小笼包- A little food trip down memory lane

This past week or so has come with a rather big triumph in the saga of returning from China. After endless weeks of battling with shipping companies and insurance, countless hours spent emailing or phoning people, many Chinese voice notes and setback after setback, my belongings have finally returned from Shanghai! I am so happy that all the hard work I have put into all of this has paid off and as amazing as having all my possessions back is, the best thing about it is not having to think about waybills, customs declarations and pickup dates again. With this being said, I have taken advise from my sister (my whole family definitely got as sick of hearing about it as I did) and will leave the baggage talk at that!

This week has also seen the return of my lovely Grandma! At the beginning of every year, she jets off to visit other family members across the globe in order to avoid a cold and dreary English winter, how pleasant! This year she visited Dubai, South Africa and Pakistan, however due to the coronavirus she got stuck in Dubai for slightly longer than intended, before managing to return home earlier this week. Sadly, after 8 months of not seeing each other, I was reunited with my Grandma from a healthy 2 metres away. Regardless, it is so nice to see her again and to be able to catch up from afar.

Next week, I have my first few midterm exams online, so this week has also seen me trying my best to focus on revision and prepare myself for the unfamiliar method of taking them online. Therefore, to keep with the theme of China, during my break from revision/procrastination yesterday I decided to attempt to fill my cravings for Chinese food and learn to make 小笼包 (xiǎo lóng bāo)- otherwise known as steamed dumplings.

During my final exams in Shanghai last term, I made sure to utilise the super easy and convenient delivery services as much as possible. Almost every day in exam week, I ordered a portion of prawn dumplings from Yang’s. For as little as 21 Chinese RMB (about £2.50) you could get 4 prawn soup dumplings. These definitely rank highly in the best foods I ate in Shanghai and it is a shame that my addiction only really developed towards the end of my time in China.

Now my recipe can in no way compare to the beauty of Yang’s Dumplings and were a much smaller version but after reading many different dumpling recipes, I put together this recipe and this is how it went!

Ingredients-

For the prawn filling-

• 1 6.5g sachet of vege-gel or an alternative vegetarian gelatine powder

• 2 vegetable stock cubes

• 240g raw king prawns (I used a packet of frozen prawns and just defrosted them in water for a few hours before I started cooking)

• 1 small onion

• 2 cloves of garlic

• Sunflower oil

• ¼ teaspoon Chinese five spice

• ¼ teaspoon chilli powder

• Salt and black pepper

• Dark soy sauce

• Fish sauce

For the wrappers-

• 150g plain flour (plus extra for rolling)

• 75ml water

Cooking the dumplings-

Because I wanted to try my best to recreate the taste of a Yang’s dumpling, I first shallow fried the bottom of the dumplings in sunflower oil to try to get the crunchy bottom like Yang’s and then steamed them in a bamboo steamer. I bought my double layer steamer online for around £15, but if you can’t get one, I have seen on the internet it seems just as easy to place the dumplings on a plate over a pan of boiling water and steam cook them that way.

1) First you will need to make a jelly out of vegetarian gelatine and vegetable stock. This jelly will then be cut up and added to the prawn filling so that it becomes the soup in the dumplings once cooked.

2) Mix the sachet of vege-gel with half a pint of cold water. Leave this to set for a couple of minutes. In the meantime, dissolve two vegetable stock cubes in boiling water and bring to the boil in a small saucepan. Once bubbling, pour the stock into the vege-gel and mix well. Pour this liquid into a baking tin or Tupperware and place into the fridge to set for an hour.

3) While the jelly is setting make the filling. Heat a tablespoon of sunflower oil in a pan. Add the prawns and cook for 3-4 minutes stirring occasionally, until all the prawns become a nice even pink colour.

4) Remove the prawns from the pan and leave them to cool on a chopping board.

5) Whilst the prawns are cooling, roughly chop the onion and peel and chop the garlic. Don’t worry about cutting them too finely. Place the chopped onions and garlic into a blender and whiz until they make a smooth paste- alternatively you can put them into a bowl and use a hand blender, however I’m not sure if to recommend this as I couldn’t handle the strength of the onions and it left me with tears streaming down my face!

