Dim Sum Lesson

– How to make dim sum

Meet the Head Chef from The Peninsula Hotel, Hong Kong and have a dim sum lesson.

 

He started by weighing potato starch and corn starch in equal quantities on his traditional weighing scales.

 

Other ingredients were boiling water and scallion (spring onion greens) ground with water and sieved to supply a wonderful fresh green colouring juice.

 
 

The dough was made by working in the boiling water (by hand!) and enough green juice for half the dough to be green dough.

 
 

The dough was worked on the surface until it was pliable, soft and smooth. . It was important to wrap the dough to prevent it drying out.

 
 

Now the shaping, firstly a thin roll of dough was chopped into even portions about 10g each. A cleaver knife wiped on a damp cloth was used on the chopping board.

 

Each small ball of dough was firstly flattened on the board.

 
 

The cleaver spread the dough into a circular shape as thin as a wafer and swiftly lifted it from the board.

 
 

A pile of dim sum pastry was made and the fillings arrived ready prepared, but firstly it was our turn to make the pastry wraps

 
 

A helping hand to improve the technique, the Head Chef could not speak English, so the Maitre D translated his instructions.

 
 

I think he was genuinely pleased to see us succeed and help us enjoy making Dim Sum.

We then filled each pastry and pleated the Dim Sum into 'small purses.' Seven little pleats made a perfect purse, needless to say we did not master the technique!

 

Paper liners in the traditional wooden steamers waited for our hand-made pale green and white dim sum. They were covered and placed on the steamer.

 

6-8 minutes of steaming gave us some wonderful samples to taste.

We also looked round the kitchens and some of the specialist cooking equipment, perhaps next time we may get a lesson on suckling pig or Peking duck.

 
 

We had such a wonderful experience in the kitchens followed by luncheon in the Spring Moon Restaurant at the Penisula Hotel, Hong Kong.

 
 
Glorious, cool, calm interior in traditional Cantonese style of the 1920's.  
 

Dim sum selections served at lunchtime in the Spring Moon.

 
 

The perfect ending to a very special lesson that will never be forgotten.

 
 

Take a peek at what else the Peninsula Hong Kong has to offer. My stay was memorable!