Lunar New Year

Pot stickers are one of my family’s favorite appetizers. In fact, my cousins even eat them as the main course. My problem with ordering them from a restaurant is that they never have a vegetarian option, so I prefer to make them at home, where I can sauté chopped cabbage to substitute for the pork.

To those unfamiliar with red bean paste, the concept may seem strange, but millions of people the world over cannot imagine their favorite steamed or baked buns and deep-fried sesame seed balls without this lightly sweet, chocolate-brown filling. The richness comes from the beans themselves and from a touch of oil, though lard would be used by traditionalists. Some cooks use brown or white sugar; I use both for a deep, well-rounded sweetness. Red bean paste is sold canned, but it’s overly sweet and incomparable to homemade. Adzuki beans are available at most natural food stores, specialty grocers, and Asian markets. You can also use the small red beans sold at Chinese markets. Sometimes I add a pinch or two of salt for a savory edge, reflecting a Japanese style of bean paste. The recipe here is more in the sweeter Chinese fashion.

A perfect taro puff (pictured) is ethereal; its gossamer shell crisp and not greasy. The underside of the dough is rich and creamy, enveloping a well-seasoned filling. I eagerly look for wu gok, as taro puffs are called in Cantonese, at dim sum restaurants. Unfortunately, most versions are lackluster and leaden by the time I pick them off the cart. Homemade ones are significantly better because they are consistently tasty and hold their crispness for hours. The dough and filling can be prepared in advance and refrigerated for a couple of days. Dumpling assembly is easy, and the deep-frying is fast. Brown and barrel-shaped with distinctive rings, taro is sold at Asian and Latin markets, often near other tubers like sweet potato. For this recipe, the large variety is used because its flesh is much drier than that of the small taro. Select a firm, full one with no signs of shriveling or molding. When cut open, taro should smell fresh; its flesh should be bright and feel firm like coconut. Store taro in a cool, dry spot and use it within a few days of purchase. Peeled and trimmed taro sold in Cryovac packaging works great. Feel free to substitute chicken thigh for the pork. Finely chopped bamboo shoots, water chestnut, or rehydrated shiitake mushrooms can replace the shrimp. Weighing the wheat starch and cooked taro and frying at moderately high heat ensures that the puff will hold together.

Whereas fried sticky rice dumplings have their alluring crispy-chewy skins, steamed sticky rice dumplings are as soft and comforting as a well-worn pair of jeans. They retain the charming soft texture and natural sweetness of sticky rice. I grew up break-fasting on Vietnamese bánh ít (“small dumplings”), though they can certainly be a satisfying brunch, lunch, or snack food. Filled with a surf-and-turf mixture of shrimp, pork, and wood ear and shiitake mushrooms, these dumplings are enjoyed warm, dipped in a pool of soy sauce and pepper. The banana leaf imparts a wonderfully tea-like quality to the dumplings during the cooking process. These are easy to make, especially when the filling is prepared a day in advance. Viet cooks often use boiling water to create glutinous rice dough, but the dough is easier to handle and control when cold water is used. I combine two kinds of glutinous rice flour (see page 15) to arrive at a texture that is pleasantly chewy, not overly sticky. The rice flours are available at Asian markets, as is fresh or frozen banana leaf.

Opening up a steamed lotus leaf packet and inhaling its alluring musty fragrance is part of many Cantonese dim sum rituals. Inside, the sticky rice is stained a rich brown from the leaf, and once you start digging toward the center with chopsticks, there is a treasure trove of succulent ingredients. Figuring out what comprises the filling is most fun. Chicken is often included, as jī (fowl) is part of these packets’ name in Mandarin; they are called lo mai gai in Cantonese. Chicken is commonly combined with shiitake mushrooms and Chinese sweet sausage, as is done here. But cooks can add a myriad of other boldly flavored or rich ingredients, such as roasted char siu pork (page 224), roast duck, dried shrimp, salted egg yolk, and chestnuts. Lotus leaf packets can be made large enough for several people to share, but I prefer to present a small one to each guest. I freeze extras as a homemade convenience food to be later revived and packed into a lunch box or enjoyed on the road. At Chinese and Southeast Asian markets, you will find the sticky rice and dried sweet sausages. Packages of fanlike dried lotus leaves are usually near the dried mushrooms; they are inexpensive and last indefinitely if stored in a dry spot. If you are making lotus packets for the first time, soak a couple of extra leaves in case you tear them.

Cantonese deep-fried sticky rice dumplings can be filled many ways, but there is usually chopped rehydrated shiitake mushroom and a little chopped dried shrimp for savory oomph. With those two ingredients in this vegetable-laden alternative, you won’t miss the meat.

