Dim Sum Quiz

[fitfool]

I love dim sum but now that Chinatown is no longer a subway ride away, I'd like to make some of these dishes at home. But...I don't know what things are called. So quiz time. Here are 10 dim sum dishes. Give the name of the dish. Bonus points given to offering the recipe too (but with the name I can try googling for recipes). I know what some of them are called but I like having an even 10 questions on the quiz. :)

	1. The white part is slippery and is filled with shrimp. The soy sauce is slightly thicker and sweet. This is my Favorite dish.		2. Crunchy deep-fried something.
	3. I don't see these as often but I liked them.		4. some kind of shrimp filling
	5. a greyish purplish inside with consistency of mashed potatoes. Outside is crispy.		6. Lots of shrimp inside.
	7. My mom made these when we were kids.		8. filled with shrimp
	9. These are more trouble to eat than they're worth though they are tasty.		10. Warm and eaten as dessert. Slippery feeling.

Thread at food_porn

Comments

[jester5.livejournal.com]

you're probably right...i just remember it from a show i saw a decade or so ago. he said it was happiness...but heart/happiness .. its all relative i guess.

and i agree about the exploration part...so much food, but i refuse to buy bigger jeans!!!

i might need to take up marathons just to keep up with my habit ;)

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

Sometimes Americanized Chinese restaurants will have some dim sum items in the appetizers section (though that's pretty rare) and sometimes they'll offer a dimsum for lunch on one day of the weekend (though I think I've only seen that in Boston for Chinese retaurants that weren't in Chinatown). Boston, New York, Chicago, and Washington DC also have lots of dim sum choices. In your neck of the woods, the closest I could find in a quick google search was a reference to a place in Durham, NC (but that appears to still be 2 hours away from you). It was China One Restaurant if you head out that way for some reason.

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

There are still lots of points to be won on talking about how any of it is made. Also #7 seems to be going by two names...turnip cake or radish cake. Cast the tiebreaker vote? I love #1 (those wide rice noodles), #3 (taro root -- how do they get that outside crunchy part?), and the skin of #4 (I think I could eat that on its own).

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

cool...I'll guess it's the second one then. Thanks again!

[medlabtech.livejournal.com]

9. Hint: This dish would put an avian podiatrist out of business



LOL. It's one of my favourite dishes! I love the flavour.

[esmerel.livejournal.com]

I've always heard it called Turnip cake.

I dunno how they do the taro root outside though, but it's YUMMY.

[sugarsin.livejournal.com]

5. Must be taro root.

And I had #1 yesterday, filled with shrimp and loaded with chili and soy sauce. mmmmm. I love dim sum!

[vandegraaff.livejournal.com]

Wow, the only dim sum I've ever seen around here was a really thick dumpling usually with pork inside (and I basically hate pork, especially in asian foods).

I'll have to check around and see. Some of the more friendly places might be willing to sell me things they don't generally have on the menu. There was a place next door to one of the last places that I worked at that was run by a very nice Chinese family and I would always see them eating things I knew were not on the menu. I never asked them about their meals tho, didn't want to bother them while they were eating. ;]

[snarkactual.livejournal.com]

1. I got my mom's recipe for Har Gau.
Dough:
3/4 cup wheat starch
2 teaspoons tapioca starch
1/2 cup boiling water, or as needed
2 teaspoons lard
Har Gow Filling:
6 ounces raw shrimp
2 tablespoons bamboo shoots
2 tablespoons water chestnuts
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon finely chopped green onion
1/4 teaspoon sesame oil
Sift the wheat starch and tapioca starch into a bowl. Slowly add the boiling water and begin stirring immediately. Add enough water until you have a sticky dough. Add the lard and knead the dough until it is smooth. Cover the dough and let rest for 30 minutes.

Finely chop the shrimp. Rinse the bamboo shoots and water chestnuts under warm running water. Drain. Shred the bamboo shoots and finely chop the water chestnuts. While the dough is resting, mix together the filling ingredients. Knead the rested dough a bit more.
To make the dumplings, pinch of a heaping teaspoon of dough and roll out into a 3-inch circle. Wet the edges of the circle. Add 1 level teaspoon of the filling in the middle. Fold over the dough and pleat the edges to seal. Continue with the remainder of the dumplings.

Steam the dumplings until the filling is cooked and the dough is shiny and translucent ( 12 - 15 minutes).


