Finding the Holy Grail: Mind Blowing Dim Sum

For the last year (or 24 years, though the first 23 were unknowingly) I have been searching for something that I know exists, yet had never seen myself, a holy grail of my own sort. A dim sum that could both blow me away with traditional tidbits and show me the unknown path to new and better dim sum. Growing up in Seattle I always loved a variety of places–the Top Gun in Seattle sticks in my mind as a favorite, but always new there was something better out there. Last year on our trip to New York we never made it out to Flushing and were consistently dissapointed in the offerings in Manhattan. Without a trip to San Fran in my future, I set my sights on Vancouver. Close enough for repeated efforts, with much opportunity.

This weekend I made it one step closer. I don’t want to say I achieved it, because, of course, there could be better, but I was satisfied. Fisherman’s Terrace in the Crystal Mall gets top scores on value, traditional stuff done well and on introducing me to new stuff. Minus points for telling me it was a 20 minute wait and then leaving us hanging for a full hour. Bonus points for being in a mall that had amazing soup dumplings (Shanghai Shanghai) that I could eat while I waited. I will definetly be torn in the future between trying this again and going out in search of better dim sum.

We started with shu mai. These were worlds ahead of any shu mai I’ve ever tried–whole shrimpies (no heads though), chunks of mushroom, held together with flavorful pork. There was enough skin to perfectly hold the thing together and even loan a little flavor. The top was amply sprinkled with tobiko. I was floored. Floored by a shu mai, who knew that could happen? Dishes arrived, none quite as shocking as the the shu mai. The mini pork buns were sub par, didn’t hold up to the ones at nearby Gingeri, but most everything else was the best I’d had of its kind. The chicken feet (which were originally missed in our order…I’m not claiming white person discrimination…but it is fishy!) were accompanied by the longest “ankle” (as my co-worker calls it) I’ve ever seen. We munched through taro root cakes (unbelievable, crisp taro flavor, texture), dried scallop and shrimp rice rolls, and a whole lot more. My favorite new item is what I have dubbed Jew food meets dim sum: a crisp chip topped with fruit salad (that part isn’t jewish) topped with smoked salmon and a creamy mayonaisse. It was truly like a chinese version of bagels and lox! All in all, a fun, interesting and eye opening experience.

Foolproof!: Easy to make Soup Dumplings (Xiao Long Bao)

The holy grail of foods, that one thing foodies will travel thousands of miles to eat, you bet, yes they are that good. Here’s the thing though, here in Seattle, I have tried a few iterations and I have yet to get any actual SOUP in my soup dumplings. So this was my first big challenge. Must keep soup in dumpling. Second important thing: Must make taste good.

Now, I will admit that bringing soup dumplings TO a party was a bad move. Next time, you have party come to soup dumplings. I thought I’d keep them fresh by laying them on leaves of cabbage, as should be done when cooking them, then driving across town. They sucked. Luckily Brett and I made about 200 more the next night with leftovers and are still enjoying them out of the freezer. When cooking them immediately we were keeping soup about five out of six dumplings (sadly a better ratio than Joe’s Shanghai in New York City when we were there). After freezing, its more like half. More on that later. First thing you do–Make the soup. Very easy, do it the night before.

Take a big stock pot, and toss in: a bunch of chicken feet, pork feet, and pork belly. I used one package each from my local chinese market, I think it was about a pound of each, maybe a little more. Unimportant. Cost about 6 bucks total. Added in shiaoxing wine, a glug or two, slices of ginger (a quarter knob or so), garlic (like 4 cloves) and a pile of chives. Fill up the rest of the way with water and put it up to a boil. Then turn it down and let it simmer for a bit. I left mine for 2 hours. If I had a bigger pot, I think I would have gone longer. But alas. If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a trolley car. Whoa! Back on topic. So stick this in a tall thin container and you’ll have an easy time skimming the fat. Put it in the fridge for about an hour, then take it out, skim the fat and pour into a low flat container. This way it will be easy to chop up later. A lot of recipes I saw had you add gelatin or agar agar to make this more jellied. I saw no need, it jellied up extremely well just with all the feet (where do you think the gelatin comes from in the first place?). Fish your pork belly out at the end and shove greedily down your gullet smothered in hot sauce for an extra bonus in making soup dumplings.

