January 8, 2024 • 41 mins
In this category of cuisine, many (many) types of dishes, teas, and establishments may feature – but all add up to a deliciously communal experience. Anney and Lauren dip into the history and culture of dim sum.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello and welcome to Saber production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Annie Reese and Unborn Vocal Bum and today we
have an episode for you about dim sum. Yes uh,
which is our first This is our first recording of
twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Happy New Year, Welcome.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yes, hopefully we are not too rusty. This is a
very exciting topic for both of us, I believe, to
start the new year off with. But we are being
pretty broad here.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, we could go into probably at least a short
episode on literally any dish within the context of dim sum. Yes,
so yeah, and there are I didn't include a number
in our number section because I couldn't find good source
about this, but like, there are hundreds, if not thousands
(01:04):
of dishes that are included under the umbrella of dim sum.
So wow, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, So this is an overview. I believe I know
the answer, but I must ask Lauren, was there any
reason this was on your mind?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
You know, it's just a nice thing to do with
family and friends. I love dem sum, and the holidays
are a nice thing to do with family and friends,
or can be depending on your you know, family and friends,
and and so I was thinking, I was thinking about
how how nice, how nice dim Sum is, and how
(01:44):
much I wanted to talk about it, and I was
feeling ambitious. I was like, you know, maybe at the
end of twenty twenty three, beginning of twenty twenty four,
I'm going to tackle some of these big topics that
we haven't tackled yet.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Go, well, here we are. I also love dim Sum.
When you sent this, I was planning with my friends
a dim Sum because we haven't been since the pandemic.
Oh wow, yeah, and I've missed it horribly and so
(02:22):
have they. And this is the Year of the Dragon,
which is my year. Yes, yes, but yeah, the cravings
were very intense.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Oh they were, Oh my heck.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Every single photo I was looking at, every single description
that I read, was painfully craving. Full speaking of a
shout out to the listener whose name I'm forgetting off
the top of my head, who sent us those adorable
dim Sum calendars a few years back.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yes, yes, And also we did do an episode on
Lunar New Year Food. I think we've done a couple
of things that would fall under this umbrella as well.
Brunch surprisingly our old episode on Brunch. I know we
talked about it a little bit so those are a
couple of things you can look into it. I guess
(03:15):
this brings us to our question.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I guess it does.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Dim sum? What is it?
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Well?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Dim sum is a type of meal where you order
a number of small dishes or it can refer to
those dishes themselves of more or less bite sized foods,
and you share them around a table with friends and
family and cups of tea. There are a bunch of
dishes traditionally attributed to dim sum, and they can cover
(03:48):
a pretty wide range of ingredients and flavors and preparation methods.
You know, vegetables, meat, seafood, rice, s, wheat, savory, sweet, spicy, steamed, baked, fried, roasted, chilled.
You often choose each dish off of carts or trays
that are brought around to each table, and there are
often a lot of different kinds of dumplings involved, and
(04:11):
a number of dipping sauces on the table or condiments
for mixing up your own, you know, vinegar and chili,
oil and soy sauce, et cetera. It's traditionally a brunch thing,
but it is expandable. Like the idea here is to
have a variety of just lovely little bites and have
a nice relaxed time doing it. It's like if a
(04:32):
buffet came to you. It's it's sort of beautifully controlled chaos,
like like sitting in the middle of a swirling teapot.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
It's like a you know, when you get a cup of.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Tea and it warms your hands and then and then
you take a sip and it warms just your whole
being from the inside out. It's it's like a whole
meal of that feeling.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah. Yeah, And I know I've told this story before,
but one of my favorite videos a friend of mine
it's ever taken of our group doing dim sum, is
that we were all just laughing, enjoining each other's company,
and like there's all these dishes in front of us
and we're all drinking tea, and it was just like
such a warm, lovely enjoying of the time together.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
So it's again your description accurate as always.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Huh okay, well, all of that, All of that being said, yes,
the exact setup of dim sum will depend on the restaurant.
At larger restaurants, you're often seated at like a big
round table with a lazy susan in the middle, and
you choose dishes from these roving steel carts or perhaps
servers with trays right, and the dishes could be small
(05:51):
plates for fried or baked or roasted foods, or little
metal or bamboo steam baskets for steamed dishes. Each dish
usually includes like three or more of whatever item, and
each piece is often dainty and sort of pretty, kind
of belying how heavy they really can be. So yeah,
(06:12):
you choose what you want. The server will plunk the
dish down and record your choice on a little piece
of paper paper card that you'll bring to the cash
register later at the end of the meal, where they
will tally it up and you pay. The lazy Susan
helps make sure that everyone has access to all the
dishes around the table. You can usually also place special
orders off of menus, either for like larger or fancier dishes,
(06:32):
or just you know, whatever you want that you haven't
seen come around. There are also smaller restaurants where you
do order mostly off of a menu, or maybe tick
off your choices on a little paper card on your table,
but either way it's just, oh, it's such a great
way to have a little bit of a lot of
different things, which is my personal favorite style of eating.
