Jung

Jung is an interesting Chinese food.  L's grandmother (ma-ma is grandmother on the father's side, po-po is grandmother on the mother's side; this gets confusing because to L the grandmother is ma-ma, but to her cousins she is po-po) taught us all how to make it ourselves.

It's pretty work intensive.  The wrap for the jung are bamboo leaves:

They go through a five-day boiling process to soften them up for the wrap.  (Boil for a few hours, let dry.  Repeat for five days.)  They're tough little buggers.  The good news, I suppose, is that this is probably the hardest part, and it mostly just requires some observation.  L's grandmother did this part for us so that we could get ahold of the rest.

After shaping the leaves, they're filled with a sweet and sticky rice (I don't have a digital scan for this one yet—I took several pictures with the F2 instead of my D7000), some mung beans, pork, lap cheung (I am sure to have mis-romanized it; I think this is the Chinese sausage), and another helping of rice.  It's important to avoid any holes while wrapping, because the contents need to be boiled for some four to five hours before you can eat them.  If too much water gets in, the flavor will leak out.

Wrap again, and tie:

The final products looked like this:

Once tied, boil pretty well immediately (we waited until we got back from NJ) for several hours depending on the size.  Meal-sized portions need five hours while the snack-sized ones run about four.

We've frozen a healthy amount of them, probably nearly twenty or so.  Half will go to B&A, who came with and did a fabulous job of making jung and helping L and I avoid awkward moments with the grandmother.

Each jung should feed a person for a meal, though for my high metabolism it's sometimes not quite enough—and we generally made smaller snack-sized ones anyway.  They are really tasty.  To reheat, take them out of the freezer and boil for 20 minutes or so.

Bon appetit.


(This is not becoming a cooking blog.  But it's what I did for a weekend off.  This Saturday is a trip to Getty with Rey and others for a photo outing.  Looking forward to that, and hoping to have a few more fun items up.)