Nyonya Rice Dumpling (娘惹粽子)

The dragon festival is drawing near and my daughter misses the nyonya version. I have never made the nyonya version before, so it is high time to try. I drove an hour looking for candied winter melon, to no avail.

wintermelon

So, I bought a fresh winter melon and took 2 days to candy it. The happiest thing about this batch of dumpling is probably the homemade candied winter melons, which taste fresh and wonderful!

The dragon boat festival is a special occasion in Singapore when I was growing up. We would make these dumplings and distribute them to relatives. I can still remember my rich second aunt giving us dumplings with salted egg yolks. That was such a luxury, then. Prior to that, I didn’t think rice dumplings had egg yolks!

Today, we can buy all sorts of dumplings from the stalls. Our children can get the most premium dumplings easily, but it is rare to find a family that still does this together as a family. I hope that my children will continue the tradition of making these dumplings, sharing them with family and friends like we did, and living the tradition. You should too.

The only person who was able to make rice dumplings in our nuclear family was my dad, and my mum fails to this day to create a dumpling. I can still remember how my mum and dad experimented with making dumplings when I was still little.

They failed many times, and the rice would fall out when they boiled the dumplings. From their conversations, I learned that the water must be well salted so as not to dilute the rice dumplings which are wrapped in porous bamboo leaves. I saw how my father refused to give up and finally learned how to make the rice dumplings the Singapore style. The dumplings my paternal grandma made were pillow dumplings and were tied differently.

Once he mastered the rice dumpling, I saw the magic of innovation in my late father. He was the most innovative and brilliant person I have ever met in my entire life. You could bring him to eat anything and the dish would reappear on our table. You could show him any art piece, and he would replicate it at home with the cigarette boxes he strung together.

His rice dumplings could never be bought anywhere. He made them with duck, fish, interesting concepts and flavours: anything he fancied. He adjusted the taste and changed the way we looked at rice dumplings. Every year, he gave us a surprise with a new twist to his dumpling.

So, today, I made nonya dumpling because my daughter misses that. You will start to see my father’s creations in future attempts, and I hope that you will enjoy his dumplings as much as I did.

Don’t be afraid to try and tie these. I am no expert in this and even so, I have never had a dumpling broken in the water before. So take heart. Give it a shot.