(06:55):
And yes, as we said, there are a lot of
dishes you can run into in some way, too many
to describe here, So if you have a favorite one
or one that you want to tell a story about,
do write in. But okay, here are a few common
like categories and and examples, all right, Perhaps most famously,
(07:15):
you've got steamed dumplings made with wheat dough wrappers. And
there are a few varieties of wheat dough here. It
could be rolled thin and delicate like in shumai, just
a real tender skin shaped into a little cup containing
things like ground pork and shrimp, seasoned with stuff like
mushrooms and sesame. A slightly thicker but still tender dough
(07:36):
might hold ground pork or chicken with a little bit
of broth. And those are soup dumplings. And the way
that you're supposed to eat these, and I never knew,
and I always had so much trouble with them, is
you pick them up, you put them in your soup spoon.
Then you take a little nibble out of the out
of the skin to let the broth release into the spoon,
and then you slurp it down.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I don't know if I knew that either, I've just
gone for it.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Oh yeah, yeah, just this whole bite, hot broth, scalding
your mouth and it was pretty good. Awkward times, but
delicious anyway. This is apparently the official methods, so now
we know, and knowing is half the soup dumpling okay,
or or we're still not done with wheat dough. The
(08:25):
dough can be puffy and bread like, as in a
charcu bow, a spicy saucy barbecued pork in this, like
tender cloud of steamed bread.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
That's a favorite at my table.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, oh yeah, those are always so good. It's a
lot of bread anyway, so good, okay, all right. You
can also get pan fried dumplings or deep fried spring
rolls or savory fillings baked into a small bun, or
like a flaky triangle of pastry. Yeah. Other dumplings are
not made with wheat flour, but with a starchy alternates
(09:00):
of various kinds. Take a hardgal which are ground shrimp
and maybe some bamboo shoot in this tender chewy wrapper
made of potato starch and tapioca starch. Usually it's steamed
so that it's semi translucent so you can see the
pink of the shrimp inside. So good. Or a taro
root dumplings, which are made of mashed taro root wrapped
(09:22):
around some ground pork and shrimp, then deep fried so
the taro get gets lacy and crunchy on the outside.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah, oh dear, we're both just like sighing and shaking
our heads.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
You don't often get straight up rice at dim sum.
It can come with certain dishes, but a different preparation
is common, and that is a packet of sticky rice
filled with things like like sausage or mushrooms, wrapped in
a lotus leaf and then steamed, or kangi, which is
a savory rice porridge served with a number of toppings
(10:00):
that can vary. Rice powder is also often used to
make dough, like for cheung fun. I'm not sure if
I'm saying that right. Annie is winsing.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Here we go, though.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
It's those rice noodle rolls, Okay. There are these large, thin, flat,
slippy rice noodles that are steamed and then rolled up,
maybe around like ground meat or some fried wheat dough,
and then served in a kind of thin, salty, savory
sauce so good. Or you can use rice to make
a to make turnip cake, which is a type of
(10:34):
rice dough and shredded radish with little bits of usually
like chewy mushroom or pork or shrimp, and the whole
cake is steamed and then pan fried into these like chewy,
pillowy crispy slices. Yeah, or glutenous rice dumplings, which are
these little football shapes stuffed with pork and shrimp and
deep fried until they're crispy on the outside and gooey
(10:58):
chewy on the inside.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
I'm dying here. Those are one of.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
My personal favorites. Then you've got proteins, maybe some steamed
beef short ribs or braised pork spear ribs, beautiful sliced
roast duck, steamed meatballs. Different kinds of offal are also common,
like whole chicken feet often deep fried and then braised
in something like a fermented black bean sauce or a
(11:24):
honeycomb tripe simmered in like a garlicy gingery broth, or
maybe some curry vegetables. You ask, yes, dim sum does
tend to be protein and carb heavy, but there are
often vegetable dishes available, like steamed or sauteed Chinese broccoli
or greens or pea shoots, often with like a little
(11:46):
bit of garlic and or some oyster sauce on there.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
And dessert there.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Are baked goods like tiny egg custard tarts in these
little flaky pastry cups or buns filled with sweet cream.
Can get steamed buns filled with a lotus root paste
or this like salty sweet egg custard. They're usually cold
puddings and flavors like coconut or mango. Fried things like
little little doughnut balls, and another one of my personal favorites,
(12:15):
I really like glutenous rice, like a dumpling made of
glutenous rice dough filled with sweet red bean paste or
maybe black sesame paste or other stuff and then then
deep fried encoated in sesame seeds.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Mm hmm. That's my favorite stew.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
No matter what the feeling is, it's always like crispy, chewy,
sweet and savory all at once.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
And oh I love them. I love them.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
It's like a little deep fried peanut butter sandwich.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yes, that is one. My friends usually request one to go,
let's go. They get an extra order to go.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
If you happen to have these in your fridge for
a minute and you need to reheat them, I highly
recommend an air fryer, by the way. Yeah, but also
don't forget the tea, because tea is a really integral
part of especially traditional dim sum. The phrase yum cha
(13:12):
technically means drink tea, but it's often synonymous with dim sum,
and as you are sharing tea around the table, it
is perhaps traditional to pour for other people. If you
don't do that, that's fine, do whatever you want. But
if your teapot is out of water and you need more,
you can set the lid open or like on the
table beside the pot to let your serve know that
(13:33):
you need to refill.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yes, good tip, good tip. It's also funny because the
place I usually go it is one of the more
i would say traditional places where they run out of food.
