Mooncakes and hungry ghosts

Today, I learnt how to make mooncakes, dzung (zongzi) and offerings to the ghosts, as part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.  The event "Mooncakes and hungry ghosts" is on at the Chinese Museum in Little Collins Street.  


The session began with a small Chinese musical ensemble.

Elizabeth Chong hosted the event.

We were served Chinese tea as the session began.

Anita Lau taught us how to make mooncakes.  

Mooncake pastry rolled out

Salted eggs, uncooked on the left, cooked on the right

Lotus bean paste, the olive coloured ball, is wrapped around a cooked salted  egg.
The pastry is rolled out and wrapped around the lotus paste and salted egg.

Mooncake ready to cook

A platter with cooked mooncakes was passed round, I got so caught up in the mooncake moment, I forgot to take a photo!  Mooncakes are served when the moon is at it's fullest, the 15th day of the 8th lunar month.

This is what the inside of the salted egg mooncake looks like, this is a photo of one I bought last year, just to give you an idea.  It is cut up into slices and you have a small piece with some Chinese tea.  I however, like big pieces, because they are so delicious!

If you want to buy some mooncake molds, I bought one last year from Chefland, 272 Victoria St, Richmond, near the corner of Church St.  They sell wooden and plastic molds.

The next dish we learnt about was Dzung.  I couldn't find anything on the internet by that name,  but they do seem to be called Zongzi.   It is served as part of the Dragon Boat Festival which is on the 5th day of the 5th month of the lunar calendar.  Magie Wu taught us about this dumpling.  It is a sticky rice dumpling filled with, in today's case, pork, shiitake mushrooms and fresh chestnuts (which are traditional apparently) they are then wrapped in bamboo leaves, wrapped in string and steamed for two hours.  

Magie preparing the rice to go into the bamboo leaves.

She ties the string to a clothes rack and then sits down to wrap the bamboo leaf parcels in string.  This looked reasonably easy.  However, I had a go and I can assure you, it is a tricky procedure!

Dzung or zongzi with steamed and string removed

Dzung or zongzi, ready to eat.  Delicious!!

At the front of the Chinese Museum, a group of people were making glutinous rice flour dumplings, with pink and green coloured dough.  

At our session, the dumplings were explained to us.  The green ones are filled with a salty fish filling, which was quite nice.  The red ones were filled with sweet red bean paste.

Elizabeth Chong prepared the third dish, a stir fried pumpkin and lup yook which she called Chinese bacon.  It is cut into strips and fried off with the vegetables.  

Stir fried pumpkin with lup yook

The stir fried pumpkin is one dish used as an offering for the Hungry Ghosts Festival.    This festival is observed on the 15th night of the 7th lunar month.  I have not heard of this festival before.  It involves serving food offerings as a sign of respect to family ancestors.


I'm not quite sure about the red and green glutinous rice flour cakes/buns.  I had a bit of information overload.  They could have been food for the Hungry Ghosts Festival or they may have been part of a festival on a Hong Kong island called Cheung Chau Bun  Festival  (the white buns with the red writing on them are a feature of this festival).  This festival is on the 8th day of the 4th lunar month.  There was a tower of plastic buns at the front of the Chinese museum today.  On the island of Cheung Chau, young men race to the top of a tower of buns (real I think)  and grab one, the first person to reach the top, has a year of good fortune.  


Elizabeth Chong explained that there are so many festivals and food associated with them in Chinese culture.  She said Chinese people celebrate from 'the womb to the tomb with food.'