2. Still has me stumped.

3. Is indeed a stuffed eggplant, I use a pork hash stuffing with a bit of Harm Ha (Shrimp paste) for this but I've seen this done about a dozen different ways.

4. It is bean curd called Foo Jook. Available in Chinatown. They're deep fried with a shrimp filling.

5. Here's another of my mom's recipes.
10 ounces taro
1 ounce wheat starch
1 1/2 ounces boiling water
8 ounces of pork
2 ounces dried shrimp
3 dried mushrooms
2 sprigs Chinese parsley (cilantro)
2 green onions

Seasonings:

1 tspn. salt
1 tspn. sugar
2 tspn. soy sauce
1/2 chicken bouillion cube
1/2 tspn. pepper
1/2 tspn. sesame oil
1 cup unseasoned bread crumbs mixed with 2 Tblspns of cornstarch for coating
2 egg whites to make the coating stick.


Peel and wash taro, steam until soft. Use 10 ounces of the softest part. Pour boiling water into wheat starch then stir and mix into a soft dough. Wash pork and cut into small pieces. Wash and soak dried shrimp and mushroms for 30 minutes. Chop finely. Chop parsley and green onion as well. Put taro, wheat starch dough and pork into a mincer and mince together. Take out and put into a mixing bowl. Add chopped ingredients then season to taste. Turn mixture into smal flat rounds, coated with flour. Put into boiling oil (350 to 375 degrees F) and deep/fry over medium heat until golden.

6. They usually use cornstarch to thicken it into a kind of a doughy mix of crab meat. I don't think there's any shrimp in there (perhaps in some restaurants they use that fake seafood stuff that looks kind of like shrimp).

7. Still stumped.

8. This is one of the types of Dim Sum I like but haven't found a recipe for either.

9. They're indeed Chicken feet. Here's another of my mom's recipes.
1 pound chicken feet
2 quarts oil
2 quarts water
1 ounce fresh ginger
3 pieces star anise
2 ounces Chinese parsley roots
2 ounces maltose sugar (see note)

Marinade:
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sake
1 ounce chopped chile pepper
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1 tablespoon black bean sauce
1/2 teaspoon sesame seed oil

Wash feet, chop off toenails and cut into quarters.
Heat oil to 350 degrees. Mix chicken feet with maltose and fry until golden brown, about 7 minutes. Remove and drain. Boil water and add ginger, star anise and parsley roots. Add feet. Bring to boil again, then reduce heat and simmer 90 minutes. Drain. Combine marinade ingredients. Marinate feet 24 hours. Before serving, steam feet and marinade 15 minutes.

Note: Maltose is a syrup.
The deep frying of the chicken feet before they're steamed causes them
to puff up giving them the appearance in the photo.

10. I don't think this is a tofu dish.

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

Oh but sometimes, the pork comes out amazing. There's char siu bao which is BBQ pork in a baked bun. I'll admit that you'll often get leftover boneless spareribs pork in Chinese restaurants that have been recooked one too many times...but when made fresh, it's one of my favorite foods. Quite possible they'd be willing to cook up some off-the-menu dishes. The Chinese restaurant in my hometown didn't bother letting my parents order off the menu. They'd just start talking in rapid Chinese and then head back into the kitchen and bring stuff out that hadn't been on the menu. (or they'd be menu items with the seasonings readjusted for non-Americanized tastebuds)

[callistra.livejournal.com]

I don't think I have seen them baked. Usually the ones we get are steamed.
:-)

[collisions.livejournal.com]

Every place I've ever eaten Dim Sum (and I eat it *way* too often), the servers are not very tolerant of my attempts to use the real names of the dishes. I even learned to say "shark fin" in Chinese to ask for my favorite dumplings by name, but I get puzzled stares until I say "Shark fin?" to which they say, "Ah! Sha fi!" and hand me the item.