Oh sure, yeah, so it's more of a brunch place time,
but I'm too shy to do. I was reading about
this and they were like, you can run up and say, oh,
(13:58):
this is the dish I've been waiting for instead of
waiting for the cart to come to your table. I'm
too shy to do it. But there are several dishes
that you were listing. I was like, yeah, I think
we only got those spare ribs once at all. It
was delicious. Maybe this year I'll have a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
A lot of the a lot of the articles that
I was or you know, blog posts are just just
interviews that I was reading about all of this. We're like,
be brave, be bold, like go after those carts, like
like what they look so busy though, yell just yell
across the restaurant. I don't know, don't take time to
say please or thank you. The professionals don't, and they
(14:41):
get the good dishes.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
It is true. This is one of the reasons. And
I actually adore this, but I sometimes I'm like, I
could barely get by Advandarin, but I can do some stuff.
And a lot of friends of mine will ask me
to go with them, oh there, like worried they won't
be able to commune cater or whatever, and I'm like,
you can. If you can point to something, you're gonna
(15:03):
be Okay. I'm flattered, but it means I can invite
into a lot of dim sum events, which is great,
but I think you'll be fine. You'll be fine.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Yeah, oh yeah, No, I speak.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
If it's not clear for my pronunciations above, I speak
absolutely zero Chinese Mandarin or otherwise. And uh yeah, I
get along just fine. It's if you're hungry enough and
you kind of make I just make a lot of
like football shapes.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
That's just like glutinous rice. Everything, the fried. I want
the fried.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Thank you. Yes. Well, that's one of the interesting things.
And we're going to talk about this a bit more later,
but that's one of interesting unique things in my experience
with dim sum is that you get to see the
food and point to it. And that's when I was
in China. That's how I kind of survived At first.
I was like, yeah, that one good, let's try that.
(16:02):
So yes, yes, yes, yes, Well what about the nutrition.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
No, No, that depends. That depends.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Dim Sum can be very calorically dense. Lots of fatty meats,
lots of fried foods, carbs of plenty.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
You know. Treats are nice. Treats are nice.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yes, dim sum is very nice.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Oh heck it is.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Oh my, well, we have a couple of numbers for you.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, kind of sort of I kept reading about this
one dim Sum place that was the first one I
believe to receive a Michelin star, and it kind of
it's tagline to this day is like the cheapest Michelin
star restaurant in the world. Dim Sum can be expensive, certainly,
(16:50):
but very oftentimes it's it's quite reasonably priced. So I
looked a little bit further into it, and there are
currently fourteen Michelin selected seen bib Gourmand and one Michelin
starred dim Sum restaurants.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Around the world. Quite a selection, I must.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Say, though there are a lot more than that. As
of twenty nineteen, there were some thirteen hundred dim Sum
restaurants in Hong Kong alone. Yes, and a lot has
been written about dim Sum in Hong Kong. Oh yeah,
oh yeah, one of the centers, Yeah, one of the centers. Well,
(17:29):
we have quite the history for you.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
We do.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
But first we've got a quick break for a word
from our sponsors, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
thank you, okay, So yes.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
The history of drinking tea in China is a long
one and is closely intertwined with the story of dim Sum.
I know. We have done episodes based on tea. But
I feel like that is a whole that's a whole world.
But we have done a.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Couple Yeah, yeah, more shall follow in the future when
we're feeling similarly exuberant.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yes, I like how we're already preparing to be tired.
But according to most sources looking into dim sum, it
most likely originated thousands of years ago out of teahouses
established along China's Silk Road, which was a trade network
spanning across parts of southern China, India, and the Middle East.
(18:33):
And these tea houses were places where people traveling along
the Silk Road could stop, take a break and enjoy
some tea, which many believed helped with digestion. So these
tea houses started offering snacks and were what many consider
the first examples of dim sum these snacks. However, quick
(18:54):
note some sources are more likely to put the origins
of dim sum way closer to where we are now,
like the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Oh yeah, yeah, sure, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
And I think this has to do with how we
think of dim sum today versus this early version that's
being described here. And more than one source pointed out
the history of tea and snacks in China is far
older than this, and even when looking at the name
dim Sum, it's much more recent than the words for
(19:25):
tea and snacks in that area in the written record.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Sure yeah, yeah. There is also a bit of argument
about where the name came from and what exactly dim
sum means. I've seen translations claiming that dim sum literally
means something like dot the heart or touch the heart,
which would be an idiom intending something like hit the spot.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I've also seen translations claiming that that's poetic nonsense, and
that it more literally means to eat a little bit
of something so you know, which could hit the spot,
which can also so hit the spot.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Sure it's true. Yes. Another big piece of the story
of dim Sum was the transport and trade of wheat flower,
which is a key ingredient in dough and a lot
of the classic dishes. We think of transporting that along
the Silk Road, and it was along this route that
the ingredient that became key to so many classic dim
(20:23):
Sum dishes really made inroads in China. I did find
a story. In twenty sixteen, headlines were circulating about how
archaeologists discovered dumplings, one of the most popular dim sum
categories in tombs in northern China that could be traced
all the way back to two hundred and twenty to
five eighty nine CE.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
They also found some that were more recent, but they
were apparently like mostly intact points.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Wow yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Traditionally, as with many Northern Hemisphere areas, Northern China is
wheat growing, Southern China is rice growing. So yeah yes,
So it is interesting how the weed got into these
more southern areas of the of the area rates.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Well. As demand grew for these teahouses this dim sum,
more and more teahouses started opening, and not just along
the Silk Road. The art of dim sum was really
hammered out in Southern China, at least in terms of
how a lot of us in the West think of it.
