Monday, June 21

It's zongzi 粽子 time. I don't find this link or this one totally correct. Nor even this one. Taiwanese zongzi favor dried shrimp or dried reconstituted squid. I find the first a little disgusting and the second superfluous. And the five-spice powder in the second link isn't really proper, either. No, the ideal zongzi has glutinous rice 糯米 with a little soy sauce; a piece of fatty pork, stewed until soft; some boiled peanuts or maybe cooked pigeon peas; a dried reconstituted shiitake mushroom; and if you want to get fancy, part of a salted duck egg yolk; and a fresh or dried reconstituted chestnut.

So what do I get? A zongzi with not very glutinous 糯 rice, black rice, mushrooms, and a little square of tofu in the middle, pretending to be pork. A vegetarian told me that fake vegetarian food was for helping non-vegetarians get used to vegetarian food, so meat eaters shouldn't criticize it for not being vegetarian enough. Still, this is ridiculous.

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