Oh, fooled ya. I didn't go anywhere for dimsum today, because my mom and I made our own! She has stocked a ridiculous variety of starches in the pantry: rice flour, glutinous rice flour, bean starch, this and that starch, that and this flour... so today, she decided, was the perfect day to try to make a dent in her supply.
Now, I'm not a big fan of dimsum. Unless it's done very well, dimsum can be a nauseating and greasy experience. One of my favorites though, chang fen, is sometimes hard to find because the xiao zhen bao, or little steamed buns are more popular. This is where "making your own" comes into action.
A popular filling for dimsum is cha sao (which is also called char siu as in the Cantonese dialect), a sweet and smoky chinese bbq pork. We happened to have some in the freezer and chopped it up into a small dice and sauteed it with finely diced shallots. For chang fen, the wrapping is essentially a rice flour crepe. We mixed about 1/4 cup of rice flour with a little oil and 1.5 cups of water. To put this whole shindig together, we used our aluminum steamer and placed a normal circular pie pan on it and poured on a thin layer of the rice flour mixture. It took about a minute of steaming, covered, to fully turn the mixture into a lovely rice crepe where it then received a heaping tablespoon helping of the cha sao mixture.
We then took the pan out of the steamer and repeated the same process with another pan. In the meantime, I was in charge of rolling the thing together. By greasing the pan a little before hand, I didn't have to fight any stickiness and was able to roll the chang fen fully intact.
The result was very pleasing. The outer rice flour crepe was smooth and light and the filling was tasty. Doused in a mixture of soysauce, sesame oil, sugar and a small drizzle of Sriracha, dim sum was a delightful affair in the comforts of our own dining room -- we didn't even miss the waitresses pushing their carts.
Final thoughts: of course I wouldn't even dare make this back in Davis (keep that huge aluminum steamer in an ittybitty kitchen that I share with 5 other people? what a laugh!) but it's just a good feeling to know that you don't have to only leave it to a restaurant for "special" foods. Everything is within our reach if we just try and go for it!