6) Now that the prawns are cool, dice them into little pieces.

7) Heat a little more oil in your pan, and add your onion and garlic paste. Fry this off for a couple of minutes before adding the Chinese five spice and chilli powder.

8) Mix until the spices are nicely combined with the onion and garlic paste. Add the diced prawns, a dash of dark soy sauce and a dash of fish sauce and stir. Be careful not to add too much of the sauces as you want the mixture to be fairly dry. Add salt and pepper to taste. Turn off the heat and set aside to cool.

9) For the wrappers, first make the dough by mixing together your plain flour and water together in a large mixing bowl. Add the water little by little, you just want to add enough water so that the mixture comes together as a ball. I find it easier to mix the dough using my hands rather than using a spoon.

10) Place the dough on a floured surface or chopping board and knead for a few minutes until it feels softer. Place the dough in a plastic sandwich bag or wrap it in cling film and leave it on the side to rest for 30 minutes.

11) Once the jelly is set remove it from the fridge and finely dice it into little pieces. My jelly turned out as more of a gel and was a lot slushier than a set jelly as you can see in the rather unattractive pictures. However, I think this was due to the vege-gel being a substitute to vegetarian gelatine rather than the quantities of powder to liquid that I used, so if you can get an alternative gelatine that might work better. This made the process of filling the dumplings a little trickier, but it still did the job.

12) When the dough is rested, place it onto a floured surface and knead it again for a good 5 minutes until the dough feels more elastic and very soft. Cut the dough in half and place one half back into the plastic bag so that it doesn’t harden.

13) Cut the dough that you are working with first into 15 small equal sized pieces. Using a rolling pin, individually roll each of the bits of dough into small circles (roughly 8cm wide). You want the dough to be thin but not too thin as they might rip (I learnt this after wrapping my first few unsuccessful dumplings).

14) It is best to try to make the dough thinner on the outside of the circle, so that when you wrap the dumplings the dough closing them at the top isn’t too thick. I did this by carefully stretching out the edges using my fingers.

15) To fill them, place a wrapper in the palm of your hand. Place a teaspoon of the prawn and jelly mixture into the middle of the wrapper. To close it, using your other hand, little by little fold the wrapper into the centre, pinching each bit together with the previous bit so that it somewhat looks like a little flower. Sadly, the stress got to me at this point and I forgot to take photos of the process!

16) Repeat this until you have made dumplings out of all the dough. Don’t worry if you lose some along the way, it is a fiddly process and I definitely need some more practice too.

17) Now that you are ready to cook the dumplings, fill a wok or large pan with 5cm of cold water. Put this water on a low heat to slowly bring it to the boil. Once boiling, lower the heat and leave the water ready and simmering.

18) In the meantime, if you want to fry the bottoms of the dumplings, fill the bottom of a large frying pan with a thin layer of sunflower oil. Carefully add the dumplings to the hot oil and fry for a couple of minutes, just until the bottom of the dumpling becomes golden brown. Carefully remove from the pan using a slotted spatula.

19) Next, in order to stop the dumplings from sticking to the steamer, line the bottom of it with thin greaseproof paper or cabbage leaves and then place the dumplings on top. Using oven gloves, place the steamer into the wok of hot water and place the lid on the steamer. Leave to cook for 6 minutes, making sure to check throughout that there is still enough water and it has not dried out, topping it up if needs be.

20) After 6 minutes, using oven gloves remove the steamer from a pan and place onto a heatproof mat. Finally, get your chopsticks ready and enjoy the success of your hard work!

I can confirm that although I had a few difficulties along the way, these definitely settled my craving for good Chinese food for the time being! With some of the dumplings, I rolled the dough too thin/put too much filling in them, which made little holes in them causing some of the soup to escape when they were cooking. Nevertheless, they tasted amazing and even though they took a good few hours to make, I will definitely be making them again and experimenting with other fillings!

So, there is another way to kill a few isolation hours and learn a new tasty skill. Try not to get too bored, enjoy the sun as much as possible in your gardens/ on your walk of the day and follow the wise words of my new chopsticks- 吃喝玩乐 (chī hē wán lè)- eat, drink and enjoy oneself xoxo