Weekend Dim Sum

Go out and get some Dim Sum this weekend.

Although I still lean more toward Little Panda as my favorite dim sum place, Golden Wok has many bragging points... not the least of which is that on the weekend, when they have the carts, they can go wild with new varieties.

A couple of things we had recently:


Water Chestnut Cake looks kinda odd and foreign to Western eyes, but it's not really that exotic. I suspect most would like it. It's a very thick gelatin, lightly sweet and faintly vanilla, with crunchy chestnuts inside. It's also been pan fried, which might seem odd, but it's GOOD that way. The cart lady said it was very refreshing for summer, and she was right. (Those cart ladies usually are.)


Custard Filled Fried Dumplings. These lovely delights are a lot like our favorite sesame balls. The wrapper is made of sweet sticky rice flour -- so it's very chewy, crisp on the outside from being deepfried. Inside it has a nice light custard, not too rich or too sweet. It's thick so that it doesn't all goosh out when you bite into the chewy wrapper. I don't know if the black sesame seeds on top are always a sign of a custard filling, but you can always ask.


Barbeque Pork Pastry. These are just a different shape than the ones I mentioned in the Dim Sum Primer. (They often play with different shapes at Golden Wok.) I like this shape best, because the ratio of meat to pastry is good in every bite.

Mango Chicken. Sorry no picture -- I didn't have my camera with me the day they had these. They brought it out JUST as we were completely stuffed and getting ready to leave, but they looked too good to pass up. It was made of strips of chicken and mango, wrapped and breaded in coconut, then deep fried. They were creamy, and rich, but not too sweet. I want to try them again when I'm not too stuffed.

Here is Maude Cat doing an impression of what we looked like after coming home from Dim Sum that day:



The down side of eating dim sum from the traditional "roving cart" method, is that it encourages a Competitive Eating mentality. You don't want to miss anything, and it all looks so good.... you end up buying and eating more than you intended. This can be okay if you are going straight home afterward with leftovers, but if you are, say, going to a movie, you must exercise a lot of self-discipline. That or leave time to run home and put the leftovers in the fridge before curtain time.

(BTW: Sesame balls or the custard-filled dumplings mentioned above are primo snacks to smuggle into a movie. Just remember that they are deep fried so they'll get some grease on your fingers -- though no more than popcorn will -- and they're a little sticky. My recommendation is to bring a ziploc bag for the smuggling part, and make sure you have a napkin. Oh and, uh... Mango Chicken ISN'T a good snack to sneak into a theater.)

Golden Wok is in East Lansing, at 2755 E Grand River Ave. (517) 333-8322. (At the corner of Northwind Drive, across from Oriental Mart, and near the E.L. Food co-op.)

(Little Panda is on the west side of Lansing, at 5439 W Saginaw Hwy, across from Lansing Mall in the Target shopping area. (517) 323-2450.)

Dim Sum Primer, Pt 4

Okay, I'm finally finishing up the Dim Sum Primer, with the larger plated items and desserts. You can skip back to the beginning of this series by checking out the Where to find Dim Sum in Lansing post.


Sticky Rice Wrapped in Lotus Leaves. You could call these Chinese Tamales. Dried lotus leaves wrapped around a bundle of filling and sticky rice, and steamed. The rice is sweet and sticky, and the leaves have a faint tea aroma. The fillings vary. Most of the time, they have some meat -- maybe the drumstick part of a chicken wing and some chinese sausage, maybe some mushroom. Those are usually cone shaped and about the size of a baseball or bigger. The ones you see pictured are a dessert version -- filled with red beans and red banana. You can get the meat version at either Little Panda or Golden Wok. The dessert version is available most days at Oriental Mart -- the Asian grocery on Grand River across from Golden Wok. (They have a lot of dim sum items in the case and freshly made -- including some amazing, and yet greasy springrolls.)

NOTE: The sticky rice in lotus leaves is sometimes called "Sweet Rice with Chicken and Pork" or something like that. It makes it easy to mix up with the "Sweet Rice Dumpling" whch is fried. If you are unclear what you are ordering, ask how it's cooked -- is it deep-fried or wrapped in a lotus leaf?