Cantonese cuisine in the early days of dim sum already
(21:33):
included many of the popular dishes served today, like chicken
feet and awful, and it became common to have these
smallish snacks, often dumplings and cakes, served with tea for
breakfast or brunch to give you energy throughout the day.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Canton now known as Guangdong Province. I hope I'm not
butchering that it's along the southeast coast of China where
the Pearl River reaches the South China Sea, like just
north of Hong Kong.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
So it's an.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Area with like a lot of trade, a lot of travel,
and a lot of industry, and some of all of
this developed as street food culture for these workers heading
in for the day. Vendors would carry long poles with
dishes balanced on one end and cooking equipment balanced on
the other and set up, you know, wherever foot traffic
was busy. This morphed into sturdier portable stalls and carts,
(22:27):
and then those carts started being brought indoors for a
sit down meal instead of like a grabbing go.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Rights, And by the nineteenth century, a whole culture around
dim sum had been established in the area, and a
brief search indicates a lot of the most famous dim
sum dishes like cargoo likely were created in this area
at the time. I tried to do like a brief
where did this come from? Where did this come from?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
And I got overwhelms But yeah, too much, too much,
too many, huh.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
As dim sum made its way across China, regional dishes
were developed as well.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, and in some areas like the then British colony
of Hong Kong, dim sum got fancier as restaurants tried
to one up each other, adding like chandeliers and statuary
and encouraging business meetings and like power breakfasts, you know,
the equivalent of the three martini lunch.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
And this is where we began to get the new
tradition of like banquet hall dining rooms for dim sum restaurants,
which many of them are these days. But that's more
like in the twentieth century. And I'm getting a little
ahead of us right.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Well. The nineteenth century is when historians think that dim
sum was introduced to the US with a wave of
immigration from southern China and especially from port cities and
the surrounding areas.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah, a lot of Guandong Province immigrants came over to
the American West during the Gold Rush, and as we've
talked about before, a lot of people opened up restaurants
with traditional and new dishes.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
One of those opened in Chinatown and San Francisco in
the nineteen twenties, and it was called the Hong A
Dim Sum tea House and it is believed to be
the oldest dim Sum restaurant in the United States. It
is still open and it's really interesting to read about
the history of it. I found a lot of it
quite endearing.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Oh yeah, yeah. There is another long running one in
New York City, the Namoa Tea Parlor, which opened in
nineteen twenty. Supposedly, one of the employees there, one Wally Teng,
who eventually bought the place from the original owners, innovated
the egg roll there as a riff on traditional dim
sum sometime after the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Ooh. The earliest known written reference to dim sum in
the US was in an ad for a restaurant that
was published in the San Francisco Examiner in nineteen thirty nine.
Another article published around the time suggested that non Asian
Americans at large may have believed dim sum referred to
one specific dish, and that dish could vary based on
(25:06):
personal experience, so like dim sum could be like a
spring roll or an egg custard tart depending on.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Who heard there.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yes yeah, dim Sum restaurants gained popularity in New York
City during the fifties and sixties, though there's still there
still seemed to be a lot of confusion around the
name for non Chinese folks. Dim Sum grew more and
more popular and started spreading across the country in the seventies,
and more and more articles were written about it, which
(25:35):
further increased the popularity and also clarified for non Chinese
folks what it was. Here's an article, a headline from
nineteen eighty eight from the Chicago Tribune that made me
chuck all dim sum has come a long way from
esoteric to mass popularity, now, okay, yeah, yeah, sure. Also,
(25:59):
I didn't know about that, and I would love for
people I was racking my brain to think if I
encountered this when I was in Australia. But I would
love from blister for listeners from Australia to write in
about this.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
In the nineteen forties, dim sim or Demi's became popular
in Australia. Briefly, these are a type of Chinese dumpling
that can come steamed or fried with a variety of fillings.
A Chinese Australian businessman named William Chen Wing Yung often
gets the credit for making these dumplings what they are today.
(26:30):
His daughter was very clear He didn't invent them in
an interview, but he kind of made them the thing
that they are in Australia. The story goes that in
nineteen forty two, Chin observed both older Chinese men who
had come from China to Australia for the eighteen hundreds
gold Rush that were now without jobs and the growing
(26:51):
popularity of dim sum in Australia and in particular Shoe Mai.
So Chin decided to find a way to mass produce
Shu Mai then offered the jobless men work selling them
out of food trucks. Because a lot of Australians struggled
with the pronunciation of shumei, he called them dim sim.