Ok, now its the next day.

This is the filling. I used a pound of ground pork (the fattiest kind), about 7 large shrimp, a pile of chives (chopped), ginger, garlic, both minced, a couple of glugs of shiaoxing wine, a load of soy sauce and a bit of sugar. To taste taste your mix, through a bit in to the water of your steamer like a meat ball. I checked mine for taste and ended up adding more soy sauce. There are no amounts, because guess what, it doesn’t matter! Just make it taste good.

The dough. I made two doughs. The first one SUCKED. Yup, all caps. It was sticky and it burst open, leaking soup all over the place. Luckily the reason I finished this was that after a good cry, I got over it and found a new dough, thanks to Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen. Basically I used about 2 cups of flour, 3/4 a cup of boiling water. Mix with a chopstick, then add 1/4 cup cold water plus a tablespoon of oil. Then knead, just beating the living shit out of it for about 10 minutes. Use lots of flour. After ten minutes, you will know it is ready when your hands hurt because the dough is so tough. Perfect. Rest it for 30 minutes. In this time, get your stuff ready:

1) steamer: Blanch cabbage in steamer water and lay over bamboo steamer. 

2) Mise en place. I found the best was to have the dough and board in front of me, the soup mix to one side, the filling to another, each with their own spoon. Lastly, a sheet of parchment paper off to the side, for finished dumplings. Keep flour near by for rolling.

Okay, now you are ready to go. My method is NOT the right way. But you know what, I want freakin’ soup dumplings, and this managed to get me some very soupy dumplings. Delicious soupy dumplings.

Chop off a bit of dough and roll it like you made a snake with clay when you are little. Cut off about a soup spoon size of dough (start big, get smaller as you get better) use TONS of flour. That was when I got good, when I stopped worrying how much flour I added. Roll the piece out, moving it constantly, into a circle. I would roll, flip, roll, flip to get enough flour all over it. You want the thickest part to be the center, thinner on the edges is best. But I never mastered that, and mine worked fine. Put your thumb and forefinger into an o, so that you are looking down on a circle, then drape the dough over that. Using a small, even amount of the filling and the soup, put them in the center of your circle of dough. Now squeeze your dough closed with your ‘o’ fingers. It ain’t traditional, but it sure works! It doesn’t need to seal, just be good enough that it stays closed.

Here, my friends, is what my first couple looked like. After a bit, I was too messy to photograph. But it works, it is delicious, and you should not be afraid to try it yourself.

You can now freeze them (lay individually, with none touching on a piece of parchment paper, on a baking sheet) and cook later, or even better, cook immediately by tossing on to cabbage leaves in steamer. The dough will start to look a bit translucent as it cooks, you should be ready then. About 5-8 minutes.

Enjoy!

Dim Sum at Sun Sui Wah

But first, a quick note: I have added a few pictures to the previous post. As per a request below, I am going to work on getting more pictures on the site–especially on home cooked meals–I don’t know about getting restaurant pictures yet.

And now on to my wonderful dim sum at Sun Sui Wah on Sunday. Aside from the whole catastrophe of me losing my passport on sunday morning (turns out you don’t actually need a passport or birth certificate to get in to Canada), we managed to get out of Seattle by 9:30, making it to the downtown Vancouver branch of SSW before noon. There was a bit of a wait for a table, but not bad, maybe 20 minutes, which isn’t all that much when you consider we drove over 2 hours to get there. The clatter and clank of dishes right away reminded me that we were not at a quiet, polite Seattle dim sum anymore. “It’s like a different country” Said B. Meaning China, not Canada. And it is, this was a real dim sum experience, and for me a first. I chose piece carefully, wanting to try everything–new things for the experience, things I get all the time to see how different they were here. I was careful to eat only small bites of what we got in order to conserve as much stomach space as possible.

I’m going to describe what I got here, please, anyone who knows the real names of these things, I would love to know!

