Har gow, steamed prawn dumplings

As tradition built it

Makes about 20. 1.5 hours.

Ingredients

For the wrapper

• 150 g wheat starch
• 50 g tapioca starch
• 200 ml boiling water
• 1 tsp oil

For the filling

• 300 g raw prawns, roughly chopped, some finely diced for texture
• 50 g bamboo shoot, finely diced
• to taste spring onion, ginger, salt, sugar, white pepper, sesame oil, a little cornflour

Method

1. For the wrapper, pour the boiling water over the combined wheat and tapioca starches, stirring quickly to a rough dough, then knead in the oil while still warm until smooth and pliable.
2. Rest the dough covered, then roll into small balls and press each into a thin, near-translucent round with the flat of a cleaver or a small rolling pin.
3. Combine the prawn, bamboo shoot, spring onion, ginger, salt, sugar, white pepper, sesame oil and a little cornflour, mixing just enough to bind without turning it into a paste; the filling should keep visible pieces of prawn.
4. Fill each wrapper, pleating the edge into the traditional crescent of folds, a minimum of seven or eight pleats along one side.
5. Steam over a full, rolling boil for 5 to 6 minutes, spaced so the dumplings don't touch, until the wrapper is fully translucent and the prawn inside is just cooked through.

What a modern chef changes

Consistency across a whole batch, not a change to the dish.

Method

1. Weigh every wrapper and every portion of filling so a batch of twenty dumplings steams evenly rather than some finishing before others.
2. Dice the bamboo shoot and the coarser portion of prawn to a genuinely even size, using the dedicated spice grinder only as a brief pulse to check uniformity, never to purée the filling.
3. Steam in two smaller batches rather than one crowded one, keeping the full rolling boil and even steam circulation Rung 2 demands.