Cooking Experiment: Healthier Zongzi

This was my most ambitious experiment to date... Not completely successful, but I think I learned a few things.

To begin with, zongzi, joong, or the Chinese rice dumpling by any other names, is essentially a pyramid of sticky rice, filled with fatty meats, usually a salted duck yolk, and a piece of lap cheong, or Chinese sausage, wrapped in bamboo leaves and steamed or boiled. It's delicious, fatty, and very bad for you. You won't find it in most restaurants, but it's cooked once a year in traditional Chinese households to commemorate the Dragon Boat Festival.

The legend has it that some famous poet tried to stop the conquest of his kingdom, but failed and threw himself into the river in grief at this. Moved for their beloved icon, the people threw rice dumplings into the water to lure the beasts away so that they would not eat the poet's body. I have my doubts about this - there's no way any real Chinese person throws away perfectly good food over someone who's dead - but anyway...

I had a yen to try making this, but with as many touches as I could to make it healthy, but still tasty. So what follows is that experiment. Bear in mind I've never made zongzi (or 'dohnes' as we call them in my family') before...

( Images beyond this point! )