. While I do not know exactly the month of the dumpling festival when I was young, I knew that the festival was here when my granny started preparing the dumplings.
It was always a joy to watch my granny preparing the rice dumplings. I could still remember that she would start preparing the ingredients like the meat, chestnuts, the mushrooms and the dumpling leaves etc. Then she would prepare the charcoals which really took a long time to start the fire. After she had finished frying the meat and other ingredients, she will spend a considerable amount of time wrapping the dumplings. Lastly, she will placed all these dumplings in a big pot over the hot burning charcoal. She will then sit by the charcoal fanning the 2 big pots of rice dumpling.
The entire process took her a day but the end products - rice dumplings were fantastic. I must say, I have yet to taste any rice dumplings as good as hers! It was a taste which I can never forget. The rice do not stick to the leaves, the meat tasted flavorful and the chestnuts were big and delightful to bite on. One rice dumpling was usually not enough and I always had two, one in the morning and one during lunch. I'm always craving for her rice dumplings.
Sad to say, I really regretted not learning the recipe from her for now that she had passed on, the recipe had also been lain to rest.
As I took a bite of a rice dumpling today, I missed my granny's rice dumpling. It was a taste that I'll always remember and one that can never be replaced. Till we meet again, I guess I'll never be able to find a dumpling that taste the same or if not as great as hers.
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