The first cart that came by I picked a steamed barbecue hum bao. The outside was a great texture, pillowesque as it enveloped pork that fell apart at the slightest prodding. The hint of sweetness that I so dearly treasure may have been a bit overpowering, but it was better than lacking it. Next up was a squid dish, it appeared just to be a few whole pieces of squid steamed in a very light sauce. Simple, yet for a squid lover like me, a great punch of flavor. The tubes held sauce so there was a little explosion of flavor when you bit into it.

We grabbed a few pork potstickers from a tray, which were good, but still just potstickers–nothing overly exciting. A sticky rice was nicely packaged into small package so there was a very high sausage to rice ratio, a nice bonus for the meat lovers among us, also allowed the rice to take on more of the meaty flavor. I always order my thick rice noodles with shrimp inside, but here they had only beef, so I took that and was surprised at the soft texture of the beef inside, matching the noodles perfectly in texture, but with a terrific bite of flavor from the inside of the plainness of the noodles.

A little treat I had never had before came by soon after, small circles of tofu (soft and custurdy on the inside, but with a solid skin, so they didn’t fall apart) with a ball of shrimp on the top–like the inside of a har gow, but with out the skin, and a small sprinkling of roe. This was a great new treat, and it was very well liked by B and I. Another new dish that we really enjoyed, I can barely even describe. The outside was like the dough part of a steamed hum bao, but it was sliced like it had been from a log, and the inside was almost all filling–only maybe a centimeter of bao around the edge. The filling looked a little like sticky rice, perhaps? With just a bit of sweetness. It was my favorite of the day, so if anyone knows what it is, please tell me!

Unfortunately I haven’t convinced B to get over his fear of chicken feet, so one of my staples was out, but my other one was definetly in–Congee. B agreed this was some of the best congee we have tried. And nothing cures a hangover like a good congee. This made us very happy, it was the only thing I had trouble enforcing my one bite rule. We finished up with a little pan fried pork dumpling, which made our potsticker taste like cardboard, it was so packed with flaver (a breadier type of dough, much better meat). Last but not least, I finally realized that I had to ask for my daikon cake to get it, which I did. Those were pretty average, despite being fried to order.

I left Sun Sui Wah with a grin on my face. I finally understood why people were so snotty about Seattle’s dim sum–this was what they were talking about. And I’m willing to bet there are people who turn their nose up at Sun Sui Wah’s dim sum, so I’ll have to keep looking for new and better places!

Sun-Ya

Oh how I love dim sum! This saturday we went out in search of a new place. My dim sum heart has not been at peace since the closing of Top Gun. I like Jade Garden, but I don’t fight crowds well. But I think I have a new go-to place.

The first thing that drew us to Sun-Ya? The parking lot. When driving around the ID in search of a good dim sum place, there is endless advantage to having a place to park the car. So Sun-Ya was the choice. We went in and were quickly seated. Right away a cart was headed straight for us with my roommates favorite food–Honey walnut prawns. No need to grab something to hold you til your favorite thing comes by here. We also snagged a shrimp paste filled peppers and eggplant. The eggplant and peppers were a little luke warm, which tastes okay with the peppers but was a little off with the eggplant. Honey walnut prawns–my roommies fav, though not mine–were as good as I’ve ever had.

The steam cart came next. We pulled off a shrimp dumplings, sticky rice in lotus leaves, rice noodles and shrimp, and some chinese broccoli. All were good.

That is my basic tenet for Sun-Ya. Everything was good. No complaints. I was well attended to and got everything I wanted (okay, well, my roommate refused to share the turnip cakes with me, but that was her fault, not theirs). Nothing was outstanding or melt in my mouth good. But I had no complaints either. Which is all I can ask for a place with no wait and a parking lot. I’ll be back here when I’m hungover and need dim sum now, no hassle and delicious!

China Gate

As much as I am inclined to vote yes on the idea of Dim Sum at night, the service here was not as good as one wants from dim sum. While everything we ordered was made fresh, they were missing about three things we ordered, and one of our dishes never made it out. Our calamari was plain and not warm when it came out (not a good thing for deep fried food). However, I must admit that the salt and pepper fish was quite good, very well spiced, little jalepanos everywhere. Macki, the owner took good care of us, but only because she knew us. I think that if this was their good service, I would be concerned. There was about 2 waiters for a room of 20 tables.