The Dim Sum Field Guide is now officially ready to go!

Happy Year of the Monkey! The happiest day on the Chinese calendar is finally here. Lots of my friends are monkeys – meaning that they were born in the year of, not that they are actual simians – and so I always think of this year as promising good things.

Today is not a day for cooking. In fact, if you have gotten your act together better than me, you should be living off the stuff you already socked away for these two weeks of celebration. So, instead of telling you what to make, I’m going to let you in on a preview of one of my two books. I think you’ll like it.

THE DIM SUM FIELD GUIDE: A TAXONOMY OF DUMPLINGS, BUNS, MEATS, SWEETS, AND OTHER SPECIALTIES OF THE CHINESE TEAHOUSE is coming out from Ten Speed Press in late August. I’ve been doing the final proofreading this last week, and I am so excited with how it has turned out.

First of all, this will be a smallish book – about the size of an iPad – so you can stash it in your bag or backpack whenever you head out for a dim sum meal. Arranged like a real field guide, all of those amazing dishes are divided into a sort of family tree, with genus and species. (Yeah, I know. But still. You have to take an idea and run with it.)

You will be able to identify 76 different types of dim sum through all of my hand-drawn illustrations. Both the Mandarin and Cantonese pronunciations are in there for every singe dish, along with their traditional Chinese characters, so you can either proudly proclaim what it is you would like to order or point it out to your server.

In here you will get an idea of how each one of these dishes is made, its background, its flavors and textures, and the appropriate way to enjoy it. And, under each entry, you will see some of the other dim sum items to which it is related. For example, under Custard Tarts you can find shorter entries on Portuguese Custard Tarts and Milk Tarts, while Roast Duck will include mini discussions on Pipa Duck, Chaozhou-Style Braised Duck, and Roast Goose.

This book started out as a feature in the Lucky Peach “Chinatown” issue a couple of years ago. It has since morphed into this new and improved guidebook with over 200 dishes. Divided into savory and sweet dim sum, THE DIM SUM FIELD GUIDE is easy to use and full of fun facts.

You will learn in here, too, what types of tea to order with your meal, how to go about designing a dim sum brunch, and the proper etiquette. (Hint: it’s not all that hard.) 

Little symbols accompany each entry so that you know at a glance what is in that dish and how to eat it – Is it vegan? Does it include peanuts? Can I pick it up with my hands? – in order to quickly demystify this incredibly delicious way of leisurely enjoying a wide variety of flavors and textures during the course of your meal.

I’m happy to say now that it will be out in only seven months! Thank you, Chris Ying, for being this book’s godfather and providing a fabulous quote for the cover, Lucky Peach for nurturing this seedling of an idea, and Ten Speed Press for allowing it to grow into a genuine book. And last but certainly not least, thank you all for reading my work and encouraging me. I am grateful beyond belief.

What a dream come true.


All illustrations copyright (c) 2016 by Carolyn Phillips. Do not reproduce without written permission.

THE DIM SUM FIELD GUIDE: A TAXONOMY OF DUMPLINGS, BUNS, MEATS, SWEETS, AND OTHER SPECIALTIES OF THE CHINESE TEAHOUSE

Ten Speed Press, forthcoming in August 2016

176 pages, 80 illustrations

ISBN: 978-60774-956-1

Dim Sum Field Guide! It's Back!

Back by popular demand (I guess) is my "Dim Sum Field Guide" in this month's online Lucky Peach. Hurray for snacking!

Buzzfeed reprints my Lucky Peach dim sum guide

Last month the great food magazine Lucky Peach published a history of dim sum I had written for its Chinatown issue, as well as a field guide to the 24 most popular things you can get at a Cantonese-style teahouse. 

And now, the equally great Buzzfeed has reprinted that field guide (and a bit of that background history as a teaser) on its website here. 

Instead of the line drawings I made for Lucky Peach, this time around there's actual photographs of the actual dishes, which gives my peek into traditional South Chinese brunch a whole new look. 

You can almost smell the chicken feet, and that's a very good thing. Check it out...

The Essential Guide To Dim Sum

Know exactly how to order thanks to this breakdown of 24 dishes, including photos and Chinese pronunciation.

FIRST, A QUICK HISTORY LESSON.

