Siew Mai - taste the difference of homemade dim sim

A basic siew mai recipe from a Chinese chef has these ingredients : 300 g of minced meat (pork or chicken); quarter of a cabbage; wanton skin (with egg). Season with oyster sauce, soy sauce and pepper to taste.

Cabbage gives the dim sum a subtle sweet taste and adds crunch to the delicacy. I would add chopped shitake mushroom and minced prawn to create a breadth of tastes and aroma.

The real test is the cook's skill in stuffing the minced meat mixture and shaping them into cylindrical parcels at the same time. You must ensure that the morsels are flattened at the bottom to enable you to stand them neatly in the steamer.

My friend was worried I wasn't too confident if I was able to "make" them as I did not attend his demonstration. Not to be discouraged, I wanted to give it a go. The first few attempts were quite disastrous, producing funny shaped siew mai. However, after a handful of trial and error, the siew mai turned out looking what they should be. One will have to be skilful and trained to be able to make larger siew mai without the filling spilling out or the morsels getting out of shape.

It is much cheaper to make your own dim sum. You would probably spend about $1 per tiny siew mai at the yum cha restaurant but the cost of producing three large siew mai with quality filling is a small fraction of that. The recipe given above yields about 40 large siew mai.

You'll get the hang of it after some practice. Cooking this delicacy is not as dim as it seems.