For comparison, Fuchsia wanted Steve to experience a more formal approach to dim sum.
For that occasion, she chose Victoria City,
where diners make their selections from a menu instead of from rolling carts.
Her commentary should make you a more enlightened dim sum customer.
And if you’ve never sampled chicken feet, Fuchsia’s encouragement may remove the fear factor.
[Fuchsia Dunlop] So, you've seen the more casual, traditional, and breakfast dim sum sort of cafe-style culture,
and here I brought you to Victoria City Seafood Restaurant
for a kind of more refined lunchtime dim sum experience.
So, here you'll find a lot of the classic Dim Sum snacks, done absolutely beautifully.
Dim Sum is a really curious term. It means literally "touched the heart,"
and it refers to this huge range of little and sort of dumplings and other deities that, um....
.....that just little bites of exciting flavors.
And these lovely translucent dumplings — they're mixed vegetable [...] and you can see that the filling is so thin,
that it's translucent, you can see all the colors of the vegetables.
And this is probably the archetypal dim sum dumpling.
This is "har gow" in Cantonese, shrimp dumpling.
The more familiar Chinese dumplings are made by rolling out wheat flour pastry.
This is made from the starch only of wheat flour, and it's mixed to a kind of putty like dough,
and then you don't actually roll it out. You use a — kind of what looks like a Chinese cleaver,
but it's not sharp, it's totally blunt,
and you smear the you smear the paste into a perfect circle on your your cutting board,
and then you pinch the shrimp filling into it.
So, why don't you try a har gow? And this is a real test of a restaurant's, um....
.....of the quality of a restaurant, because it's very simple, but you want that lovely crisp and shrimp the texture, yeah.
All those little pleats.
[Chef Steve Jilleba] That's fantastic. You get the nice crunch of the shrimp and they get kind of little liquid coming of that.
See, I took the whole thing in, so.... and so, but fantastic.
[Fuchsia Dunlop] Yeah, it's very important, obviously with this kind of thing, to use perfectly fresh shrimp,
because otherwise the texture will be a bit soft and you really want that little crispness.
And usually, there's a little tiny bit of chopped bamboo shoot in them, too.
[Fuchsia Dunlop] Mmm mmm! Mmmm! [Chef Steve Jilleba] They're good, aren't they?
[Fuchsia Dunlop] And these are our beautiful vegetable dumplings.
[Ambient noise]
Mmmmm.
[Chef Steve Jilleba] The flavors are wonderful. You get that burst of freshness.
[Fuchsia Dunlop] And the way you they're all sort of mixed together, but you taste distinctly every single thing separately.
You've got the the crunch of the carrot....
The little crispness of the wood ear mushroom. A bit of cilantro....
And these lovely pan-fried dumplings, often known in Chinese as Jiaozi — potstickers,
because of the way they're cooked which is that they're cooked in a skillet or frying pan,
but they're part fried and part steamed, so you put some liquid in at one stage of this cooking,
so they will steam through, and then you let them toast golden on their bottoms.
And these ones, on the menu it says they're Taiwanese style Chinese chive dumplings....
and because they're quite rich and they're fried, they're usually served with a refreshing vinegar and ginger dip
which will just cut that that oiliness and make them taste really good.
[Chef Steve Jilleba] There is a very large amount of thyme in there. Very good, very refreshing. [Fuchsia Dunlop] Yeah, yeah.
[Fuchsia Dunlop] And a different sort of wrapper for this one.
[Chef Steve Jilleba] Yeah, it's a little more chewy especially the pan-fried pork.
[Fuchsia Dunlop] Mm-hmm.
There are so many different kinds of Chinese pastry for dumpings,
and I don't know this precise recipe but often with the pan-fried dumplings,
the dough will be slightly cooked first, so you mix it up with a portion of boiling water from the kettle,
so the flour is slightly cooked, and then you add a bit of cold water and mix it to a dough
and that helps it to have that slightly glutinous texture.
Now, these these ones are particularly difficult to make. Xiaolongbao. Xiaolongbao.
A "xiaolong" is a little bamboo steamer and a "bao" is a little bun.
And these dumplings, they're really a speciality of Shanghai in eastern China.
I think these are probably just pork, but often they put a little crab coral into to enhance the the savory taste.
And with these they have some stock inside, so they're quite difficult to....
....You have to make sure that the.... a little bit of filling here.....
....that the skin is intact, because their juices will flow out.
And these are often — these are usually also served with ginger and vinegar.
One of the things about Xiaolongbao is that they're so beautifully juicy, and there's this
burst of fresh savory stock when you when you bite into them,
and a lot of people are very mystified by how they get the stock into the dumplings....
But they actually use a jellied stock, you know, cut into cubes,
so it's easy to wrap them and then as they heat, it melts....
and then you get this kind of bite full of gorgeous stock. (laughs)
And here.... Now this is a very interesting dim sum.
I'm going to pour over a little bit of soy sauce.
This is Cheung fun, and it's very thin sheets of rice pasta
and they're made by laying a piece of muslin over a steamer,
pouring in a rice flour batter, and then putting a bit of filling
as it cooks, steaming it, and then rolling them up.....
And it's very difficult to do, because you want the Cheung fun — the pasta — to be really sort of soft and lovely in the mouth,
but it has to be just elastic enough to hold together, you don't want it to fall apart.
And this is one of the textures that, when it comes to dim sum, a lot of Westerners don't take to immediately,
because it's got that slightly, sort of slithery texture, but it's one of the most enjoyed of all dim sum styles.
This one is filled with duck and celery, but they're often filled with them fresh shrimp....
They can be filled with beef.... All kinds of different things