Zongzi (Rice Dumplings in Bamboo Leaves) 粽子
A traditional Taiwanese dish

Wednesday May 31 (2006), is Dragon Boat Festival. In China and in Chinese communities worldwide, that means boat races for some, but delicious zongzi for all. At this time of year, the unmistakable smell of bamboo leaves is in the air, and there are few things more tantalising to the nostrils than steaming zongzi. Zongzi are eaten all year round but during the Dragon Boat Festival (the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar year) and for the following month or so, millions are consumed. Normally eaten as a snack; a hefty snack – one Taiwanese zongzi eaten in the afternoon will keep you going until dinnertime. Two zongzi and, well … forget dinner.

The main ingredient of zongzi is glutinous rice. Other ingredients and flavourings vary from region to region. They come in different sizes and shapes, and some are wrapped in leaves other than bamboo. Most are savoury, some are sweet, some are boiled, some are steamed. Professional zongzi makers are getting more creative every year, but I have never eaten anything better than the product made from the recipe below for typical pyramid shaped steamed Taiwanese zongzi.

Quite a lot of ingredients are involved, and a trip to the Chinese grocery will be necessary if only to buy the bamboo leaves. But I reckon the key to a great taste is the fatty pork. The fat turns to oil when it is cooked and its flavour diffuses through the zongzi. Don't be swayed by the anti-fat Nazis into buying the leanest meat you can find – skimp on fat and you lose flavour. Besides, the small piece of pork in each zongzi is just one of many ingredients.

I won't kid you by telling you that making zongzi is easy. It is time consuming, and you will want to allocate the best part of a day for shopping, preparation, and cooking. It can be tricky putting zongzi together and wrapping them into nice pyramids – organizing a little work gang to help is a good idea. So, if you are going to do it, scale up. My recipe makes 20 pieces but for a little extra labour, you could double the quantities and make 40.

Recipe for Zongzi

Ku Klux Loquat
Eriobotrya japonica

Tree fruit in Taiwan is normally grown on steep land where paddy rice is impossible to cultivate. Around the hills outside Taichung, where I often ride my bicycle, there are countless orchards, and over the course of a year I see many kinds of fruit come and go with the seasons. March and April is the time of the loquat.

Loquat trees stand about two metres high. Lately they are all dotted with puffed-up paper bags. The bags are tied to branches and enclose ripening bunches of orange-coloured loquats. They keep birds off, discourage insects, and by keeping the direct sun off, make for a sexier fruit at the market. Farmers prune loquat trees severely, forcing the fruit to push skyward rather than hang down. The effect of the bagged bunches can be a little disconcerting on first encounter – a little like stumbling on a covert Ku Klux Klan meeting with the shrunken, hooded heads of hundreds of Klansmen protruding from the foliage (see Loquat Grove photo).

The large-leaved loquat tree is indigenous to south eastern China, and that region is still the most important area of Chinese cultivation. Today though, a thousand years after the loquat was introduced from China, Japan is the world's leading producer. The species name japonica, reflects an incorrect belief that the fruit is native to Japan.

The fruit, skin, seeds, and leaves of the tree all have medicinal uses. The loquat, according to Chinese traditional medicine doctor Henry C. Lu, is useful in treating cough, thirst, constipation, asthma, nosebleeds, and pharyngolaryngitis. Other sources say rosacea can be treated with loquat leaves.

Taiwanese prefer to eat many fruits unripe (plums and peaches for example), but the loquat is not one of them and it is allowed to mature fully on the tree. Loquats have a thin peel which is easy to remove with fingers or a knife. You can eat around the kernels or cut the fruit in two and pluck them out. Loquats bruise quite easily and do not keep well out of the fridge.

There always seems to be a disparity between the loquat's appearance which cries out, tropical tanginess, and the actual taste, which is mild, even weak. Loquats are nice enough, but hardly what I would call an exciting fruit.

http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/loquat.html
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/loquat.html
http://www.acnease.com/HArticle4.asp

Kumquat: The Dwarf Orange of China

On the day of Chinese New Year's Eve, just as I was leaving our local produce market, a car swerved towards the curb. I noticed the car because it pulled up with a jerk just a couple of feet from a family trying to cross the road. The driver bolted from the car to a stall in front of the market. The back seat of her car was already packed with groceries. Clearly, it seemed, the banquet that evening for her large extended family, was her responsibility. She had stopped at the market for a last minute purchase. When I say, 'a car swerved towards the curb', towards is all I mean, as there remained between the curb and the side of her car, enough space for a skilled driver to manoeuvre another very compact car, such as a Mini. A couple of minutes later she rushed back carrying a potted kumquat bush bearing dozens of tiny orange fruit. She placed it on the passenger seat beside her and drove off, ether oblivious or unconcerned at the line of cars she had been blocking on the narrow street behind. I was glad I didn't feel as harried as she looked, but I was only cooking for three while she might be cooking for thirteen, including a domineering mother-in-law.

