Lo Mai Gai 糯米雞 (Sticky Rice With Chicken)

Nei hou!  Today I'm writing about a dim sum dish that's relativly new to me: Sticky Rice with Chicken, "lo mai gai".  Introduced to me by one of my roommates that deems it a must-have, lo mai gai is sticky rice filled with chicken, shiitake mushrooms, chinese sausage, and other random goodies and then steamed in a lotus leaf.  Not only does the lotus leaf work as a super eco-friendly wrapper, but it imparts a really nice fragrance and taste to the rice.

The lo mai gai I'm dissecting today came from Clement Restaurant (7th & Clement).  I picked it up yesterday morning, and it served as the perfect thank-goodness-I thought-ahead-because-I'm-too-lazy-to-cook lunch today.  (Lo mai gai is one of the few dim sum items you can save for later and still have it be delicious.)

My immediate thought upon opening it was, "why is this called sticky rice with chicken when it's filled with so much non-chickeny stuff?"  After a minute of poking and prodding with my chopstick I was able to identify a small piece of chicken, 4-5 chunks of char siu (BBQ pork), chopped shiitake mushrooms, 2 inches of lap chang (Chinese sausage), some bits of ginger, and a lot of ground meat that I assume/hope is either chicken or pork but I really can't tell after 20 taste tests.  I'd like to think it's chicken just so "sticky rice with chicken" seems more appropriate, but it's pretty greasy with a thin layer of visible fat, so I'm guessing it's pork.

This bundle of bejeweled carbs is packed with flavor and definitely filling enough to be a meal on its own.  For me, I'm driven to eat it mostly out of intrigue and a strong desire to learn more about sticky rice dishes.  For the longest time I only knew of sticky rice in the form of doong, another southern chinese dish involving sticky rice, chicken and lap chang but it's far less saucy and far more sticky than lo mai gai.  My Po Po and Gung Gung (grandparents on my mom's side) make a large batch every year and it's one of my favorite things to eat!  Making doong is quite labor intensive and doesn't play well with my grandparents' arthritis so the tradition is fading out unless someone else in my family learns how to make it.  (I'm trying to find time for my mom and I to fly our to visit Po Po and Gung Gung so we can learn.)  This is not a dish that my family orders so I was completely unfamiliar with it until about a year ago.  When my roommate first brought home one of these sticky rices I thought it was a poorly wrapped doong and was shocked at how "brown" and flavor-packed the filling was.  Though it wasn't bad it certainly wasn't the doong sticky rice I was used to and I didn't decide to try it again until recently when my roommate brought another one home for me.  This time around I decided to do my research and learned that this leaf-wrapped sticky rice was an entirely different dish.  If I have to choose between the two, I still prefer doong.  Nostalgia is a great spice, almost as great as hunger, and doong is super flavored by it for me.  (Plus the mystery brown sauce and ground meat kind of freak me out, shhh.)

Dim Sum For One

With Siu Mai Guy out of town I was left to dim sum alone.  Taking advantage of his absence (Please hurry home, Siu Mai Guy. ;) Dim Sum isn't as good without you!), I headed to Clement Restaurant and decided to try an item that we never order...the forbidden pan-fried shrimp and chive dumpling!

Siu Mai Guy is a pretty healthy eater but he'll splurge if the food passes his calorie-taste analysis.  Most deep-fried and breaded things don't pass this test, and the pan-fried shrimp and chive dumpling is no exception.  Steamed shrimp and chive dumplings are my ALL-TIME FAVORITE so it just didn't seem right to continue living without trying it.  (And if you're starting to worry that Siu Mai Guy is cruel and controlling, he's the complete opposite.  If I really wanted to get these, he'd encourage it but wouldn't eat any - and since the fun of dim sum is sharing, it wasn't worth it.)

The filling was pretty good, but I much prefer the thin "clear" wrappers on the steamed dumplings. Siu Mai Guy was right - it's not a must order. :( It was quite greasy and the outer shell, which for some reason reminded me of the 'te doy' my ngae-goo-hoo (great-aunt) makes, kind of took away from the filling flavor by clouding it with starchiness.

I also picked up a box of steamed fresh shrimp noodle rolls, 'har cheong fun'.  As I kid, these were a real favorite of mine - and I think it's been deemed a 'must order' amongst every group of friends I've dim summed with.  After trying this dish at a few take-out spots, I've decided this is a dish best left to the sit-down restaurants.  The noodles are just really thick and the shrimps are generally not as large and plump as they are when you order this dish from a nicer restaurant.  What this take-out spot did nail is including a side of sweet soy sauce.  If they didn't include this in the box I wouldn't have bothered.  That's a mistake I made once and refused to make again.  Now apparently the sweet soy sauce is literally just soy sauce and sugar, but I'm pretty sure you have to boil the two together so it's not something you can just whip up.  Overall it was a shrimpy morning which means it was a GREAT morning!