Greens and oyster sauce. These are a great accompaniment to dim sum, especially if you want to up your vegetable matter. I don't think they have it at Little Panda (though I have never asked), but Golden Wok has it on request (and sometimes on the cart). The greens, which may be a broccholi raab rather than the little bok chois pictured here, come with a little dipping bowl of salty oyster sauce. I've never seen either place in town offer similar platters of meats, but most larger dim sum houses will also have platters of sliced bbq pork or duck as well.


Silver Noodles. There are several kinds of platters of noodles available for dim sum. These silver noodles are hand rolled, fresh rice noodles. They have a nice chewy texture like other rice noodles, but unfortunately look a little like worms. However they taste really good. At Little Panda they serve these stir-fried with some vegetables. Another favorite noodle dish which is available both at dim sum and on the regular menu is Singapore Noodles (or "Fried Vermicelli Singapore Style"). This is a stirfried thin rice noodle, seasoned with curry and served with shrimp and chinese sausage and peapods and other veggies.


Congee, Juk or Joke. Congee is a dim sum tradition -- a brunch food. It's a thick rice soup or gruel, made with chicken broth and often served with a "cruller", or a stick of fried bread to dip in it. It may be plain or with various meats, seafoods, or even a thousand year old egg. The picture here is of my own homemade congee -- which I make with whole grain rice, and corn and greens. What you get in a restaurant will be whiter and creamier. You can get this at Peking Express and other more authentic type Chinese restaurants too. Lamai often serves it with a little toasted garlic, grated ginger and cilantro sprinkled on top.

Sesame Balls. (I don't have a picture of these, but I'll add one when I get one.) These are our favorite dessert at Dim Sum. They are a ball of sticky rice flour dough, filled with either sweet red bean paste or sweet yellow lotus bean paste, coated in sesame seeds and deep fried. (You can often get these at Oriental Mart as well.) We call them Chinese Jelly Donuts. The wrapper is chewy and sticky, and the filling only lightly sweetened.


Mango Pudding. It's not really pudding. It's jello, made with a little milk. Not as sweet as American jello, and pretty refreshing, though we usually skip it because there are other things to fill up on. It comes in a bowl with a maraschino cherry on top. You often have a choice of Almond pudding as well. Sometimes they call this tofu or bean curd rather than pudding -- but that's because jello resembles bean curd to many Asians. (You can buy packs of this at Oriental Mart labelled "Do Fu Delight.")


And then there's Red Bean Pudding, which is also milk jello. At Golden Wok, you get this in big squares. Again, not as sweet, and the red beans add a grittiness to it.


Red Bean Pastry. This is a cool show peice that you don't see often, but may be able to ask for. It's flakey pastry dough, spread with sweet red bean paste, and rolled up, slashed, and baked. Really pretty, and I think it's one of the best ways to eat red bean paste. This you only get at Golden Wok (and that is true of all dishes which require pastry). They also have the little custard tarts -- which are exactly what they look like.

There are many other dishes you may come across. A lot of other dumplings that are similar to those I've already described. I haven't taken pictures of the chicken feet, or the tripe. If you want them, they are available at all dim sum houses. Chicken feet are gelatinous and many people like to suck on the bones. The tripe sometimes comes "red-cooked" or simmered in sweetened soy sauce and spices, and I just might try that sometime.

(NOTE: if you are a more sophisticated dim sum eater, you might notice that there are some dumplings listed on the Golden Wok menu called "Pork Dumplings". The Chinese characters for these list them as xiao long bao -- "little dragon buns" otherwise known as "soup dumplings." They are NOT xiao long bao. They are just pork dumplings. They're good, but they don't spit hot soup at you when you bite into them.)

Happy eating!

Where to find Dim Sum in Lansing
Dim Sum Primer, Part 1
Dim Sum Primer, Part 2
Dim Sum Primer, Part 3
***
Recommended Reading from Amazon.com:

The best book on dim sum, imho is Dim Sum: The Art of Chinese Tea Lunch. The recipes are good and they also demystify just what a lot of those dishes ARE for those who just want to eat. (This one is also available at the East Lansing Library, but it's pretty popular and often checked out.