Commonly sold on Styrofoam trays at Chinese and Southeast Asian markets, these opaque white rice rolls flecked with orange dried shrimp and green scallion are a terrific southern Chinese snack. Purchased ones are seldom as tasty as homemade because producers tend to be skimpy with the dried shrimp, which give the rolls their oomph. These steamed rolls can be eaten as is, dipped in sweet soy sauce. Or they can be panfried to a delicate crisp. When served with other dishes, a few rolls are all you will need. For a light main course with a salad, double or triple the recipe.

Traditionally a Cantonese Lunar New Year treat, but now a standard dim sum offering, these remarkable football-shaped dumplings have a tender, crisp skin that yields to a wonderful sweet chewiness when you bite into them. Light brown sugar helps to color the dough during frying and adds a bit of sweetness—a contrast with the savory pork or vegetable filling. I usually avoid these dumplings (called haam sui gok in Cantonese) at dim sum restaurants because they tend to be leaden and overly greasy. However, made at home, they are irresistible. Make sure to prepare the filling before making the dough.

Asian dumplings are often prepared with chopped shrimp, but these rolls are filled with whole shrimp and always seem extra decadent. Called har cheung in Cantonese, they are a perennial favorite dim sum—delighting diners with the orange-pink glow of the shrimp beneath the sheath of rice sheet. On their own, the rolls will seem very mild flavored. But finishing them with the sweet soy sauce makes all the elements sing.

Chinese cooks use rice sheets as wrappers for not only shrimp and beef, but also tasty stir-fries like this one. The chicken and vegetable mixture here could be used as a filling for deep-fried spring rolls, but it is also wonderful in this delicate treatment: encased in rice sheets and steamed. The chicken and vegetables are cut into matchsticks to complement the shape of the oll. To cut the chicken, freeze it first for 5 to 10 minutes, slice it, and then stack the slices and slice again into thick matchsticks. Pork tenderloin or beef flank can be substituted for the chicken. For a vegetarian version, replace the chicken with 2/3 cup packed shredded bamboo shoots (boil for 1 minute first to eliminate the tinny flavor) and decrease the cornstarch to 2 teaspoons.

Rice roll fillings are often precooked and reheated through steaming, but this popular one involves a filling of raw beef and orange zest that requires steaming to complete the cooking. For efficiency, professional Chinese cooks typically add the raw beef to the rice sheet about 30 seconds into cooking, but that is a difficult technique. Filling cooked sheets and then steaming them to cook the beef is easier and the results are the same. You do not have to use the baking soda in the filling, but some Chinese cooks use it as a meat tenderizer and to lend a silky texture. The beef should be hand- or machine-chopped so it isn’t too finely textured and clumpy (see page 158 for guidance).

You can often spot these crystalline, dome-shaped dumplings from a far because of their contents: emerald green Chinese chives. The garlicky, flat-leaf green is a workhorse ingredient in Chinese dumpling making that commonly plays a supporting role. Here the chives are the star, flavored by a bit of shrimp in regular and dried form to punch things up a bit. Chinese chive dumplings (called gow choy gow in Cantonese) can be served steamed or panfried to a delicate crispness, my preferred option. They do not freeze well, but I’ve never had a problem gobbling them up quickly.

Many Chiu Chow people migrated from mainland China to Southeast Asia, particularly to the Malay Peninsula. That is why you will find Chiu Chow dumplings among the hawker street food offerings in places like Penang. Along with the regular version in the preceding recipe, there is usually a vegetarian option. Chai kuih (literally “vegetable cake”) can be flavored with dried shrimp and oyster sauce, or it can be totally vegetarian. I have presented the latter, though you can certainly add the other seasonings if you wish. The mushroom soaking liquid adds savory depth to this jewel-like filling, so remember to save it after rehydrating the shiitakes.

The Cantonese dim sum repertoire would be incomplete without this wonderful contribution from the Chiu Chow, a seafaring people from a region located on the Taiwan Strait. Robustly flavored by briny dried shrimp, this dumpling also tastes light because it’s packed with vegetables, including jicama and shiitake mushrooms, and peanuts. The varied texture of the filling gets rounded out by a touch of pork, though you can use any meat. Because there is lots of chopping involved with the filling, make it a couple days in advance to minimize last-minute pressures. I first enjoyed these nearly twenty years ago in Hong Kong and they instantaneously became one of my favorites. Good renditions were hard to find in the United States, so I began making them myself. Enjoy them alone or with soy sauce and an Asian chile garlic sauce of your choice. If jicama is not available, substitute canned water chestnuts.

