Favorite Dim Sum dishes

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spork

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Chinese Dim Sum is the best restaurant lunch experience (hands down, including the venerable sandwich).

Do you have a favorite dish? I don't. I just look at waiters' carts as they pass by my table, listen to their offerings (mostly incomprehensible), and point at my choices. I do look for, though, whether for family fun or business meeting...

sticky/sweet/glutinous rice
Chinese green beans/broccoli, served with oyster sauce
shrimp in rice noodle, actually in a steamed kudzu starch wonton
dumplings with various fillings, if I like the kitchen
and just on weekends for most places, roast succulent pork

I also like taro/rice turnover cakes and have learned never to point my finger at a dim sum dish of BBQ pork.
 
I have to describe the succulent pork...

It's roasted whole, or half.
The dim sum plate usually comes with a first bed of sharply pickled juliennes of carrot and daikon radish. On top is a mound of 1-inch cubed pork, each is very white with one side having a dark crisp skin of crunch. It's fatty, but well cooked I can't tell or taste the difference between fat and meat. Covering the mound, or on the side, are 6x1-inch coin-thin strips of the roasted pig's refried skin, like addictive chicharonnes chips. A saucer of straight hoi sin sauce is usually provided for dipping.

Dim Sum is a lot like Spanish Tapas.
 
Oh, I am so jealous. We cannot get dim sum here, and it all sounds good to me. I've never worked up the courage for chicken feet, but it has been so long that I'd probably welcome it! When we lived in Hawaii, I could buy shu mai in the freezer section of the military commissary. I miss the international flair of military life in those days.
 
yum cha

dim sum also goes by the name "yum cha," which I like because it describes "yummy stuff with tea." Great restaurants will serve you gratis a pot of your choice of tea, good restaurants have waiters who recognize the universal sign of an empty pot, a tilted lid.

I should also describe shrimp in rice noodle...
Imagine a translucent ravioli square/triangle (rice is okay but a kudzu pasta becomes completely opaque) with a single curled pink prawn. Inside the pocket was added a snuff-spoon of congealed pork fat that melts as it steams. It's finished with a big spoon pour of diluted oyster sauce. Good stuff, a great bite, finished with tea.
 
Traditional "sticky rice" is a small fist size triangular portion wrapped in lotus leaves and steam for a very long time, so that each rice kernel maintains their glistening pearlescence while attaining a magical stickiness due to their exterior glutin. Flavor comes mostly from fried rice ingredients, maybe dried shrimp and mushroom that work well with long cooking. Sweetness often comes from lap chong, a common asian sweet sausage. Part of the fun is opening up the lotus leaves.

I also like dim sum plates of spareribs in black bean sauce. Tasty mable-size nbbits. And sesame balls with sweet bean paste from the dessert cart.
 
sui mai - pork dumplings
har gau - shrinp dumplings

these are the 2 must haves when dim summing, if you notice when they push the carts around they usually yell out HAR GAW - SUI MAI !!!!!!
 
BBQ pork buns and sesame balls. I have made the sesame balls a few times but instead of sweetened bean paste (can't find it) I mix hoisin sauce and peanut butter with some sesame oil and a pinch of sugar.
 
I love the steamed squid!!! I don't think I've tried Feng Zua (nor will I, I rub Myrtle's feet when I hold her to warm her up...chickens have a little "bulb" in the center of their feet...and she curls her little claws around my hand and purrs...I couldn't eat those!).
 
I love the steamed squid!!! I don't think I've tried Feng Zua (nor will I, I rub Myrtle's feet when I hold her to warm her up...chickens have a little "bulb" in the center of their feet...and she curls her little claws around my hand and purrs...I couldn't eat those!).

I have had many experiences in life, but I don't think I have ever heard a chicken purr. :ermm:
 
I used to love going for dim sum, though I seldom knew what we were eating. I don't go any more, now that I'm not allowed soy. I only eat in Asian restaurants where the wait staff are good at English. Many of the dim sum ladies don't seem to speak any English.
 
I have eaten a wide variety of offerings but I am a Dim Sum Virgin! I think I just found my 2012 resolution. I would try the chicken feet and just about anything else.
I like the restaurants where nobody including the patrons speak much English. You usually found the right spot!
 
I have had many experiences in life, but I don't think I have ever heard a chicken purr. :ermm:
I don't know how else to describe the sound...but it is a soft, purring sound. Maybe she picked that up from the stray cat that visits the barn every now and again...or PF taught her that:).
 
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