Unusual suspects for a great meal

Nowadays, the term "dim sum" (點心 in written Chinese, and pronounced dian xin in Mandarin) is a meal—usually taken on a weekend morning—that encompasses a vast roster of small dishes selected from carts.

In the beginning, dim sum was a verb that merely meant “to eat a little something.” Cantonese dim sum culture began in tearooms in the latter half of the nineteenth century in the city of Guangzou, possibly because of the recent ban of opium dens. It spread and gained popularity—especially in nearby Hong Kong...

Read the rest on Buzzfeed!

Photos from Buzzfeed's website.

The history of dim sum as told to Lucky Peach

The "Chinatown" issue of hipster food magazine Lucky Peach just hit the stands, and a combo article by moi is in there.

Called "The Beginner's Field Guide to Dim Sum," this introduces the history behind one of China's most gracious contributions to human civilization. This elegant definition of afternoon sloth around the dining table is none other than the glorious Cantonese tradition of enjoying a dim sum meal in an endless relay of tiny dishes. 

The article then breaks form and segues into an actual field guide replete with detailed line drawings on the best of the best dim sum, replete with their backgrounds and contents and the occasional weird story. The featured 24 delectable culprits have contributed to the delinquency of many a food tourist who wandered into a Hong Kong or Chinatown teahouse one day and was never quite the same again. 

If you relied only on the cover, you would never know that I was in there in a spread that stretches across eleven pages. No, I am not famous enough for that. 

I sob quietly as the likes of Anthony Bourdain, Fuchsia Dunlop, Martin Yan, and Danny Bowein bask in the limelight. But to be fair, a tiny slice of "Dim Sum" can be seen to the immediate left of the Lucky in Lucky Peach, so I guess I qualify as sort of a walk-on role here in a major crowd scene.

Chicken buns, or jibaozi

Be that as it may, I feel just like a small-town girl who landed a bit part in a major motion picture. I even got to draw everything here, and that was loads of fun. (Be on the lookout for a goldfish jiaozi with green eyes.)

If you do get your hands on a copy, please check out the article by the brilliant Harold McGee on "酒餅," which means jiubing, or Homemade Fermented Rice. Highly recommended.  

Lucky Peach is not yet available online, so you'll have to read it while you're standing in line at Whole Foods. When you do, turn to the blushing pink pages that run from 114 to 124, the ones that are bedecked with ink drawings that garnish "The Beginner's Field Guide to Dim Sum," which starts out like this...

"Nowadays, the terms "dim sum" (點心 in written Chinese and pronounced dianxin in Mandarin) encompasses a vast roster of small dishes selected from carts (rather than ordered from menus) in Hong Kong-style restaurants that serve little else during the daylight hours.

My drawing of Taotaoju
teahouse in Guangzhou

"In the beginning, dianxin was a verb that merely meant 'to eat a little something.' The first recorded use of the term dianxin comes from about 1,000 years ago. In the Tang shu 唐書 (History of the Tang), the wife of a man called Zheng Can said, 'I haven't finished putting on my makeup and so cannot eat yet, so you should first have a little something to eat (dianxin).'

"Around the year 1300, dianxin turned into a noun that referred to snacks and very light meals, a definition that has more or less remained unchanged to this day. In the entry for dianxin in every authoritative Chinese dictionary, this always appears as a complete term that cannot be reduced and thus defined according to its individual characters. What this means is that rather than translating to 'dot heart' or 'touching the heart' or 'a little bit of heart' -- which is what these characters mean separately -- the term dianxin refers solely to snacks and so has nothing to do with the heart at all, much in the same way that in English a 'cocktail' has no feathers..."

When you get to the actual field guide, be sure and read about Steamed Pork Buns, aka char siu bao, for "in Hong Kong, char siu bao suffers a reputation like that of hot dogs in the U.S. -- it's thought that any mystery meat could end up inside, even human. This urban legend was memorialized in a bloody 1993 Hong Kong movie called The Eight Immortals Restaurant: The Untold Story...."

Bon appetit!

Both ink drawings by Carolyn Phillips,copyright (c) 2012; all rights reserved.

