Ping's bak chang

It's Duan Wu Jie (端午節) - Dragon Boat Festival - this month. Back home, it is usually when people make rice dumplings (chang, 粽子). The rice dumpling is made of glutinous rice and various fillings, usually beans and chinese mushrooms in addition to pork. The rice and fillings are wrapped up in a bamboo leave and boiled until cook. Ping's favorite is Air Itam ahmah and tua ee's chang but recent years, Ping haven't been eating them much. There's always so many things that Ping wants to eat whenever Ping goes home that Ping don't get to eat all of them. Furthermore, ahmah and ee haven't been making them for quite sometime already. Another type of rice dumpling that is pretty popular back home is 'kee chang' (鹼水棕, alkaline dumpling) that is made up alkaline water (don't ask Ping, have no idea what it is) and it is really good with gula Melaka (brown sugar)!!

Since Ping don't get to eat it here, Ping decided to be adventurous this time and try it out herself. Had most of the ingredients except for some that are available from Oriental Market.

Ingredients

Glutinous rice (choo bee, 糯米)
dried mushrooms (hiow kor, 香菇)
dried prawns (hae bee, 蝦米)
black-eyed peas (pek tau, 白豆)
garlic

for seasoning - soy sauce, dark soy sauce, and five-spice powder (ngo hiang hun, 五香粉)

sesame oil

bamboo leaves
Ping soaked the rice, peas and bamboo leaves overnight. The prawns and mushroom were soaked in warm water for about an hour before cooking. The recipe is actually from Kuali, but Ping didn't add any meat so it is not really a 'bak' chang. Ping also could not find chestnut and kiam ark noi (salted duck egg) so just make do with whatever that is available.

Ping started out by frying the minced dried prawns and garlic with the mushroom. Then Ping fry the rice with the spices and sauces and mix in the beans. The hardest part is the 'pak' (tie) part. Ping kinda remember what the chang looks like but not really. So Ping asked mummy but mummy's description seems to be giving Ping the triangular shape instead of the pyramid shape. So Ping looked up online and found this video on YouTube by teckiee. Haha..keng leh!



But then without someone physically showing Ping, Ping's chang all look weird. But Ping is proud of herself because out of the 10 chang that Ping pak, only 2 went loose! So chin chai pak also never mind. heheh..but learning how to pak is now on Ping's list of 'stuff to learn from gee kim'.
Tua ee, what do you think of this? ahdik, can show this to gee kim and get her comments? Hehe.. Oh yeah, Ping also just realized that this type of chang is actually called 'kiam bak chang'..maybe because of all the tau eu that we use?? This is also the 'nyonya' style chang. The cantonese style has a lot more fillings in them like the one in the video - all kinds of different tau and don't know what yong and other stuff.

Ping also could not put too much of the filling in like the one in the video. So Ping's filling is actually very little compare to most of the bak chang that are much bigger. Usually, bak chang is pretty filling but Ping's bak chang, Ping can eat two to three.

This afternoon, brought some of them to the picnic we had at the Riverside Park at downtown Lansing. The girls liked it but Ping wish that tua ee and gee kim get to try it to see if it is 'passable'. Hehehe..