The Fifth Day of the Lunar Month - 'Choong Chi'

On the fifth day the lunar month, the chinese celebrates the Rice Dumpling Festival, or Dragon Boat Festival in honour of a patriotic poet, Qu Yuan who drowned himself in Miluo River as a protest against the Emperor. For this, rice dumpling is a must-have specialty every year.

This year 19th June 2007 will be a season fills with the fragrance of appetizing rice dumpling. Rice dumpling come with an assortment of fillings layered in glutinous rice, wrapped with bamboo leaves and are boiled for hours. Many of us especially all the mums and grandmums have from early days been busy scouting for all basic ingredients necessary for the preparation of rice dumpling such as selection of glutinous rice, dumpling leaves and any other ingredients of our choice to welcome the arrival of this traditional chinese festival.

The rice dumpling not only comes in various shapes but in different variety of taste too. It can be categorized into sweet and savory two groups. The creation of nyonya and malay rice dumpling with a blend of local culture, add on further to the diversity of this chinese cuisine.

As for me this year due to heavy, hectic and busy working hours and not able to 'balik kampong' to celebrate "Tai Yat Chee" over the weekend with my two wonderful ladies(my mum and my aunt), I decided to celebrate this tradition by buying some rice dumplings

Where would be the best place to get this authentic rice dumpling? I guessed it must be The Tasty Rice Dumpling at Bandar Sungai Long, KL. The owner Elaine started this shop 5 years ago and now her son also helps her to run the business. There are many varieties of rice dumpling available from this shop such as five spice, egg yolk, green bean, chilli shrimp, vegeterian, eye bean, red bean, nyonya and kee chang.

I had tasted the five spice fried rice dumpling which was great, lovely, fragrant and mystified really. I love it. You can smell the fragrnt of the five spice, lovely salted egg yolk, the meat and not to overpowering of glutinous rice.

I also had a bit of rice dumpling which is white in colour. But as from young I alway prefer the one, fried rice dumpling.

I also tried their nyonya rice dumpling which consist of sweeten minced meat and a mild of spice. For this one I find that it a bit huge compare to those I usual had before. The taste was average to my liking.

I love the red bean rice dumpling which is a sweet rice dumpling. I really like this, the size is great, not too huge and easy to handle. The glutinous rice was soft and tender, as you bite into it, you can taste the sweetness of the red bean, it was so gorgeous and I was totally speechess.

By the end of the day, my tummy was really full and just can't handle them anymore and also had to skip my dinner too. Tasty Rice Dumplings has a great variety of rice dumpling selection and also not too pricy and very affordable. I would give them an 8 out 10 for quality, tasty and affordablity.

Tasty Rice Dumpling
28, Jalan SL 1/2
Bandar Sungai Long
03-90766130