Name: Nyonya Meat Dumpling | Nyonya Zhang | [Nyonya Cooking]
Uploaded: 2018-06-01T18:06:03.000Z
Duration: 12 min 48 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

One of the most celebrated festivals by the Chinese community in Malaysia

is the Dragon boat festival or also known as 'zhang' festival

The word 'zhang' comes from a 'hokkien' word which is a Chinese dialect

That is from the word 'ba zhang' which means meat dumplings

Meat dumplings are widely known across Asia and you can find various types of them

Even in Malaysia, on this special festival, you can find different types of meat dumplings

So, today I'm going to show you a very special one from the 'nyonya cuisine or the 'peranakan' cuisine

It's special because of the spices that we used in it

It is said that this festival is used to remember the sacrifice that is made by a Chinese poet

who jumped into a river and drowned himself because he wanted to show that he was against corruption

So, the locals made these rice dumplings and threw them into the river

so that fishes will not feed on the body of this Chinese poet

I'm going to show you how to prepare your own 'nyonya zhang' at home

We are going to go through a very exciting list of ingredients

The list of ingredients begins with the bamboo leaves

These are the bamboo leaves that I got from the Asian market

and within the pack...along with the pack, it comes with the bamboo strings as well

If you don't find the bamboo strings in them, you may also get hemp strings as well

Then, what I have here is also 'pandan' leaves, glutinous rice,

some oil, fermented bean paste or 'taucu' and some black pepper

Over here, I have some minced mushrooms, minced garlic, coriander powder and some chicken breasts

The next ingredient that I have here is to add some sweetness to the 'nyonya zhang'

So, these are actually eaten just as it is, as sweets

It is known that it has medicinal benefits as well

The most exciting ingredient on the list is these butterfly pea flowers

These flowers are known to give some colour to the food that we cook

It is very well known in the 'nyonya' cuisine as well

So, I have these flowers dried and they were sent to me by my parents

They plucked them fresh, dried them in the sun and sent them to me through the mail

I don't think so you can get them at the Asian market, unfortunately

If you don't have this, you have to skip it

Because these bamboo leaves are dried, we're going to soften them first

I'm going to boil the water and then soak these leaves into this pan of water

So, this will soften the leaves and then we're going to leave them aside

After taking the bamboo leaves out of the pan, remember to rinse them really well

Now, I'm going to just wipe it dry using a paper towel

After this, do not forget to also put in the strings because they're slightly hard at the moment

We're going to soften them by putting them into the pan

When softening the strings, all you want is to make sure that these strings are manageable

so they can be twirled because they will be used to tie the dumplings later on

Using a glad wrap, I'm going to cover this bowl

We're going to leave this aside overnight

The next thing is to work on the chicken breasts that we have here

So, we're going to blanch this in a pot of hot water

You do not need to cook this chicken hundred percent

We're just going to blanch it and make sure that the outer layer is white and then, bring it out

By blanching the chicken, we are actually getting rid of the poultry smell that we get from the chicken

Besides that, it is easier when we want to mince the chicken

So, do not worry that it is not fully cooked because we are going to fry it later on

We're going to start by mincing the chicken over here

We're going to leave it aside in this bowl here

So, with a bit of oil, I have this pan heated up here

This is when we're going to add in the mushrooms

Once you smelled that it's fragrant, it is time to scoop it out and put it into a little plate or a bowl

Once again, with a tiny bit of oil... very little

Just give it a few quick stirs and then, once it's fragrant, we're going to bring it out again

Lastly, I'm going to add the rest of the garlic

Also remember to add a bit of oil if the pan is not oily

Then, I'm going to add this fermented bean paste

So, we're going to add the coriander powder but before that, add a bit of water to create a paste

Then, we're going to pour it into the pan

Add the black pepper back into the pan together with the mushrooms and the minced meat

Also, do not forget the sweetened melon bars

The only thing that you need to do now is just to saute this mixture to let the chicken cook

Then, also add some salt to taste until the excess water is all dried up

Do not cook it too long because you don't want the meat to be fully dried

This is ready right now and I'm going to scoop it into a bowl here

We'll leave this aside and this will be the filling for the dumplings

As for the glutinous rice, what are we going to do with it?

All I'm going to do is to take 1/4 of this glutinous rice

and I'm going to soak it in the water that has these butterfly pea flowers

So, you can imagine some of it would be blue and some of it would be white

We're going to soak this glutinous rice overnight

and it must be soaked for at least 8 hours before we can use it

As for the rest of the glutinous rice, I'm just going to pour water onto it and we're going to soak it overnight

The only ingredient that I did not work on is the 'pandan' leaf

I'm going to show you what I'm going to do with it tomorrow

Put this minced meat into the refrigerator as well

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Nyonya Meat Dumpling | Nyonya Zhang | [Nyonya Cooking]

process

slightly

ingredient

wrap