That said, here's the ones I know:

1. They call this "shrimp roll." I'm pretty sure the wrapper is made of bean or rice flour. Good stuff.
2. No idea. I've never seen this form factor of fried stuff. There are places, though, that serve a ball of minced shrimp in a similar looking wrapper (it seemed to be rolled in strips of won ton wrapper, then deep fried). They call it, not surprisingly, "fry shrimp."
3. Eggplant shrimp. A ball of minced shrimp, a Japanese eggplant, a deep fryer. Good stuff.
4. No idea, but these look good. Is that perhaps some snow crab leg in there too?
5. Deep fried taro. I love this when the fryer temperature is right, and I hate it when it's too low (the taro ball ends up way greasy).
6. Crab ball! Crab claw, minced shrimp with a binder, roll in egg and panko, fry. Nummy!
7. Not sure.
8. Shrimp dumplings in a (pretty sure) rice flour wrapper. The rice flour wrappers tend to become translucent when steamed (the Vietnamese do spring rolls that way). I've had these with various types of herbs, but cilantro is often included.
9. Chicken feet! I like them when they're good, but have had them be fairly icky tasting at a couple different places (I think the feet got old in storage or were just *very* gamey), so I don't often order them.
10. Dunno. Looks pretty custardy. I like the mango puddings and sesame balls as desserts.

[glam-ang.livejournal.com]

8 could be crystal dumplings, although, I've only seen them with a pork filling. Crystal dumplings gain their see-through skin due to the huge amount of oil used in the filling. I seem to recall gasping and vowing never to make them after reading a recipe ;)

[evilbeard.livejournal.com]

i love that alton brown is goofy. =)

[callistra.livejournal.com]

Me too.
:-)

[callistra.livejournal.com]

Actually, Vietnamese spring rolls aren't steamed, fried or cooked. You get the rice paper thingies (I'll check my cupboard in a sec for the real words) and soak them in water. Hint: Warm water works best. When loose and floppy, you put your ingredients down the middle, usually including a mint leaf or two, and a spring onion or chive if you're feeling fancy, roll it up and serve with your fave dipping sauces. LOOOOOOOVE these too. They satisfy my craving for fresh veg and spicy yumminess all in one. I've made them with chinese style duck in the middle once, I've made them using lettuce instead of noodles in the middle too.

[callistra.livejournal.com]

My packets say "Rice Paper," or "Galettes de riz or "I can't read that and I don't know how to make my keyboard sit up and beg like that" and "Reis Paper" and "RIJSTPAPIER".

I'm not sure if that helped. I could take a picture of the packets if you're interested? I'll need to find the camera. :-) Which I need to do anyway.
:-)

Re: <3 dim sum!

[summercomfort]

萝卜 I think can refer to any of the family, but I think daikon is typically used?

Dunno how helpful a Chinese search for these would be, but here's some of the characters in simplified:

1)虾肠粉
7）萝卜糕
8）韭菜饺
9）凤爪

I'm of the opinion that if you can get your hands on the clear rice-flour-based wraps used for the various Jiao (shrimp, leek, etc), and the 河粉 (Ho fen the white strips) for the various Changfen, then you're half done.

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

Ah ok. Yeah. I want some too!

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

This particular restaurant was heavy on the seafood so I think a lot of the dishes included some form of shrimp. I try not to think how much oil there is in Chinese food since my favorite dishes tend to be deep-fried :)

Re: <3 dim sum!

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

Ah ok...thanks! #2 is the only one I can definitely say was something different. It had some shrimp filling with shredded taro on the outside to make it look spiky and then it was deep fried so it was crispy on the outside. Really tasty.

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

1. Thanks for the har gau recipe! I have a sudden need for all of these different kinds of starch. This should make for a fun scavenger hunt next time I go to Chinatown.

2. I don't think I've gotten a name for this dish but I think I could approximate it using recipes for the other dishes since the shrimp filling inside tasted the same as some others.

4. mmmm....Foo Jook them. I'll keep an eye out for it.

5. Awesome. Thanks for the taro recipe! Now to figure out where to buy taro...

7. Going by the majority answer, seems to be Lor Bak Gow or Law Bok Goh. Chinese Turnip Cake

9. Wow. where does she even buy chicken feet? Or can you get that in Chinatown too?

10. Oooh... jezebe1 posted a link to one recipe (though that one involves an automatic soymilk maker...) but the rest sounds like that that stuff was.

Re: <3 dim sum!

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip. I think I must be missing a plug-in to show the Chinese but maybe it'll help someone else who reads this thread.

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

4. I'm not sure if there was crab in there too. Definitely shrimp though. And very tasty.

[snarkactual.livejournal.com]

You may be able to find Taro in Chinatown. I know I could find it in the 99 Ranch Market in Irvine, California and occasionally in Bristol Market, or Trader Joes there. In Texas I can usually get some Taro root from Central Market and sometimes at the larger H-E-Bs. I think I saw some in Chinatown in Boston.