端午安康 (Duānwǔ ānkāng) means "wishing you peace, health, and well-being on the Dragon Boat Festival", so I wish you all 端午安康.
Since today is the Dragon Boat Festival, I started preparing the ingredients for zongzi yesterday. I soaked the glutinous rice, peanuts, and dried shiitake mushrooms overnight.
After rinsing the rice, I drained the water and used the mushroom soaking liquid to soak the rice again. This gives the rice a beautiful natural color and a subtle earthy aroma. The pork was marinated overnight as well with five-spice powder, oyster sauce, seasoning sauce, black pepper, and palm sugar.
The next morning, the first thing I did was boil the bamboo leaves until they became soft, then washed them thoroughly. I also lightly baked the salted egg yolks to reduce their strong smell, and prepared the Chinese sausage, mushrooms, and drained the soaked rice and peanuts.
Once everything was ready, I stir-fried the pork first, followed by the mushrooms. I added a little more seasoning with salt, mushroom sauce, and light soy sauce, and cooked everything until the pork was done. Then I added the Chinese sausage and let some of its oil render out before mixing in the glutinous rice and peanuts. At this stage, a little seasoning sauce or dark soy sauce can be added for extra color and flavor.
After everything was well combined, I turned off the heat and wrapped the still-uncooked rice mixture with the prepared bamboo leaves, adding various fillings as desired.
But for a lazy person like me, I chose the easier way: I lined my steamer with bamboo leaves and spread all the rice mixture inside instead of wrapping each zongzi individually. I only made three to four traditional triangular zongzi for my husband, who wanted to enjoy them the classic way.
And yes, I only made 3-4 triangular zongzi; the one in the middle was my husband's.
Once steamed until the glutinous rice became soft and fully cooked, it was finally ready. The kitchen was filled with the wonderful aroma of bamboo leaves, shiitake mushrooms, glutinous rice, and black pepper.
The traditional recipe actually includes ginkgo nuts, dried shrimp, and sweet taro paste as well. However, since I was only making it for the two of us at home, I decided to keep things simple.
