Recipe: Southern savory meat dumplings

Ingredients (Makes 20):

1 kg glutinous rice, washed and soaked

500 g belly pork skin, cut into thick chunks

20 small dried shiitake mushrooms

20 dried Chinese chestnuts

20 salted egg yolks

10 cloves garlic, chopped

Soy sauce, five-spice powder, salt and pepper to taste

40 bamboo leaves, plus reeds or strings to tie

1. Drain glutinous rice and place in a colander to dry.

2. Marinate belly pork with 1 tablespoon light soya sauce, 1 tablespoon dark soya sauce, 1 teaspoon five-spice powder and salt to taste.

3. Heat up oil in a large frying pan and fry garlic until lightly golden. Add drained rice and season with more dark soya sauce. Just toss enough to mix in garlic and seasoning. Remove to big mixing bowl.

4. Make a cone with two bamboo leaves and add a spoonful of rice. Add the pork, chestnut and mushroom, and the egg yolk.

5. Cover mixture with more glutinous rice.

6. Fold over bamboo leaf to make a pyramid and secure with a piece of reed or raffia.

7. Tie dumplings into bundles of 10 and thread onto a wooden spoon or thick chopstick. Hang over a pot of boiling water and cook for at least two hours.

8. When dumplings are cooked, they come away from the leaves easily and the rice will stick together. If they break apart, you have to cook it longer.

9. Store cooked dumplings not more than a week.

Food notes:

If wrestling with bamboo leaves and reeds is beyond you, get some pretty rice bowls and pack in the mixture and lotus nuts. Steam over high heat for two hours, turn out on a plate and serve. It tastes just as good!