Steamed Chicken and Prawn Dim Sum

Prawn & Chicken Steamed Dim Sum

Prawn and Chicken Steamed Dim Sum – Steamed Dim Sum is such a favourite in la casa Tripepi as is all the food of Asia. Like Italian food, it’s well balanced and jam packed full of flavour, reflects the character of a continent and the foods that are readily available in its markets. Much like any Italian mamma, ingredients are purchased daily to ensure that they are fresh and seasonal.

I am constantly inspired by the foods of other countries and will be forever grateful to the brave explorers of yesteryear. Those romantic great galleons fused the cuisines of the world with an invisible thread. I have to chuckle at the nouveau gastro terms such as ‘Fusion food” …. We have been sharing ingredients and cooking styles for centuries. The humble tomato was introduced to the countries of the Mediterranean in the 1540’s by the Spanish, just back from conquering the Aztecs and let’s not forget dear old Marco Polo who introduced the ‘noodle’ to Italy! God bless his soul!

Dim Sum are Asian dumplings that can be filled with any number of different fillings. They can be deep fried but I prefer them steamed as it’s lighter and easier (and kind to my hips).

I had a bit of a disaster when I made my Dim Sum; Miss Bubblz decided to nick a whole sheet of my pasta. She has been playing up a bit lately. Max’s gorgeous little dog, Armani was supposed to come and live with us. Armani visited during the day only for a few days – the idea was to slowly introduce him to the pack. Phoenix took one look at Armani and shook from head to toe! Perhaps she though he was an enormous flea or another puppy to mother. Bubblz played with him for about 5 minutes on the first day and then flopped down on the floor in a complete huff. She refused to play with him ever again and has since demolished 3 doggie beds, ripping them to complete shreds. My lounge looked like it had been hit by a sponge explosion! Needless to say dear Armani is no longer coming to live at la casa Tripepi ….

Prawn and Chicken Dim Sum

Makes 25 Dim Sum

The Pasta for the Dumpling Wrapper

Ingredients

200g SASKO Flour Always Fluffly and Fresh

2tsp salt

2tsp olive oil

2 eggs

Method

This is a rather small amount of dough, so would be easily mixed by hand. Alternatively place the flour, salt, olive oil and eggs in your mixer or food processor and mix to a dough.

Pour the dough out onto a floured surface and knead by hand for 5 minutes until the dough had formed a smooth and slightly shiny ball.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Remove from the fridge and cut the dough into 3 equal parts.

Flour the first piece and run it through your pasta machine on the largest setting three times. In between each time fold the dough in on itself twice.

Now run each piece through the machine, reducing the size each time.

Roll each piece out until it is paper thin and set aside on a table cloth.

You will have 3 nice long sheets of pasta which you will cut into 10cm x 10cm squares to fill with your dumpling mixture.

Confession: This is a previous photo of sheets of pasta! You will notice that there are 4 of them when this recipes only yields 3. After the pasta stealing incident by Miss Bubblz I forgot to photograph the pasta sheets I was in such a hurry to finish the Dim Sum – ready for steaming!

Ps: don’t leave them where you dog can reach them!

Penitent Puppy!

The Prawn & Chicken Filling

I have made these using pork mince, a combination of pork and prawn mince – the combinations are endless. If you are vegetarian you can leave the meat out and add in some fried Shiitake mushrooms and chopped water chestnuts for a little extra crunch! You can make them with beef mince and Shiitake mushrooms with a nice plump red chilli finely chopped into the mixture.

Ingredients

200g chicken mince

200g de-shelled and de-veined prawns and finely chopped

1 cup of shredded cabbage

1 cup of shredded carrot

1 egg

2Tbs corn flour

6 spring onions finely chopped

1inch of ginger finely grated

4 cloves of garlic finely grated

1Tbs soy sauce

1Tbs sesame oil

1tsp salt

Method

Finely chop the peeled and de-veined prawns.

Combine the finely shredded cabbage, carrot, spring onions, ginger, garlics, chopped prawns, chicken mince, lightly beaten egg, corn flour, soy sauce, salt and sesame oil in a large bowl.

Give this mixture a really good mix; you want to make sure that each Dim Sum dumpling has a bit of everything in it.

Cut your pasta into 10cm x 10cm squares. If you pasta has stood for any length of time it may have dried out slightly. Simply dip each Dim Sum wrapper into a bowl of water, and then place a heaped teaspoon of the filling into the centre of the Dim Sum.