Dim Sum

I probably got home sick and I missed Cantonese Dim Sum so much. I fixed up some Lo Mai Gai wrapped in lotus leaf and Dim Sum Dumplings.

Alvin loves the Lo Mai Gai, which is made from sticky rice and chicken. He can eat almost two of them! Sticky rice might have a comfortable texture to him. Who knows. And, Alvin kept referring Dim Sum Dumplings as "wonton". To some extend, it is more like a steamed wonton.

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BBQ sticks for the little ones

You know Summer is approaching. I want to introduce to Alvin a different way of food preparation so I came up with BBQ Sticks. It works really well. He loves the idea of eating off the stick (I used tooth picking stick) but it was hard for him to pull the meat out of it. Next time, I will buy some better sticks or put oil on the stick.

Here is how I prepare this dish:
1. I marinated the meat (I used chicken in this case) for several hours. You can use any flavor you want to on the meat.
2. Cut the vegi into proper size (usually the same size as the meat). Remember, they like colorful foods.
3. Fry the meat to golden brown.
4. Fry the vegi.
5. Put meat and vegi on the stick.
6. Put the sticks in a little oven and bake it for 5-10 minutes.

Chinese Steam Buns

The steam bun is something that Alvin really likes. One simple bun has all the nutrition he needs: carbohydrate, meats and vegetables! You can easily vary the contents inside the bread so he will try different taste of foods and different textures and get different nutrition.

Ingredients:
1. all purpose flour
2. ground meat: pork, chicken or beef
3. any kind of vegetables that you can easily chop into small pieces

Steps:
1. Prepare the dough ahead of time: use yeast to raise the flour (it can take 2 to 6 hours depending on the room temperature)
2. Prepare the content for the bread: I usually chop the ground meat to give it finer texture. Put in soy sauce, salt, sugar, sesame oil and vegetable oil and mix them well with the ground meat. Since the meat itself doesn't have that much fat, putting oil in the meat can give the content a better texture and more moisture otherwise the content will be too dry to eat. Since Alvin is allergic to egg, I skip the egg part but you are welcome to put that in the content. Chop any selection of vegetables (sometimes I add mushroom in too!) and mix them in with the meat content.
3. When #1 and #2 are ready, here comes the fun part. Give your dough a nice massage first. Roll the dough to a flat round pancake. Use a glass edge to cut the pancake into small round circle wraps. Put the contents in the wrap and enclose the wrap. The uncooked steam buns look like this:


4. Let the raw bun sit for 15 to 30 minutes so the yeast will raise the dough again.
5. Put them in a steam pot and steam it for 20 minutes.

If everything goes right, you have have something looks like what is shown in the first picture.