(27:12):
In the early days, the company called Wing Lee had
four women making the dumplings, including Chin's wife, but as
demand grew, they expanded, and, as the story goes, while
on his way to make delivery, one of Chin's sons
got distracted talking with a friend who owned this fish
and chip shop and they ended up going fishing. But
(27:36):
then they came back and fried the dumplings that he
was supposed to be delivering, and the friends served them
at his restaurant. The next day. The friend called and said,
everyone was asking where he got them, and demand drew
even more, and Chin worked with an engineer to come
up with a machine to mass produce the dim sim.
(27:59):
They are a bit bigger than Schumi from what I understand,
and the ingredients have changed based on availability over the years,
like in World War Two and their meat shortages and stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Sharing a change.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
But they became a popular side dish at fast food
establishments and were sold in grocery stores too, like pretty
soon after all of this, and from what I can gather,
they are still really popular in Australia, Like there are
groups based on love of dim.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Sum, all right, cool, Yeah, let us know, please.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Let us know. They're bringing us more to the modern day.
In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion,
some very regionally specific, like around Hong Kong, about the
future of dim sum in terms of rising cost, aging,
workforce and clientele, efforts to preserve traditions, techniques and dishes,
(28:51):
changing trends, especially like around veganism and stuff like that.
Because yeah, historically the act of having dim sum is
about more than the food or the tea. And during
the pandemic they really took a hit. Yeah, and I
missed it terribly during the pandemic. That was one of
(29:12):
the big things. I just, yeah, it just was really
want because it's comfort food.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
It's comfort food, and it's also a comfortingly clamorous environment,
you know. And we were we certainly weren't going out
and doing that then.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
No, And we were not the only ones. I missed
it many people. I found a lot of articles that
wrote about it, and yeah, a lot of dim some
places were hit pretty hard. The racist rhetoric about where
COVID nineteen came from did not help at all. And
many of the restaurants specializing and in some change from
(29:48):
a roving card experience to a more standard piece of
paper menu experience, which some of them were always doing
as you said, which, of course, yes, adapting and surviving
is great safety measures, yes, but yeah, part of the
beauty of dim Sum is that you get to see
and smell the dishes before you order them, like I
(30:08):
was saying, and you might get something you weren't anticipating
and end up loving.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Every time a cart comes out, it's like so exciting
wondering if the food is on it. And it is
very communal, as you said, like it's a meal you
share because you want to try a bunch of stuff. Yeah, yeah,
And I was thinking about this when I was reading
about it and writing this outline. I was introduced to
(30:38):
dim sum in China, but of course I'd had things
like dumplings or buns before, like I'd had the foods
of it, but that was like the first time I
did the experience of dim sum. Yeah, and so when
I say dim sum, because i'm that's how I was
introduced to the term. That's what I mean. It's sort
of the slow, participatory, relax next meal with friends where
(31:02):
you choose foods from carts and you share and you
drink tea and you enjoy people's company. And I get
that according to some articles, at least, I'm not using
it correctly, but that's what I That's what I think
of when I think of gymsum. That's what I mean.
Otherwise I'll just order dumplings for delivery, which is also great,
don't get me wrong. But the experience, Yeah, the experience
(31:24):
does matter, and it makes it distinctive, Like it's it's
one of the rare times for me where I sit
and slowly enjoy a meal and talk to people as
opposed to like, oh, we've got to be to this
thing next, or.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
We're going to go to the share and yeah, just
kind of scarfing it down for the sake of getting
calories into your body in that moment. Yeah right, Which
it's still like you can have great meals that way,
but it's it's the experience of like waiting for the
carts to come out and be like, you know what,
I think we can try this.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
I know we're all full, but what about yeah, see
this one, let's try that. I've never tried this before.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Or oh no, that one hasn't been around yet, and
I need some of that before we go or write share.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Even if you're like sitting in your chair.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Slow dumpling yourself. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
And there are really good articles out there that you
can find listeners if you're interested, where people just give
really personal takes on their experience growing up with this
with their family or whatever it was. Yeah, and I
even read one that was like, sometimes it didn't have
to be the best food, but it was the most
lovely experience because you were appreciating that time together. Yeah,
(32:45):
but it is really delicious, Oh that too. Yeah, all right,
the Siege of cravings.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yeah, need to need to make this happen, all right.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Yes, yes, well, listeners, this is one where I'm sure
you all have your favorite dishes. Help you have your
thoughts about it, Please write in and let us know.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Oh oh yes, we do already have some listener mail
for you though, and we are going to get into
that as soon as we get back from one more
quick break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Thank you, sponsors, Yes, thank you, and we're back with
listener man. H that's how dim sum makes me feel. Yeah,
nice hug.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Aeriel wrote, I was listening to your Pitzele pitzele now
I'm all confused about the pronunciation episode and was delightfully
surprised to hear a reference to the Western Pennsylvania cookie table.
Have family from the area, and a cookie table is
(34:02):
always necessary.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
If not required, for a wedding. People are more excited
about the cookies than the cake, usually because your great
aunt Helen only makes her special cookies for Christmas and weddings.
While I can't speak to the history, my dad grew
up in rural Pennsylvania and has said that or he's
from cookie tables were a way to provide more food
without spending the money to also have a meal. A
(34:26):
typical reception was coffee, cake and cookies, the three c's.