Fish heads, Kill Bill, and random thoughts

(From Swallow Daily)

Elle Driver: “Know what I did? I killed that miserable old fool.” [flashback with Elle hovering menacingly over the stricken Pai Mei] “How do you like the fish head, you miserable old fool?” 

- Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)

Quentin Tarantino was right on a lot of cultural points in Kill Bill, but as a Chinese food writer, the one I enjoyed the most was that part about fish heads... they would have been the perfect vehicle for assassination, because what ancient and irascible kung fu master could have resisted?

In the West, though, fish heads seem predestined for the cat or the garbage can. Few of us get the appeal of something staring back from a bubbling sandpot.

But think of it: if you braise the body of a fish, every bite pretty much has a uniform texture, with each mouthful tasting the same as the next one. Even the sauce hovers on the surface, rarely penetrating the skin and meat, while aromatics like bits of chopped ginger, fermented black beans, and fresh chili shreds settle to the bottom of the dish, invariably knocked off of their precarious perches on the slick skin, only to be noticed with regret once the last of the fish has been finished.

With a big fish head, though – and I’m talking about something that is at least a pound in size – there’s lots of acreage to deal with. It will consist of a whole maze of nooks and crannies where those seasonings can hide, places where they can burrow in the bones and skins and fins, flavoring every last morsel; plus, that is where you’ll also find the most interesting musculature on a fish.

Face it: the body of your average fish is pretty boring. Simple backbones and ribcages provide framework for little more than long strands of muscles stretching from the collar down to the tail. You don’t get “cuts” on a fish like you do with a pork butt or shank, the only obvious exceptions being the way in which a sashimi chef divvies up the body of an ICBM-sized tuna into tiny slices of red meat akami, semi-fatty chu-toro, buttery toro belly, and the half fat o-toro.

So, if you want to discover different layers of texture and flavor in a fish, the place to look is the head.

How complex is that part of the animal? Very: there may be up to 100 English words that describe the various parts of a fish head, as the complex array of bones and muscles make up the most intricate part of this animal.

But what does that have to do with eating? The answer lies in the way these pieces are put together.

Each one of these little muscles has a different texture and thickness and structure from the next, often with tiny globules of fat crammed into corners, so you not only have an array of flavors exploding on your tongue, but your mouth gets visited by things like plate-like sheets of bone wrapped with thin skin on one side, perhaps a fan-shaped muscle on the other, a tiny tidbit of gelatinous tissue hovering on a corner, and a fluctuating bouquet of aromatics.

That means that every bite is a different experience: sticky, meaty, chewy, pillowy, gooey, rough, smooth, and all the textures in-between are present. There’s a tongue in there, a pair of eyeballs, a soft brain, and tiny rows of teeth. To those with a sense of adventure combined with a curious palate, these add up to a sensuous experience, but one that requires rolled-up sleeves and lots of napkins, rather than candlelight and flowers.

One word of advice when you dive into your first fish head: aim for the area right beneath the eyes. This muscle is called “walnut meat” (hetao rou) in Chinese, and it is generally covered by a thin plate of bone. Composed of busy muscles that work the jaws, these two lumps are the prizes awarded to favored guests and pampered children as the best part of the fish.

However, if the idea of fish heads still squicks you out, I recommend that you take your first baby steps toward true Chinese foodie status by diving into the following recipe for fish collar, which is the area between the head itself and the body. This is called the chin (xiaba) in Chinese and is often inexplicably wasted by people should know better, since it contains particularly tasty morsels of meat wrapped up in largish bones.

So, instead of lopping it off next time and serving it to Fluffy, claim the collar for yourself, especially when you have a big fish like wild-caught amberjack (which is sometimes labeled as yellowtail and called hamachi in sushi bars). You then can turn it into a dish that is nothing short of insanely delicious, as in the recipe here where the skin caramelizes and becomes what can only be described as fish-scented candy. This is Shanghainese magic, a mélange of sliced fresh ginger and green onions sparking the sticky dark sauce that begs to be licked off of every last bit of bone and fin.

Enjoy this with a glass of warm rice wine, a bowl of hot steamed rice, and perhaps some greens or a simple Chinese pickle. You’ll quickly understand what all the fuss is about.

