I love dim sum, whether it's early in the day as it should be or in the evening English style I don't care. The mass of textures and flavours, all wrapped up in little bite-size morsels is perfect for a man that can never decide exactly what he wants to eat.
A while back I photographed a dinner of kangkong belacan which contained a few shop bought pork dumplings. Although I do tend to buy them frozen they are reasonably simple (if not a tad time consuming - hence the buying frozen) to make at home using supermarket ingredients. This weekend I decided to give them a go again to see if I still had it in me. The recipe I chose to adapt came from a Keith Floyd book which has graced this blog before.
Ingredients (makes 20-24 dumplings)
Wrappers
250gr plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 egg yolks (you can save a white to seal the dumplings)
140ml warm water
Filling
300gr minced pork, preferably with a bit of fat.
300gr of chinese leaf (I've used spinach in the past when this isn't available)
A thin slice of ginger, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 spring onions, minced
1 TB of rice wine
1 TB of sesame oil
4 TB water with 2 TB of cornflour
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon soy sauce
Method
First off make the dough. Beat the yolks into the water, mix the salt into the flour then combine into a dough. Knead on a floured surface until smooth, as with all dough the less extra flour you can get away with the better. Wrap in clingfilm and leave to rest whilst you make the filling.
For the filling first off chop the Chinese leaf and stick in a food processor with 1 TB of salt. Pulse till finely chopped then remove to a sieve and wash to remove the salt. The salt may seem superfluous but it helps extract the water from the cabbage and you want it nice and dry. Once rinsed dump into a clean tea towel and squeeze all the excess water out. Now combine with all the remaining ingredients and mix really well.
Now you need to simply take a 24th of the dough, roll out to a circle about 7cm-8cm across and put 24th of the filling in. When rolling out the dough you'll need a reasonable amount of flour as it's pretty sticky stuff. I worked with a quarter at the time, leaving the rest in the clingfilm so it didn't dry out. Filling quantity was about a dessertspoon full per dumpling.
To fill place the filling in the middle, in a sort of quenelle shape, fat in the middle and tapering towards the ends then pull the pastry over like a mini-pasty. For the folds I did two from each side coming into the middle so they curl into half moons. After about 10 dumplings I decided that from now on I would by the wrappers as it's pretty repetitive stuff. I imagine it could be quite fun to do with a friend whilst chatting, well maybe not fun but less soul destroying than doing it on your own anyway. Alas the girlfriend was happy to sit and watch TV whilst I did it.
To cook place in steamer and steam for 10-12 minutes.
To serve you need something to dip them in, my favourites are chili sauce (which I buy from the supermarket) and a mix of soy sauce and red wine vinegar. The girlfriend likes to dip them in hoisin.
As you can see my filling and folding technique still leaves a lot to be desired and they're nowhere near as compact and pretty as the bought ones. They're very tasty though and you get to see exactly what goes in them. They are pretty labour intensive so you need a good couple of hours if you're going to make them. I'd definitely recommend it, even if it makes you want to buy them frozen from that point on.
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