In our family, when someone gets married, we get together
and bake cookies in the weeks before the wedding. It's
a great way to be part of the wedding and
show off your best cookies. Part of the fun is
showing up and seeing what cookies are there and catching
up with friends and family over a good cookie. And
(34:47):
the best weddings will have to go containers for you
to take the cookies home. Now that's a wedding favor
everyone will like. Thanks again for your educational and entertaining episodes.
I enjoy bringing out tidbits from them at get togethers,
especially at weddings around the cookie table. Oh, I love it.
I love it. I'm I'm a big fan of this.
(35:14):
I love cookies. Yeah, and I've really I'm enjoying hearing
from all of you about this because we've already gotten
several messages and I like, I personally like the trendim
C where the cake is sort.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Of like yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
But then you have you can have so many different
types of cookies. There's so many different types of cupcakes
or pies even.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Oh oh, I love a good pie wedding. I've had
a couple of friends have like a pie table as
their dessert at a wedding and it was delightful.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yes, I have as well, and I you know, I
think the cake has got a lot of like tradition
to it. It's not bad at all, but I think
there's something fun about. Yes, I'm a I can take
home a like favor box of different types of cookies,
Like you see what different types of cookies people made, Because,
(36:09):
like I said, I used to I would get requests
and it was fun to kind of get the like
who made this Oreo stuffed cookie? I be oh that
was me?
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Yeah those were hit Oh absolutely, Oh I bet, I
bet yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Good cookies are so good.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Yeah mmmmmmmm.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
All right, trying to figure out if I can have
an excuse to have a cookie table at some kind
of function.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Oh, I'm sure, I think that'd be easy to come
up with an excuge. We're trying to play in our
next Dungeons and Dragons. We could just bring a bunch
of cookies. You know who likes cookies? Super Producer Dylan,
he would love it.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
See the.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Problem solved, Christine wrote, and this one is fun with pronunciations,
so bear with me. I'm sorry, okay, I'm currently tucking
into a truly divine pantoni. I missed buying one last year,
and I remember writing to you about it. And this
year I happened to go into a supermarket as the
shelf stalkers were putting out a fresh load. Normally I
(37:18):
get a particular mass produced brand, which is quite okay. However,
this year there was a second Panatoni available. It was
more expensive and they're in much smaller numbers. The package
itself suggested the panatoni was half the size of the
other one, but when I picked them both up, the
smaller and more expensive one was heavier. Intrigued, I bought
one of the smaller, more expensive ones. Oh my, it
(37:41):
is so good. It has a wonderful mix of dried
fruit instead of just sultanas, and there is so much
more fruit. The bread slash cake is very moist but
still very light and has a delicate spice flavor. Looks
like I'll be getting the more expensive panatoni for good now.
Along with your recent episode on Pazzella. I can get
the Electric Maker in Australia. There's also been a bit
(38:04):
of buzz online about other Italian holiday treats. One in
particular was the oh Schnike's U torciglione torciglione.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Sure Christine has no idea on the pronunciation either.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Ah Yes.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
This is an Umbrian cake of almond paste and fruit
which is coiled so it resembles a snake. It's thought
to date back to the Etruscans, so even older than Rome.
There's also the Verenese Pandoro, which is baked in an
eight armed star shape. The mix looks similar to pantone
but has no fruit inside, and the cake itself is
dusted and powdered sugar. This brings me to my favorite
(38:39):
German Christmas treats, Stolen and Puffefernouse. Stolen is another bread
and also contains dried fruit and candied peel, and also almonds.
The better ones are also flavored with cardamom. The whole
thing is then covered in marspan and is youm Piffeffernoose
are ginger aniseed cookies with a fairly firm texture, covered
(39:00):
in a white sugar glaze. Pepfort News have been around
in Australia since I was a small child. However, Stolen
has really only become known since Aldie arrived in Australia.
Both have interesting histories if you need ideas for Christmas
next year, And this has led me to realize I
don't know anything about French, Spanish or other European Christmas treats.
More research projects, I guess, as though I need them.
(39:22):
I hope you and your super producers and all your
families have wonderful holiday seasons.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Well, thank you as always, Christine, because this is great.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yes, yes, I also do love Stolen. Stolen is great,
but I love anything Marzapan involved. So yeah, that's a
whole situation.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yes, I am so glad that you the Panaitone turned
out well and a lot of things you wrote about
I have never heard of, and I even said to
Lauren before this, I've never seen this word in my life.
But yes, I never heard news in my life. I've
(40:06):
never seen it. That is a new one for me
and I always appreciate that. So I that is one that.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
I've definitely both seen and heard aloud, although I'm not
totally positive that I understood when I read it on
paper that that was how you pronounced it out loud.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Mmmmm, well I was at a loss, so it's maybe
the reason I put it for you to read.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Yeah, thanks Annie.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Yeah, the best ghost. But I do love I love
how you You're like us. You've got a new projects
to look.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
Into to try.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Yeah, absolutely, it's a great project for the new years
and listeners. If you have any suggestions for Christine, please
let us know yeap, yes, and for us as well.