Shanghainese soy braised amberjack collar

Hùshì gānshāo húbóyú xiàbā 滬式乾燒琥珀魚下巴 

Shanghai

Serves 4 generously as an appetizer or as part of a multicourse meal

4 halves (about 2 pounds) very fresh collar from a wild-caught amberjack (aka hamachi) or other firm-fleshed yet mild large sea fish

6 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil

5 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh ginger

2 cups green onions that have been trimmed and cut into 1-inch lengths

½ cup Shaoxing rice wine, divided

6 tablespoons good regular soy sauce

4 tablespoons (or so) crushed rock, brown slab, or piloncillo sugar

1. Rinse the collars carefully under cool running water, making sure than all viscera and gills have been removed. Thoroughly scrape off all scales under running water; carefully go over the skin a couple of times with a paring knife to ensure that the skin is scale free, since the skin is delicious and those tiny scales would ruin everything. Pat the collars very dry with a paper towel so that they fry in the oil rather than steam.

2. Heat the oil in a large, flat-bottomed skillet over medium-high until a small piece of ginger immediately sizzles when added. Place the ginger and the collars (skin-side down) in the hot oil. Sear the collars on one side without moving them so that a light crust is formed. Shake the pan and flip the collars over; add the green onions and shake the pan so that they shimmy down under the fish. When the second side of the fish is golden too, add the soy sauce, sugar, and half of the rice wine. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pan, and let the fish slowly cook for about 10 minutes. Raise the heat to medium-high, and when the sauce has been reduced to a heavy syrup, gently turn the fish over and add the other half of the rice wine. Cook the sauce uncovered until it has once again has been reduced to the consistency of honey; you will be able to smell caramel as the sauce reaches its perfect state of gooiness. (The fish may be prepared ahead of time up to this point and gently reheated under the broiler in the final step.)

3. Remove from the heat and place the fish skin-side up on a lightly oiled broiler pan; scrape all of the sauce and ginger and onions onto the fish, as well. Broil the fish a few inches from the coils until the edges of the fish have caramelized and the sauce is very sticky.

Tips

Asian markets – and in particular the Korean grocery stores here in California – often have a wonderful array of fish, including varieties and cuts that Western markets often don’t offer.

If you decide to plunge in and prepare a fish head, just substitute one whole fish head for the four collar halves. Split (or have your fishmonger split) the head down the middle and remove the gills. Rinse the head, scale the skin carefully, pat it dry, and proceed as with the collar.

Check with your fishmonger to see if yellowtail heads or collars can be special ordered.

Rock sugar (as well as other solid sugars like Chinese brown slab and piloncillo) is a secret to the luxurious mouthfeel of many Chinese sauces because it melts into a silky layer that does not leave a sour aftertaste.

This dish will be recognized by Chinese cognoscenti as being from Shanghai due to the copious amounts of green onions, as well as because of the sophisticated sweet-salty sauce. Both the green onions and the ginger are every bit as delicious as the fish here, so be sure to enjoy them between bites of the fish.

Illustration copyright (c) Carolyn Phillips, 2012

Nanjing's drunken eggs with molten centers

New York chef David Chang of Momofuku and the fine folks at McSweeney's recently came out with a hip new culinary magazine called Lucky Peach, and this first issue centered mainly on eggs and chicken.  This grabbed my attention because I am eternally in search of the perfect egg.  

And beautiful as these different approaches are -- in particular the whipped cream and maple syrup topped wonder known as the Arpege Egg -- in all good conscience I have to mention Nanjing's version as my own contestant for the most divine version ever.

First of all, the whites of the egg are deliciously flavored when done this way.  A good dousing of Shaoxing rice wine lends a heady sherry and mushroom aroma to the eggs.  This is tastefully and tastily countered with an infusion of dried salted plums, ginger, lemon peel, and whole peppercorns that turns this from a one-note wonder into a dish worthy of the most finicky eater.  Rarely do egg whites taste of much of anything, but here they serve as the perfectly flavored foil for a yolk that is molten.

Yes, you read that right: the center here is soft and runs like liquid gold, but it's also cooked to just the absolute perfect degree so that while the yolk remains just this side of solid, you won't taste any rawness.  Instead, the yolk serves as a delicate sauce for the white that cradles it.

But this dish is not just about flavors and aromas - it's primarily all about texture.