Just before Chinese New Year fruiting kumquat bushes can be seen for sale all over Taiwan. Because the ripe kumquat (cumquat) symbolizes prosperity, Chinese like to give the plants to relatives and friends. My own potted tree never seems to bear fruit at this time. This year, as we saw in the Year of the Dog (February), it was blossoming, and so we will have to wait until late April for fruit. Fortunately the prosperity faculty of kumquats applies all year round, not only to the New Year period. Supposedly. A couple of years ago, when I pointed out our tree, heavy with ripening fruit to my wife, she was nearly gleeful. We were going to have a fantastic year she announced; a year in which everything goes well, a year of great health and happiness, a year when the heavens rain great bounties down on our humble heads! That sounded ridiculous, but not so ridiculous as to prevent me making a mental note to start buying weekly lottery tickets. In the final rinse, that year did turn out relatively calamity-free, but the only real bounty I recall was an abundance of kumquats, which, ironically, my wife finds too sour to eat. Who knows, perhaps things might have been different if mental note to self regarding lottery had not been forgotten as soon as it was filed.

The kumquat plant was originally assumed to be a citrus but was later revealed to have a somewhat simpler structure than citrus and was alloted its own genus, Fortunella, after well-known Scots botanist Robert Fortune, who first bought the kumquat from its native south east China to Europe in 1846.

There is something oddly amusing about the name kumquat, which derives from Cantonese, gam gwat, Just the thought of the fruit brings out the worst of puns in me: kumquat may (come what may). Unlike oranges, lemons and grapefruits, the kumquat has never really achieved mainstream market acceptance. It has remained on the fringe – a cutesy-wutesy, doll's house fruit.

The small size of the thorny evergreen kumquat plant makes it ideal for urban gardeners with limited space – which describes about 99 percent of Taiwanese urban green thumbs. The wonderful thing about the kumquat bush is that it will bear fruit more than once a year if the weather is warm enough. The fruit grows to about 3 cm (1 inch) round. With thin, finely textured peel, and tiny seeds, kumquats are normally eaten whole, peel, seeds and all. The taste runs quite tart – the peel is sweeter than the fruit itself. As far as I can tell there are two basic varieties in Taiwan: round (Marumi F. japonica Swing), and oblong (Nagami F. margarita Swing). Except at New Year when the fruit is left on the bush to ripen fully, the round type is usually sold green or semi-ripe, and is used to make kumquat tea. The oblong fruits are sweeter and are eaten ripe.

According to traditional Chinese medicine, kumquat helps eliminate phlegm and is a good remedy for a sore throat or a nagging cough.

Health-wise, kumquats house a good measure of vitamin C, plus potassium, and beta-carotene. And because the fruit is usually eaten whole, there is an extra nutritional boost from the peel and seeds. According to traditional Chinese medicine, kumquat helps eliminate phlegm and is a good remedy for a sore throat or a nagging cough. Last week I happened to be down with a cold myself, and the two or three pots of kumquat tea I drank did seem helpful. Chinese pharmacies sell a traditional throat lozenge made of dried kumquat peel. According to Henry C. Lu, the fruit, prepared in specific ways is also useful in treating indigestion, whooping cough, hernial pain, ad poor appetite.

In Taiwan kumquats are also sold dried, and used to make preserves. I was once given a bottle of kumquat sauce, though I was at a total loss as to how to use it, and still am. Kumquat assumes its major role at any of Taiwan's thousands of tea shops and tea stands in the form of kumquat tea.

How to make Kumquat Tea

Resourses
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/kumquat.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumquat
http://www.kumquatgrowers.com/what.html
http://www.phoenixtropicals.com/citrus.html

Year of the Dog (Chinese New Year)

According to the Chinese calendar, Sunday January 29 is the first day of year number 4,704 – the Year of the Dog.

Tea Bush
(Camellia sinensis)

"Better to be deprived of food for three days, than tea for one."
– Chinese proverb

What tea looks like before it is picked, processed and packed – though the leaves shown here are too mature to be used for high quality tea.

Learn more about Tea