Hakka Dough Dumplings 客家粄粽

Just made these yesterday. This is not a back post :)

Yes, it's almost that time of the Lunar Year again, Duan Wu Festival or Dragon Boat Festival, the day that the Chinese remembers the loyal scholar who commited suicide. The actual day is next Wednesday, 16th June 2010. But I'm making this early for your reference :) I always do my dumplings one or 2 weeks earlier, just for the sake of eating.

Actually I’ve never eaten this, nor have I seen this in real life. I only got to know the existence of this type of Zongzi when I was searching the internet for the real Cantonese Zongzi last year. Malaysia’s Chinese food is already so, so fusioned, that one no longer can distinct between each other, except for certain dishes.

This year Kristy made some sweet hakka dough dumplings.
And I have already planned to make these since last year.

What makes Hakka dough dumplings (客家粄粽) different??. Wait before that, let me tell you there is another type of Hakka Dumpling that is shaped like a pillow... that is a rice dumpling and it is not the same as this dough dumpling.

The difference of savoury hakka dough dumplings is that it uses glutinous rice flour instead of glutinous rice.
Uses minced meat instead of meat pieces.
Uses preserved radish instead of beans.
Fillings are pre cooked and not used raw
Other than these, the mushroom is there, the 5 spice is there. No chestnuts and no salted egg yolks.

And one mistake I did, I thought since this is steamed and not boiled, soI didn’t bother about the small cracks in some of the wrapping. And I also wrapped them quite tight, tried hard to eliminate empty spaces in the wrapping. It is ok, to just form a round ball, with a slightly pointed end and fold the top wrapping loosely over, no need to be too tight cos the dumpling will expand a bit during steaming. Hahaha, the dough seeped out from the cracks during steaming, like Incredible Hulk getting green, cos there was no where to go, except through the wrapping, and caused dumplings that didn't have cracks in the beginning to tear after steaming.

Anyway, it goes into the tummy…..

Here goes the recipe

Hakka Dough Dumpling Recipe

Fillings
5 shitake mushrooms, soaked and chopped, it will come to about ½ cup
200gm minced meat or 1 cup
½ cup or 70gm chopped preserved radish (Choy poh, I used the sweet type, just rinse and chop, if salty type please soak for 30 minutes, squeeze out water before use)
5 shallots, sliced or chopped
10gm (1 heaped Tbsp) dried shrimps, soaked for 30 minutes and finely chopped
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt (you may need less if using salted preserved radish)
Pepper
½ tsp 5 spice powder
1 Tbsp light soy sauce
1/2 cup water +1 tsp cornstarch




1. Heat wok and put in 3 tbsp oil. Put in shallots and fry until golden, drain and dish up.
2. Put in chopped dried shrimps and fry until fragrant, then put in minced meat and fry until dry and fragrant, put in preserved radish and fry until fragrant. Put in seasonings and cornstarch mixture. Cook until the water is absorbed by the fillings. Mix in fried shallots.
3. Dish up and let it cool down. Divide into 16 and freeze filling to harden slightly.
4. Meanwhile prepare the dough

Dough
550gm (5 cups) glutinous rice flour
190gm rice flour(1 + 2/3 cups) (If you prefer a less sticky texture, you can substitute some of the glutinous rice flour with rice flour)
2 Tbsp cooking oil
300ml water + 1tsp salt + 1 Tbsp sugar
300ml water (room temp)

1. Mix both flours and make a well in the centre. Put in 2 Tbsp cooking oil
2. Put salt, sugar and 300ml water in a saucepan, bring to a boil.
3. Pour half of (2) into (1) and mix with spoon, bringing in flour slowly into the center. Pour more of (2) and combine. Add the room temp water slowly and knead the flour into a dough. You may not need all the water. Knead dough until smooth. Divide dough into 16 pieces, about 80gm each.

Assembly

16 pieces of bamboo leaves or more, washed and trimmed

Hemp strings or cotton strings

Some cooking oil for coating the dumplings

*click on pic to have a larger view on how to form the cone. This is one of the crucial steps in wrapping. Once I did this in Pudu Girls School, and my students took 2 hours just to learn the wrapping method, and they found the cone forming step is the most difficult of all, besides getting the four corners as pointy corners.
The rest of the wrapping method is in my Bak Zhang Recipe

1. Take one piece of dough roll it round.
2. Lightly flatten it, and make the sides flatter than the center.
3. Place one piece of filling in the center and wrap up the dumpling. Gently rolling it in your hands to seal up. Repeat until all fillings are wrapped up. (I managed to wrap all the fillings with dough in less than 10 minutes, simply due the fillings are hard and clumped together because they are half frozen)
4. Coat each dumpling with cooking oil. Shape each dumpling to look like a green pear, slightly conish.
5. Form a cone with bamboo leaf and place one piece of dumpling(pointy side down) into the cone. Lightly press and fold the rest of the bamboo leaves to form a “pyramid”.
6. Tie with a piece of hemp/cotton string.
7. Steam on high heat for 30 minutes.

So, how did this hakka dough dumpling taste like.... Chewy and the filling taste good. Much chewier than kuih koci, if you want to know the comparison. A fresh change from the usual.

If you prefer a less sticky texture, go with half glutinous rice flour and half rice flour.
If you like it softer, you can use less boiling water and increase the room temperature water. The boiling water here partially cooks the dough, and makes it sticky. When the dough is partially sticky, it needs less water to form a dough and the dumpling will have a firmer and chewier(ngann) texture. But you cannot simply increase the water, you must decrease the boiling water and increase cold water, remember.

My neighbours liked them a lot, and hahaha, indeed this dumpling was a stranger that no one knew before this. But now, at least now, my family knows that this thing exist :)

Recipe adapted from these places:

http://www.wretch.cc/blog/CarrieC/13934825&tpage=1
http://www.951b.com/meishi/200912/10-18682.html
http://www.hk32168.com/viewthread.php?tid=146573

Oh yes, I'll be making more Zongzi this weekend, Both Cantonese and Hokkien varieties.
Not making any Gan Sui Joong.....


Video on how to wrap (updated 6/6/13)