As a bit of a reminder, the Japanese calendar system has been beat up and smashed around to the point that it is confused and hardly recognizable, but suffice to say that May 5th is thought of as a seasonal holiday called “Tango no Sekku” (also known as Kodomo-no-Hi, and perhaps you’ve heard of it as Boy’s Day or Children’s Day), but because the weather is still too cool to call it the start of summer on May 5th, the San’in Region and some parts of northern Japan practice tsuki-okure: They delay these seasonal holidays by a month and instead celebrate Tango-no-Sekku on June 5.
Chimaki, known by other names and methods in other Asian countries, is a traditional treat for this holiday. The basic idea is that you make a dough out of rice flour (and perhaps some other ingredients for flavor), wrap it in leaves (bamboo leaves are common now), and boil them. If you don’t boil them, they have the tasteless consistency of dough, I found out. Although I really did not know what I was doing when it came to boiling them, I did find them more palatable afterward. I would have appreciated them with a little something sweet, though.
June 26, 2015 at 7:26 pm
in chinese culture, we have something similar that is called Bak-Cang. bamboo leave wrapped glutinous rice stuffed with pork, duck salted egg, mushrooms, and other stuff. it’s a savory rice snack. about the size of a fist. and it’s made for a celebration close to the summer time, which is now. but i don’t know to what purpose/celebration they are made for. i’ve never learned the reason/legend behind the Bak-Cang eating period that we do annually. we just know it’s that time of the year again as we see people started making/selling/eating them again.
July 6, 2015 at 9:56 am
The most similar thing I know of is zongzi, and the story I heard was that when a court official named Qu Yuan threw himself into a lake out of despair, the people rushed in boats to rescue him and threw zongzi at the creatures in the lake to keep them from eating him. I did try them in Hangzhou when I was studying there in summer a few years back, and while they were savory and tasty, they were so glutinous that I had trouble finishing mine! I found the zongzi more exciting than chimaki, but the chimaki was a lighter, easier snack.
July 6, 2015 at 12:33 pm
YUP. that’s the one. yeah, i’m not a big fan of the ones made with glutinous rice either, hence at home we make ours with regular japanese rice. as it still provides the sticky texture to glue everything together, but not as heavy and much easier to consume on regular basis. kinda like rice bowl with meat topping, but all in one bamboo wrapping.