Dim Sum Primer, Pt 3

Continuing on with Part Three of the Dim Sum Primer. If you want to know where to get this stuff locally, check out the "Where to get Dim Sum in Lansing" post.


Fried Sweet Rice Dumpling. This thing has a lot of names, and the names often sound like other kinds of dumplings. At Little Panda, they're now calling it something like "Meat Filled Dumpling". But it's so much more: The wrapper is a thick, chewy sticky dough made of sweet rice (or sticky rice) flour -- which is used in a lot of desserts. However, in this dish, it's wrapped around some seasoned ground pork, and then deep-fried. I had a variation in L.A. filled with chicken and cilantro. In either case, something about the sweet and the crispy chewy fried crust makes the flavor of the meat inside POP. You really should have this with the hot sauce, though.


Hot Sauce. At Golden Wok, they put the sauce on the table when you arrive. At Little Panda, you have to ask for it. It's made up of chili flakes soaked in oil, and may be seasoned with ginger or garlic as well. The oil here is not as hot as the flakes, and it carries all the flavor, so if you don't want it too hot, you can just dab your dumplings in the oil, or you can drizzle it on the food.


TurnipCake. This is another item that goes well with the hot sauce. "Turnip" Cake is generally made with a large sweet Daikon radish, rather an an actual turnip. The batter is made with rice flour and water, mixed with various flavorful ingredients, usually including Chinese sausage, mushrooms and dried shrimp, along with the grated turnip. This is then steamed -- more like an English pudding than a cake -- and then sliced and fried. Little Panda tends to have more flavorful fillings. Golden Wok sometimes has a variant of this with a Taro Cake - which looks almost the same, but is slightly purple. Taro is sweeter and pastier.


Chive Dumpling. This translucent dumpling is shaped kind of like one of those round rubber coin purses that you squeeze to open up. (Flat, round, with a coiled top.) They are almost always filled with seafood and chives. At Golden Wok, they have shrimp. We've seen them with clams, and I've heard of them offered with greens or cilantro inside too. (Little Panda doesn't offer them.) The wrapper is a slightly tougher version of the clear Har Gow wrapper, and the dumpling is pan-fried after steaming.


Steamed Ribs. These are not BBQ ribs, but rather little chunks of bone, meat and gristle which have been steamed with garlic and black bean sauce. (Black beans are fermented, salted beans used as a seasoning -- and they are really great with pork or beef in particular.) The thing is, even though you have to suck the tiny bit of meat off small bones, these are really good, especially at Golden Wok.


BBQ Pork Pastry. These are almost too rich.... Okay, forget the "almost". They are too rich. Tender, flakey pastry wrapped around sweet hunks of Chinese BBQ pork. Melt in your mouth, heart-attack-on-a-plate. Yum. (Only available at Golden Wok.)

Shrimp Balls. Sorry I don't have a picture of these. They are basically just a meatball of pure shrimp, coated in crumbled rice noodles and deep fried. When I want shrimp, I prefer a little more texture and variety of flavor, so I don't often order these -- but they are great for somebody who just wants shrimp. Add a little sweet and sour sauce or hot sauce, and they are a treat.

Next time I'd like to get to some of plated dishes, congees and desserts. (I don't have as many pictures of those yet, though.) But before that, I have a few restaurant reviews to get to, and a Peking Duck banquet.

Where to find Dim Sum in Lansing
Dim Sum Primer, Part 1
Dim Sum Primer, Part 2
Dim Sum Primer, Part 3
Dim Sum Primer, Part 4

Dim Sum Primer, part 2

Here's a continuation of my guide to dim sum dishes. You can learn about where to get dim sum in Lansing here, and read the first part of the Primer here.


Spring Rolls. More delicate than eggrolls, these crunchy treats are meant to resemble gold bricks and bring you good fortune. Little Panda in particular has wonderful Spring Rolls on dim sum weekend. (I don't know if their weekday spring rolls are the same -- for some reason I don't think so.) Cabbage and a little chicken or pork, lightly seasoned with five spice that just opens the flavors wide.


