Trying to eat a little healthier but it is Dragon Boat festival today and carb is life.
Peanut one: Taiwanese style Zhong zi with pork shank, shittake mushroom and peanuts with a soy sauce based rice. Rice is very flavorful. Purchased from a lady who makes them out of her home in Rowland Heights area
White rice: Cantonese style Zhong zi made by Kathy Yu’s mom. Stuffed with chinese sausage, fatty pork, egg yolk and mushrooms. Lightly flavored rice, let’s the ingredients shine.
Since I grew up eating taiwanese style, the candied egg yolk was always weird to me ha ha. My m-i-l usually omits the egg yolk for mine but this time she was making a huge batch for the place she volunteers.
Why haven’t I heard of these? They look and sound great. At risk of sounding racist, I confess that my first thought was that Zhong Zi was a board member
Co-ink-i-dink-ly, my wife and I stopped by a HK Cantonese resto for breakfast this morning after dropping off a vehicle for service. Ended up ordering a couple of breakfast sets, one of which came with a zhong zi. We were too stuffed from the jook and won ton mein that were in the sets, so we’ll pan fry the zz for breakfast tomorrow morning.
Wow, great thread, Charlie! I also grew up eating the Cantonese style zongzi. My wife just made a batch of Shanghai style zongzi that she learned from her grandmother. Only one ingredient, pork belly. The fat from the pork belly melts into the rice as the zongzi are boiled, lending quite a distinctive flavor. Occasionally she changes the recipe to include preserved duck egg yolk and pork shoulder rather than pork belly. The Shanghainese also eat a sweet version with red bean paste. Whichever style of zongzi, they’re all delicious!
They are typically pretty seasonal as it’s labor intensive and it’s for the holiday. Some chinese supermarkets will have it year round in their bakery areas. Check Philly’s chinatown and i’m sure you can find some.
San Gabriel Valley in LA has a lot of “food sale” facebook groups and there are some “vendors” that primarily make these year round.