Hongyou Chaoshou | Red Oil Dumplings
Chaoshou means to fold your arms, but in Sichuan dialect it refers to these dumplings, a detail that becomes apparent when you see them in their raw state. You can imagine a stubborn-looking person sitting with their arms crossed. Chaoshou are always served in a soup or sauce, either chicken soup, hot and sour soup or, my favourite, chilli oil.
Makes 20-25 dumplings (serves 3-4)
- 2 spring onions
- 1 thumb-sized piece of fresh root ginger
- 50ml water
- 250g fatty minced pork (15% fat)
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp cornflour
- 1 tbsp oyster sauce (optional)
- 1 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1 packet of square wonton wrappers
TO SERVE (per portion)
- 1 tsp lard
- 1 tsp light soy sauce
- ½ tsp ground Sichuan pepper
- a pinch of granulated sugar
- 2 tbsp chilli oil
- 1 tbsp thinly sliced spring onion greens
Put the spring onions, ginger and water into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth, then pass through a sieve to remove any large pieces. Set aside.
Put the pork, egg, cornflour, oyster sauce, if using, and soy sauce into a bowl and add a quarter of the ginger and onion liquid. Use your hand in a claw shape to mix the meat in one direction only. This will help whip the protein structure, creating a light and delicate texture.
Set a timer for 15 minutes and hand whip the meat until you have a smooth paste, every couple of minutes adding a little bit more of the ginger and onion liquid until it has all been absorbed. Set aside to rest for 15 minutes.
When you’re ready to assemble the dumplings, take a wrapper and place it in your hand in a diamond shape. Using chopsticks, place a teaspoon of the filling in the middle. Fold the diamond in half from the bottom up and press it closed tightly with your hands. Turn the dumpling so the top point is facing you. Take the left and the right point and cross them over each other tightly, pressing them together. Continue until you run out of filling or wrappers – any leftovers of either can be frozen.
Put the serving ingredients, except the spring onion greens, into bowls.
Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil and add the dumplings. When the water comes back up to the boil, add a cup of cold tap water to cool the water. Bring the water back up to the boil and once the dumplings are floating, divide them between the bowls.
Add a small splash of the cooking water to each to make a soup, then garnish with the spring onion greens.
Congyou Bing | Spring Onion Pancakes
Spring onion pancakes can be thin and flaky with layers that easily pull apart or thicker and stout, more like a crunchy puck of dough. Nowadays, the flaky variety of shou zhua bing from Taiwan has become more mainstream. Many recipes use a combination of oil and flour to create layers, but I find that this can taste like raw flour and has an unpleasant sandy texture. Unfortunately, if you are vegetarian or vegan it is genuinely your only option, otherwise the best fat to use is lard.
Makes 6 pancakes
- 600g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
- 300ml water
- 50ml neutral oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 100g lard, softened (or 50ml neutral oil mixed with 2 tbsp plain flour)
- 12 spring onions, finely chopped
- ground white pepper, to taste
Combine the flour, water, oil and salt in a bowl, then use your hands to bring it together into a smooth dough. Knead the dough for 10 minutes, then cover and leave to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface into a large rectangle around 35 x 70cm.
Smear the lard across the entire surface of the dough, sprinkle the spring onions over one side in an even layer and press them into the dough. Sprinkle as much white pepper as you like across the dough – I like a hefty amount.
Fold the rectangle in half to make a square and press down on it, as if you were making a big square sandwich. Cut the dough into thin strips, about 1cm wide. Give them all a stretch so they double in length.
Divide the strips into six bundles, then, like making fresh tagliatelle, coil each bundle around your fingers into a snail. Flatten the snail into a pancake and repeat with the remaining dough. Cover with a tea towel and set aside to rest for 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 150°C.
Heat a dry frying pan over a medium heat. Roll out one of the pancakes to at least 20cm wide, then fry for 4-5 minutes on each side until golden brown. If you want, you can brush with a little neutral oil or any leftover lard you have, but the amount of fat in the dough should be enough by itself. Repeat with the remaining pancakes, then transfer to a baking tray and cook in the oven for 10 -15 minutes until cooked all the way through.
Yuni Bing | Deep-fried, Taro-filled Biscuit Sandwiches
Taro, often mistranslated as yam, is a traditional breakfast or snack in the southern Min area of Fujian. Usually it is peeled, steamed and mashed. But if you take the steamed taro and sandwich it between two rich tea biscuits then deep-fry it, you can see how something very ordinary can become a marketable trend and an evolution of tradition. With some species of taro, simply handling them raw can cause skin irritations, so it’s best to wear kitchen gloves when preparing them and be careful not to touch your eyes.
Makes 10-12 cakes
- 1.5kg taro, peeled and cubed
- 30-50g granulated sugar
- 1-2 x 300g packets of rich tea biscuits
- 2 tbsp plain flour
- 1 tbsp rice flour
- 100g white sesame seeds (optional)
- neutral oil, for frying
Prepare a steamer, then steam the taro over a high heat for 17-20 minutes until fork-tender. Transfer the taro to a bowl and mash it. Add the sugar and combine, then set aside to cool.
Spread some of the mashed taro on to one of the biscuits until it is about 1.5cm thick, then top with another biscuit to make a sandwich. Make sure the taro comes all the way to the edges and is smooth. Repeat with the remaining taro and biscuits. Combine the plain and rice flours with a few tablespoons of water in a bowl to create a thick paste. Using a pastry brush, coat the sides of the cookies in the batter to seal in the taro. Roll the edges in sesame seeds, if using.
Heat 5cm oil in a large saucepan, deep frying pan or wok until it reaches 180°C.
Carefully add a few of the sandwiches to the hot oil, being careful not to overcrowd the pan. Fry for 2 minutes on each side until golden brown, then drain on a wire rack or kitchen paper.
Repeat with the remaining sandwiches, then serve warm.
An edited extract from Zao Fan: Breakfast of China by Michael Zee (Bloomsbury Publishing, $54.99 Hb)