We do love looking into these treats for episodes alway,
thanks to both of these listeners for writing in. If
(41:13):
you would like to write to us, you can our
emails hello at sabrepod dot com.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
We're also on social media.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
saver pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor is production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts in my
Heart Radio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
You listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard.
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way.
Hello and welcome to Saber production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Annie Reese and Unborn Vocal Bum and today we
have an episode for you about dim sum. Yes uh,
which is our first This is our first recording of
twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Happy New Year, Welcome.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yes, hopefully we are not too rusty. This is a
very exciting topic for both of us, I believe, to
start the new year off with. But we are being
pretty broad here.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, we could go into probably at least a short
episode on literally any dish within the context of dim sum. Yes,
so yeah, and there are I didn't include a number
in our number section because I couldn't find good source
about this, but like, there are hundreds, if not thousands
(01:04):
of dishes that are included under the umbrella of dim sum.
So wow, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, So this is an overview. I believe I know
the answer, but I must ask Lauren, was there any
reason this was on your mind?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
You know, it's just a nice thing to do with
family and friends. I love dem sum, and the holidays
are a nice thing to do with family and friends,
or can be depending on your you know, family and friends,
and and so I was thinking, I was thinking about
how how nice, how nice dim Sum is, and how
(01:44):
much I wanted to talk about it, and I was
feeling ambitious. I was like, you know, maybe at the
end of twenty twenty three, beginning of twenty twenty four,
I'm going to tackle some of these big topics that
we haven't tackled yet.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Go, well, here we are. I also love dim Sum.
When you sent this, I was planning with my friends
a dim Sum because we haven't been since the pandemic.
Oh wow, yeah, and I've missed it horribly and so
(02:22):
have they. And this is the Year of the Dragon,
which is my year. Yes, yes, but yeah, the cravings
were very intense.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Oh they were, Oh my heck.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Every single photo I was looking at, every single description
that I read, was painfully craving. Full speaking of a
shout out to the listener whose name I'm forgetting off
the top of my head, who sent us those adorable
dim Sum calendars a few years back.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Yes, yes, And also we did do an episode on
Lunar New Year Food. I think we've done a couple
of things that would fall under this umbrella as well.
Brunch surprisingly our old episode on Brunch. I know we
talked about it a little bit so those are a
couple of things you can look into it. I guess
(03:15):
this brings us to our question.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
I guess it does.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Dim sum? What is it?
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Well?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Dim sum is a type of meal where you order
a number of small dishes or it can refer to
those dishes themselves of more or less bite sized foods,
and you share them around a table with friends and
family and cups of tea. There are a bunch of
dishes traditionally attributed to dim sum, and they can cover
(03:48):
a pretty wide range of ingredients and flavors and preparation methods.
You know, vegetables, meat, seafood, rice, s, wheat, savory, sweet, spicy, steamed, baked, fried, roasted, chilled.
You often choose each dish off of carts or trays
that are brought around to each table, and there are
often a lot of different kinds of dumplings involved, and
(04:11):
a number of dipping sauces on the table or condiments
for mixing up your own, you know, vinegar and chili,
oil and soy sauce, et cetera. It's traditionally a brunch thing,
but it is expandable. Like the idea here is to
have a variety of just lovely little bites and have
a nice relaxed time doing it. It's like if a
(04:32):
buffet came to you. It's it's sort of beautifully controlled chaos,
like like sitting in the middle of a swirling teapot.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
It's like a you know, when you get a cup of.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Tea and it warms your hands and then and then
you take a sip and it warms just your whole
being from the inside out. It's it's like a whole
meal of that feeling.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah. Yeah, And I know I've told this story before,
but one of my favorite videos a friend of mine
it's ever taken of our group doing dim sum, is
that we were all just laughing, enjoining each other's company,
and like there's all these dishes in front of us
and we're all drinking tea, and it was just like
such a warm, lovely enjoying of the time together.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
So it's again your description accurate as always.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Huh okay, well, all of that, All of that being said, yes,
the exact setup of dim sum will depend on the restaurant.
At larger restaurants, you're often seated at like a big
round table with a lazy susan in the middle, and
you choose dishes from these roving steel carts or perhaps
servers with trays right, and the dishes could be small
(05:51):
plates for fried or baked or roasted foods, or little
metal or bamboo steam baskets for steamed dishes. Each dish
usually includes like three or more of whatever item, and
each piece is often dainty and sort of pretty, kind
of belying how heavy they really can be. So yeah,
(06:12):
you choose what you want. The server will plunk the
dish down and record your choice on a little piece
of paper paper card that you'll bring to the cash
register later at the end of the meal, where they
will tally it up and you pay. The lazy Susan
helps make sure that everyone has access to all the
dishes around the table. You can usually also place special
orders off of menus, either for like larger or fancier dishes,
(06:32):
or just you know, whatever you want that you haven't
seen come around. There are also smaller restaurants where you
do order mostly off of a menu, or maybe tick
off your choices on a little paper card on your table,
but either way it's just, oh, it's such a great
way to have a little bit of a lot of
different things, which is my personal favorite style of eating.
