Dabbling in dim sum, continued

After my last post, I continued to dabble some more in dim sum-making at home.  It's fun to challenge myself to try something new and, lately, it's been dim sum and Chinese food making beyond what I'm used to.  

If you like seafood, chances are steamed shrimp dumplings (or "har gow") are a must when it comes to dim sum.  They're sometimes called "crystal shrimp dumplings", referring to their signature translucent skin from which you can see the coral pink of the shrimp peeking through.  It's a dim sum classic and something I always get when I'm having dim sum at a Chinese restaurant.

This har gow project was definitely a challenge but worth the effort to, in the end, get to sit down with my husband and enjoy our own homemade har gow in the comfort of home.  It's just neat to learn how things are made.  And it turns out, the har gow skin is made from a combination of wheat starch and cornstarch; I had to make the dough three times to get it right but it was due to my own error and mix up.  In the end, I still found the dough difficult/fragile to handle but using a little extra wheat starch helped the maneuverability and I plowed on...

The filling was a lot simpler to whip together.  The shrimp is the star but it's also important to get your hands on a can of bamboo shoots because it's a must in this recipe and not to be omitted, as those bamboo shoots give the har gow a distinct crunch.  

The dough being a lot harder (stickier than I expected, easy to break) to maneuver than I expected, I exercised as much patience and care as I could muster in pleating and shaping the har gow and somehow managed to put some into my steamer basket!  

Luckily, a lot of flaws are hidden after steaming and I thought my homemade har gow looked the part (admittedly, expectations were low going in).  They may not be restaurant-quality (the skin being a little too thick and not as supple as they should be; not to mention general appearance as far as pleating goes) but they were pretty close to the real thing.  I loved the flavor of the filling and thought that was spot on.   

Now bamboo-steamer expeditions aside, sometimes you order off the menu when you go for dim sum.  If it's around the lunch hour, the kitchen opens up to provide heartier fare and they start taking orders for other dishes - particularly noodles.  One of my favorites is saucy beef ho fun (flat) noodles.

Chinese rice porridge (congee), my way

If the title of this post suggests that I might have some special wisdom to share on the topic of Chinese rice porridge, or "congee" (we also call it "jook" in Cantonese), I apologize because that's actually very far from the truth.  Unfortunately, I am not a knowledgable Chinese cook (I'd give that crown to my mother).  My Chinese cooking is relegated to basic stir-fries and recipe-following with tips I picked up growing up.  I get by and it suits me for now.

There are so many variations of Chinese rice porridge - this one has beef and dried scallops

With Chinese New Year a few days away, I wanted to post a Chinese recipe and this is one I wanted to write down and "save" on this blog (I have these daydreams where my son, grown up, looks up some of his favorite childhood recipes from this blog to cook for himself).  So this is Chinese rice porridge, my way.  And "my way" is essentially a thick rice porridge.  Maybe it's my general preference for hearty, filling foods but I like my rice porridge to be substantial - thick and full of flavorful meats and other ingredients.  My family is on the same page.

Growing up, I remember seeing my grandfather have plain congee (made with just rice and water, maybe a pinch of salt) for breakfast and it was so thin, I thought of it as more like boiled water with some rice floating in it.  He'd open up a jar of some kind of black fermented beans to have with it and that made breakfast.  My mother makes a mean congee, too.  Her's is on the thinner side (maybe I should just say it's more on the "normal" side) but she'll thicken it up if she knows I'm coming.  But there's really no right or wrong way to do it.  It's all a matter of preference and adjusting the water to rice ratio accordingly.

So congee is something of a staple and a comfort food for us, often eaten for breakfast.  You can usually find it when you go for dim sum at Chinese restaurants.  I started making congee at home some time after I got married.  For the longest time, I'd just "eyeball" things in a pot and I never measured the ingredients.  I just had to make sure I used the same pot each time!  So a while ago, I finally did a little measuring (so I could start using different pots and write things down here) and realized that I make my congee in a ratio of about 1:7.  That would be 1 cup of rice to 7 cups of water.  Typically, the ratio is more in the 1:10 range for medium thick porridge, and for a very thin consistency, as much as 13 cups of water could be used for one cup of rice!

Rice porridge with pork,preserved duck eggs, and dried oysters

There are so many kinds of congee.  It can be flavored with beef, pork, chicken, fish and other seafood.  I really like beef with dried scallops (it adds a great saltiness) while my husband's favorite is pork with preserved eggs (also called "thousand-year eggs").  These eggs (usually duck eggs), with their oddly dark appearance and gray yolks, might not look very attractive but we love the creaminess and deep flavor of the yolks.  Taking a cue from my mother in law, who makes her delectable pork and preserved egg congee with dried oysters, I often make the same.  

 A side of noodles with congee makes for a complete Chinese-style breakfast

That congee, with a side of noodles, is probably my husband's favorite Chinese-style breakfast.  I like to buy dried "shrimp-flavored" noodles at the Chinese market. It takes a few minutes to boil and while that's happening, I gently heat up some oil with a few cloves of crushed garlic.  After the noodles are drained, I toss them with the hot garlic oil along with some soy sauce, oyster sauce, and a touch of sesame oil.  

We might have congee for lunch or dinner but it's a fun change for breakfast.  We get to break out our chopsticks and shake things up from our usual pancakes and eggs!