It doesn't get better than this

In most boiled egg recipes, the white is rendered into a relatively reasonable facsimile of a ping pong ball.  Those that aren't tend to look soggy and runny and anything but appetizing.  However, the folks in the Jiangsu capital of Nanjing have turned the practice of cooking an egg into the highest art, for the whites are cooked for a mere 30 seconds, made to sit in the hot water for another three minutes, and then quickly cooled down.  What this does is to give the whites the texture of the tenderest custard, and the yolks are sent just barely over that fine line between raw and cooked.

I've experimented with a bunch of different versions, happy to indulge my passion, and after tossing in this and taking out that, this has come to be my favorite way to prepare eggs, period.  It isn't too sweet, but also has enough pizazz from the rice wine and dried sour plums and all those seasonings to make me sit up and take notice.  You too can play around with the flavorings to your heart's content; just be sure and not use anything with, say, chicken fat or sesame oil, as the eggs should come across as clean and greaseless.

Traditionally this dish is made with fresh duck eggs, but because they are relatively difficult to find in the States, I've substituted large hen eggs; feel free to use whatever type of eggs you like, but do know that you'll have to experiment a bit in order to get the texture the way you want it, since the size of the egg will greatly affect the cooking time.  The only caveat I want to make is that the eggs should be organic and free range; the better quality egg you use, the better the result, since this is after all just about one ingredient.   

The eggs are best when they are about a week old in order to make them easier to peel.  Bring them to room temperature before cooking in order to a) have the perfect cooking time and b) keep them from bursting.  I like to prick the round ends of the eggs with a large tack, since there's a little air pocket in there, and if you give the air an escape route, the whites will be able to swell without breaking the shells.

Dried salted plums

The only unusual ingredients here are the dried salted plums, called huamei.  You can find these in just about any Chinese grocery store in the candy aisle.  They are very tart and sweet and salty all at the same time, and usually used as a tea snack.  However, I like pouring boiling water over a couple to make a tasty beverage for summer; just chill the infusion, add fresh lemon juice to cut the sweetness, and dribble it over a glass full of ice.  Instant refreshment!

Drunken eggs with molten centers -
Tangxin huadiao zuidan  溏心花雕醉蛋   
Jiangsu

Makes 6 eggs

6 organic, free-range eggs about a week old and at room temperature
1 cup filtered water
7 dried salted plums
1-inch piece of fresh ginger, smashed with the side of a cleaver
1 tablespoon sea salt
1 teaspoon whole white or black peppercorns
zest from half a lemon
1 cup Shaoxing rice wine, plus more as needed

1. Use a sharp tack or pin to poke a hole in the round end of the egg; just barely break through the shell without puncturing the inside of the egg.

Marinating eggs

2. Place the eggs in a small saucepan and cover with cool tap water by about 1 inch. Place the pan uncovered on the stove and bring to a boil.  As soon as the water comes to a full boil, where big bubbles are bursting over the surface, start counting down 30 seconds.  At the end of 30 seconds, remove the pan from the heat, cover, and wait exactly 3 minutes.  Then, immediately drain the eggs and cover them with cool tap water. Change the water a few times until the water remains cool. Drain the eggs and lightly crack them all over with the back of a spoon, but don't remove the shell.

3. Clean the saucepan and bring the filtered water, dried salted plums, ginger, salt, peppercorns, and lemon zest to a boil; lower the heat to a bare simmer and cook the marinade for around 5 minutes.  Allow the marinade to cool to room temperature and add the rice wine.

Gentle marbling under the shell

4. Place the eggs in a tall, narrow container. (This allows the eggs to soak in as little marinade as possible.) Pour the marinade over the eggs, cover, and refrigerate the eggs for a few hours; add more rice wine if needed for the marinade to completely cover the eggs. When the eggs are cold, shell them and return the eggs to the marinade for 24 to 36 hours. (If you are not eating them within 36 hours, remove the eggs from the marinade so that they don't get too salty.)

5. Serve the eggs as a simple appetizer by slicing them in half and serving on any light and refreshing vegetable, like microgreens or radish shoots or finely shredded leeks.  Or, serve them as a summer breakfast on hot toast, with noodles or Congee, or as a midnight snack. It's hard to go wrong with this, the perfect egg.