When I first tasted this Shanghai specialty in Vancouver a few years ago, I wondered how it could have escaped me so long. The stupendous filling is remarkably simple, with a mild bite from the raw daikon radish, smokiness from the ham, and richness from the sesame oil. The pastries can be shaped as rounds with an arty spiral pattern of layers or as oblongs with a handsome linear pattern of layers. They are a classic Chinese banquet morsel, but there’s no need to wait for a special occasion. Enjoy them as a snack, accompanied by other dumplings or a clear soup.

If you like pot stickers and steamed buns, you’ll love these spongy-crisp panfried treats from Shanghai, where typically they are cooked in humongous shallow pans (much like large paella pans) with wooden lids. These buns are made of yeast dough that is filled with an aromatic pork mixture and then fried and steamed in a skillet. Cooking under cover with a bit of water delivers plenty of moisture to puff up the buns. Ground beef chuck or chicken thigh can stand in for the pork in this recipe. A bāozi is a mini bāo (bun) and for that reason, I like to keep these true to their name and shape small ones. However, you can elect to form sixteen medium-size (2 3/4-inch) buns. Roll the dough circles out to 3 1/4 inches in diameter and use about 4 teaspoons of filling for each bun; increase the water and cooking time a tad.

Baked buns, called guk bau in Cantonese, are a wonderful southern Chinese creation. They can be filled with a whole host of things, including sweet bean pastes and savory preserved pork shreds. Some have a crumbly crust that’s akin to coffee cake topping. My favorite renditions are slightly shiny and sticky from having been brushed with a lightly sweet honey glaze. Whatever the filling inside, whether it is spicy chicken curry, roast pork, vegetables, or bean pastes, you can’t lose. Commercially produced Chinese baked buns are nearly cloying and super soft, whereas these have a delicate flavor and texture resembling that of challah.

The Chinese repertoire has many kinds of rolls—savory, sweet, thin, fat, fried, and unfried—and they’re all hard to pass up. The Cantonese fried version is bigger than its Shanghai kin, and it is encased in a large version of a wonton skin. Cantonese spring rolls, also known as egg rolls, have gotten a bad rap in America because they’re often greasy, overly doughy, and bland. However, when made from thin skins and a savory-sweet mixture of fresh vegetables and meat, Cantonese spring rolls reveal their worth as a splendid snack. Resembling gold bars and symbolizing wealth, prosperity, and good fortune, spring rolls are savored during the Lunar New Year, which is called the Spring Festival in Chinese. Cantonese spring rolls often combine pork and shrimp, but I prefer to keep the focus on tasty roast pork, which is best when homemade. Finely chopping and shredding the ingredients is time consuming, but you want the filling to be compact so that it fills out the long shape of the roll. Lighten your workload by making the filling and skins in advance.

There are numerous fillings for fried spring rolls, and this one is my take on an old-fashioned Shanghai filling. The surf-and-turf combination of pork and shrimp is punctuated by earthy bamboo shoots and shiitake mushrooms. Whereas the Cantonese filling on page 79 is savory-sweet (and can be used here), this filling is more robust and offers wonderful depth, so much so that dunking them in a touch of vinegar is all you need to create a wonderful mouthful. Most spring roll fillings are cooked first because the frying is fast, and you want to ensure that the meat is cooked and that there’s a minimum of moisture, so the skins don’t soften up too much as they sit once out of the fryer. When preparing this and other similar fillings, cut the main ingredients so that they match in size and roll up well. I typically buy pork tenderloin steaks and freeze them for 10 to 15 minutes to make them easier to cut. Canned bamboo shoots work well so long as they first are boiled briefly to eliminate any tinny flavor. Spring rolls are great as a snack but also terrific for a light lunch along with a green salad.

These open-faced dumplings are a requisite part of the Cantonese dim sum repertoire. In contrast to their dainty size and frilly edge, shāomai (siu mai in Cantonese) are packed with a pork filling that’s typically punctuated by earthy mushrooms and crunchy water chestnuts. The dumplings here are made from thin wonton skins that have been cut into circles. Don’t confuse them with the Jiangnan version from the area between Shanghai and Nanjing, which is made from hot-water dough wrappers and filled with a sticky rice mixture. Both go by the name shāomai, which literally means “cook and sell,” reflecting their perennial popularity. Feel free to add chopped raw shrimp to the filling (cut back on the vegetables) for variety. Any of the wonton fillings can be used, too; but do remember to double the pork and shrimp filling on page 41 or quadruple the shrimp filling on page 70, adding a beaten egg white in each case to insure a smoother texture. The shape of siu mai enables them to hold a lot more filling than other dumplings of the same size.