[Sca-cooks] OP food question

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Susan Fox-Davis:
>Sounds like Nor My Gai, Rice in Lotus Leaf to me.
>It's a Dim Sum standard.
>
>Here are some recipes online:
>http://www.allbaking.net/ch/1999/june/dimsum3.html
>http://www.foodtv.ca/recipes/recipedetails/recipe_122.asp
>
>They look a little complicated, but basically it's just a
>re-constituted dry leaf wrapping up nice sticky rice
>with "stuff" in the center.  Could be any old stuff
>really, ask your bro what he likes.  Shrimp and
>Chinese sausage are pretty standard.
>
>If he's really just getting back on solid foods,
>I would make these really small at first,
>not the more usual grapefruit-size.
>Or even just serve the rice with the
>meatstuff in a bowl so he can nibble
>at will.

There's a Cantonese name for these, I forget what it is exactly, but 
a close approximation would be "dzung", or "downg" (think of the word 
"dough" with an "ng" stuck quickly on the end) sometimes referred to 
in English by Chinese-Americans as Chinese tamales (which they pretty 
closely resemble).

Yeah, the filling in amongst the sweet-rice is often Chinese sausage, 
maybe dried shrimp and peanuts and/or chestnuts, sometimes with 
Chinese-cured slab bacon chunks in addition to, or instead of, the 
sausage. Sometimes salted duck-egg yolk shows up in there, too.

Wrapped in a palm or banana leaf, usually in a rather distinctive 
axe-head shape, like a double-bladed axe with one edge twisted 90 
degrees away from the other, tied up with string and steamed? These 
are sort of the industrial standard, and one or maybe two of them 
would make a meal for most people (except maybe my lady wife); 
dim-sum house versions are usually smaller and square, and wrapped in 
banana leaf.

These are "in season" now, I believe, the eighth month of the New 
Year being the Full Moon Festival for Chinese people, and those, as 
well as moon cakes, being traditional fare for that festival.

Adamantius

Adamantius