RiceRoll. This is a tender, slippery rice flour sheet, steamed and wrapped around beef, shrimp, or sometimes bbq pork (only at Golden Wok in town). I like the beef best, at least at Little Panda, where it has been seasoned with a little tangerine peel. All variations have a sweet taste and a slippery texture. I advise sliding it onto your plate and cutting it up before attempting to use chopsticks on these.


Pork In Bean Roll. Bean Curd Skin may not sound that appetizing, but it's a wonderful chewy wrapper for a number of Chinese dishes, and often used to simulate chicken skin in Buddhist vegetarian dishes. It's wrapped around something, then fried, and then steamed in a luscious garlicky gravy. It is actually most wonderful when filled with vegetables, but you can't always get that. And I find that Golden Wok often forgets the steaming and the garlicky gravy for this dish -- especially when serving it off the menu. And it's really just not good when it's only been fried. (Although if you take it home and pour on a little chicken broth and garlic it's just fine -- so sometimes I'll get this as takeout.) Little Panda always gets it right, but they only serve the pork version. Which is fine with me. Pork is good.


Stuffed Eggplant. There are actually several items you can get prepared this way -- tofu, mushrooms and green peppers are all popular -- but a friend of mine turned me on to the eggplant, and even though I'm not normally an eggplant fan, this is too good to pass up. We always get it. Generally it's a little sandwich of eggplant, stuffed with shrimp and deep fried. Then, like the bean rolls, it is steamed with the garlic gravy. (Side note: this dish comes out of the kitchen sizzling HOT, so be careful or you may burn your mouth. Other side note: Lamai has taken to making this dish and sometimes has it on her Friday fish and shrimp buffet.)

Where to find Dim Sum in Lansing
Dim Sum Primer, part 1
Dim Sum Primer, Part 2
Dim Sum Primer, Part 3
Dim Sum Primer, Part 4

Dim Sum Primer, part 1

For the uninitiated, "Dim Sum" is a Chinese tradition for brunch -- tea and little plates of delectable and beautiful snacks. The words translate literally as "touch the heart." Or "touch of heart" depending on who you ask.

If you ask me, dim sum is a form of worship. It is as close as a food geek can get to God. (It's SO important, that I think I may start a separate blog just devoted to Dim Sum. But for now I will confine myself to a couple of postings about the wonderful practice of tea lunch.) There are two houses of worship...er, two places to get dim sum in town, as mentioned in my previous post.

A traditional dim sum house is usually a large banquet hall. You sit down, you get tea, and the host slaps down a blank bill on your table. Ladies with carts full of food rove around the room, and you point out what you want. They mark on the bill the number of dishes you take.

Of course, smaller places don't have room for the carts, nor the kind of kitchen that can produce hundreds of separate delicacies. So a lot of places have fallen back on a modified version of the bill that acts as a menu. (Kind of like what you see in a lot of sushi places these days.) You mark on the menu what you want, and then they bring you the food later.

In either case -- carts or menu -- it helps to know what you're ordering. Here are a few basic dumplings that are most popular. (I'll follow this up with a more expanded list of common dishes next week.)


Har Gow (Ha Kow, Shrimp Dumplings). These are delicate, tender, richly flavored dumplings that often symbolize dim sum. The translucent wrapper is made of wheat starch with a little tapioca starch to give it body. They are tender and sweet, with richness absorbed from the shrimp inside. Inside you might have pure shrimp, or you might have shrimp with shreds of bamboo shoot, to give it a little extra texture. Unless you hate shrimp, these are a must have.


Char Siu Bao (BBQ Pork Buns). Chinese barbequed pork, in a sweet rich sauce, inside a sweet white steamed bun. There are a lot of variations of Bao out there, but when you see these white, ruptured forms, you have that basic bun that pretty much everybody likes. There is also a baked version, which looks like the smooth, brown roll.


