I’ve got two words for you: freakin’ awesome.

This past week I hosted a brown dinner where the theme was “wrapped”. For the uninitiated, “brown dinner” is our weekly themed potluck dinner. Its moniker comes from the 5 originators of the dinner who were all Brown alumni.

I decided to make Chinese Zong Zi which are glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves and then steamed/boiled. The results were pretty good. I made two kinds, a savory zong zi with mushrooms, pork, peanuts, and Chinese sausage, and a sweet version with red bean paste. The results were surprisingly good for my first try!

Wrapping the dumplings was a huge pain when I first started. In the first hour I only wrapped two (and lost a few bamboo leaves in the process). After I got more familiar with the wrapping, I powered through all 20 dumplings with relative ease.

We’ve been doing the brown dinners for quite some time now, but nobody’s really documented the food at all. The “wrapped” theme lent itself to some very pretty and delicious offerings, which I’ve decided to post here.