What Surrounds Har Gow, Anyhow?

After eating that amazing har gow at Delicious Dim Sum I started to wonder..."What's the har gow wrapper made of???"  In search of answers I headed to Rasa Malaysia, my go-to blog when I'm interested in cooking a Chinese dish.  According to guest poster Shao, the wrapper is made of mostly wheat starch with a little tapioca starch and lard.  Interestingly, some Asian grocery stores will actually sell this mixture pre-made as har gow wrapper flour.

Now I had always assumed the wrapper was rice based, so this "wheat starch" was really intriguing to me.  A few facts about wheat starch:

• Wheat starch is produced by removing the proteins from wheat flour
• They think ancient Egyptians used wheat starch to glue papyrus together
• It's apparently available at art stores for book repair
• It's mainly a bonder for foods - it makes stuff stick together
• Some use potato starch for their har gow wrappers instead (one person also said you can use cornstarch but your wrappers will turn out crappy...boo yao)

Apparently incorporating 7+ folds in your har gow wrapper means you're kind of a badass.  I haven't tried it myself but I have a feeling my har gow wouldn't look even remotely close to the little seashell shape they're supposed to be.  I think most home cooks go with a more potsicker-y shape (top middle).

This video seems to do a pretty good job of showing the entire process of making har gow but I skipped to the folding part.  Given that this lady is 1) speaking Chinese and 2) old, I fully trust that she's doing it right.  It looks like there's a fair amount of sculpturing required after you pleat and close the dumpling in order to get the proper har gow shape.  Watching this video really makes me admire how much work must go in to making the 100s and 1000s of har gow that restaurants and bakeries offer!

It All Started With A Dumpling

My determination to find SF's best dim sum would not exist without my two loves: Siu Mai Guy and Yelp.

Siu Mai Guy is my wonderful boyfriend/partner-in-dine who I share most of my dim sum adventures with.  Having a penchant for pork and slight fear of sticky-rice, our differing dim sum preferences are perfect for building an excellent dim sum spread.  In the past I would completely forgo siu mai in favor of saving room for more shrimp dumplings, but Siu Mai Guy has slowly showed me how delicious siu mai can be by pointing out who serves up some of the best (Hong Kong Lounge I is the current blue-ribbon holder).

We live on opposite sides of town (I'm in the middle of the city, while he's on the eastern edge) but we each happen to have a really awesome "Chinatown" within walking distance!  His apartment is about a mile away from the real Chinatown and mine is about a mile away from Clement street, host to a plethora of dim sum 'bakeries', Chinese restaurants, bahn mi dealers, and Chinese grocery stores.

One day, before setting out on a morning jog, I asked Siu Mai Guy if he felt like trying a new spot for dim sum and busted out my Yelp app with his consent.  There was one place in the top 10 search results that I had not yet tried: Delicious Dim Sum, so we set that as the destination and jogged on down to Chinatown.  Everyone on Yelp was raving about the har gow, so we asked for 1 order of those, 1 order of xiao long bao, and 1 order of shrimp and cilantro dumplings and took a seat at the solo table in the back.

After our first bites of har gow Siu Mai Guy and I were completely floored!  It was perfection!  The "clear" wrapper had an unparalleled thinness that was just barely thick enough to contain the plump shrimp filling and both the wrapper and filling were incredibly tasty and fresh.  As a kid, I gravitated toward har gow because I loved the taste and look of those "clear" wrappers so this dumpling really made me happy. :)  After eating that har gow I became determined to find out which dim sum spots really excelled at certain items and ultimately build the best dim sum plate in Chinatown!  It's a tough undertaking but my allies and I are ready to stomach it.  (Heh heh...)

All That And Dim Sum

Nei hou! Har Gow Girl here.  Welcome to my blog!  Today's date is 8/8, which I assume is lucky given all the 8s in there, so I thought it'd be a great day to get it started.

Dim sum names comprise 98% of my pathetically small Cantonese vocabulary and I really do have trouble considering it a good weekend unless a few shrimp dumplings were involved.  I recently began a quest to CARPE DIM SUM and find the best dumplings, buns, and rolls available in SF and do some research into how to prep and order these delightful daytime dishes.  If there's a story behind a dish, I'm gonna find it - and if there isn't, I'm going to make one up!  There's a smaaaaall chance I'll attempt making my own dim sum at some point but since I'm not the best cook and there are so many great dim sum shops near me that sell tasty dumplings for 60 cents a piece it's not high on the to-do list.

At any rate, thanks for stopping by!  I hope you enjoy the readings as much as I enjoy the eatings!