Green Onion Pancake. This is layered dough (usually the chewy boiling-water dough used for homemade potstickers and stretched noodles) rolled with green onions, then pan fried. A lot of places get this frozen, and fry it up in the restaurant. This usually results in an okay, thin crispy pancake. But Little Panda makes their own hearty dough, which makes for good thick crust of bread. This is really good for sopping up the sauces and juice on your plate.


Siu Mai (or Shao Mai) are an open topped dumpling with a meatball inside. They're meant to look like overflowing money bags. At a lot of Japanese and Korean places in town you will see an appetizer called Ebi Siu Mai - which is a shrimp version. The common Siu Mai is filled with pork, with a tiny shrimp on the top. At Golden Wok, the cart ladies push these hard on beginners, and with good reason. They are very tasty, and generally friendly to picky eaters. At Little Panda, you have a choice of two varieties, pork or beef. The beef version used to have a sweet orange peel tang. (There was a period when they got pretty plain, but I think they've returned to form. It's worth trying anyway.)


Pan-fried Dumpling, (Pot-sticker, or "Peking" dumpling, or Kuo Tieh). These are so popular they are usually on the regular menu. A steamed dumpling that has been panfried on the bottom. At Little Panda, they are huge, fat pork filled dumplings, and an order from the regular menu is a meal in itself. They also serve it with this wonderful sweet soy dipping sauce that is almost addictive. Golden Wok doesn't have a dipping sauce, but theirs is filled with a flavorful mixture of pork and shrimp and so just a little plain soy will do.
(NOTE: I didn't have a picture of any in-town pot-stickers right now. I took this picture at a wonderful place called Luscious Dumpling in Alhambra California.)

(I'm sorry this post took so long. I'm using Blogger's "easy" interface, which doesn't make it so easy to figure out how to put multiple pictures in a post.)

Next week, I'll get into the greater variety of dim sum.

Where to find Dim Sum in Lansing
Dim Sum Primer, Part 1
Dim Sum Primer, Part 2
Dim Sum Primer, Part 3
Dim Sum Primer, Part 4

Where to get Dim Sum

For those of you who don't know what Dim Sum is, I'll post more information on the next rock this weekend. For those who do know:

We are so lucky that this rusted out burg has no less than TWO dim sum places that could hold their own in any big city on the coasts. (Not world class, mind you, but respectably delectable nevertheless.)

Litte Panda has better food and prices, but they only serve dim sum on the weekends at lunch. They don't have carts, and you may have to ask for the dim sum menu if you don't look Asian. They're on the west side of Lansing, at 5439 W Saginaw Hwy, across from Lansing Mall in the Target shopping area. (517) 323-2450. (They do have a few dim sum items on their regular menu for those evenings when you just HAVE to have the best and heartiest potsticker or green onion pancake in town.)

Golden Wok, on the other hand, serves dim sum for lunch every day. And on the weekends and on holidays, they have the carts (and each week they seem to have newer and better varieties). The ladies who push the carts are much better tempered than those in your classic Chinatown dim sum house, but they are still free with their opinions of your choices. Golden Wok is in East Lansing, at 2755 E Grand River Ave. (517) 333-8322. (At the corner of Northwind Drive, across from Oriental Mart, and near the E.L. Food co-op.)

(NOTE: Golden Wok has changed significantly. I think they are under new management. They no longer have carts on Sunday, and the new chef does not seem to be able to handle the translucent starch dough used for Har Gow or Fun Kor. Their pastries seem to be still good, and they are the only place to have "Bread Stick in Rice Roll" which is really good.)

Everyday Restaurant in East Lansing has a good, authentic, dim sum buffet on Sundays and I think Saturdays as well. (You may want to call first if you go on a Saturday.) Their new chef is a great Cantonese chef, and there are a lot of excellent other dishes on the buffet both on dim sum weekends an the regular weekday buffet. Some dishes don't take to the buffet style as well as others. The Fried Taro Ball is the best in town. Everyday Restaurant, is at 1375 East Grand River Ave, East Lansing. (517) 337-1882.

Dim Sum Primer, Part 1
Dim Sum Primer, Part 2
Dim Sum Primer, Part 3
Dim Sum Primer, Part 4