(06:55):
And yes, as we said, there are a lot of
dishes you can run into in some way, too many
to describe here, So if you have a favorite one
or one that you want to tell a story about,
do write in. But okay, here are a few common
like categories and and examples, all right, Perhaps most famously,
(07:15):
you've got steamed dumplings made with wheat dough wrappers. And
there are a few varieties of wheat dough here. It
could be rolled thin and delicate like in shumai, just
a real tender skin shaped into a little cup containing
things like ground pork and shrimp, seasoned with stuff like
mushrooms and sesame. A slightly thicker but still tender dough
(07:36):
might hold ground pork or chicken with a little bit
of broth. And those are soup dumplings. And the way
that you're supposed to eat these, and I never knew,
and I always had so much trouble with them, is
you pick them up, you put them in your soup spoon.
Then you take a little nibble out of the out
of the skin to let the broth release into the spoon,
and then you slurp it down.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I don't know if I knew that either, I've just
gone for it.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Oh yeah, yeah, just this whole bite, hot broth, scalding
your mouth and it was pretty good. Awkward times, but
delicious anyway. This is apparently the official methods, so now
we know, and knowing is half the soup dumpling okay,
or or we're still not done with wheat dough. The
(08:25):
dough can be puffy and bread like, as in a
charcu bow, a spicy saucy barbecued pork in this, like
tender cloud of steamed bread.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
That's a favorite at my table.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, oh yeah, those are always so good. It's a
lot of bread anyway, so good, okay, all right. You
can also get pan fried dumplings or deep fried spring
rolls or savory fillings baked into a small bun, or
like a flaky triangle of pastry. Yeah. Other dumplings are
not made with wheat flour, but with a starchy alternates
(09:00):
of various kinds. Take a hardgal which are ground shrimp
and maybe some bamboo shoot in this tender chewy wrapper
made of potato starch and tapioca starch. Usually it's steamed
so that it's semi translucent so you can see the
pink of the shrimp inside. So good. Or a taro
root dumplings, which are made of mashed taro root wrapped
(09:22):
around some ground pork and shrimp, then deep fried so
the taro get gets lacy and crunchy on the outside.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Yeah, oh dear, we're both just like sighing and shaking
our heads.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
You don't often get straight up rice at dim sum.
It can come with certain dishes, but a different preparation
is common, and that is a packet of sticky rice
filled with things like like sausage or mushrooms, wrapped in
a lotus leaf and then steamed, or kangi, which is
a savory rice porridge served with a number of toppings
(10:00):
that can vary. Rice powder is also often used to
make dough, like for cheung fun. I'm not sure if
I'm saying that right. Annie is winsing.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Here we go, though.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
It's those rice noodle rolls, Okay. There are these large, thin, flat,
slippy rice noodles that are steamed and then rolled up,
maybe around like ground meat or some fried wheat dough,
and then served in a kind of thin, salty, savory
sauce so good. Or you can use rice to make
a to make turnip cake, which is a type of
(10:34):
rice dough and shredded radish with little bits of usually
like chewy mushroom or pork or shrimp, and the whole
cake is steamed and then pan fried into these like chewy,
pillowy crispy slices. Yeah, or glutenous rice dumplings, which are
these little football shapes stuffed with pork and shrimp and
deep fried until they're crispy on the outside and gooey
(10:58):
chewy on the inside.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
I'm dying here. Those are one of.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
My personal favorites. Then you've got proteins, maybe some steamed
beef short ribs or braised pork spear ribs, beautiful sliced
roast duck, steamed meatballs. Different kinds of offal are also common,
like whole chicken feet often deep fried and then braised
in something like a fermented black bean sauce or a
(11:24):
honeycomb tripe simmered in like a garlicy gingery broth, or
maybe some curry vegetables. You ask, yes, dim sum does
tend to be protein and carb heavy, but there are
often vegetable dishes available, like steamed or sauteed Chinese broccoli
or greens or pea shoots, often with like a little
(11:46):
bit of garlic and or some oyster sauce on there.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
And dessert there.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Are baked goods like tiny egg custard tarts in these
little flaky pastry cups or buns filled with sweet cream.
Can get steamed buns filled with a lotus root paste
or this like salty sweet egg custard. They're usually cold
puddings and flavors like coconut or mango. Fried things like
little little doughnut balls, and another one of my personal favorites,
(12:15):
I really like glutenous rice, like a dumpling made of
glutenous rice dough filled with sweet red bean paste or
maybe black sesame paste or other stuff and then then
deep fried encoated in sesame seeds.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Mm hmm. That's my favorite stew.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
No matter what the feeling is, it's always like crispy, chewy,
sweet and savory all at once.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
And oh I love them. I love them.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
It's like a little deep fried peanut butter sandwich.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yes, that is one. My friends usually request one to go,
let's go. They get an extra order to go.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
If you happen to have these in your fridge for
a minute and you need to reheat them, I highly
recommend an air fryer, by the way. Yeah, but also
don't forget the tea, because tea is a really integral
part of especially traditional dim sum. The phrase yum cha
(13:12):
technically means drink tea, but it's often synonymous with dim sum,
and as you are sharing tea around the table, it
is perhaps traditional to pour for other people. If you
don't do that, that's fine, do whatever you want. But
if your teapot is out of water and you need more,
you can set the lid open or like on the
table beside the pot to let your serve know that
(13:33):
you need to refill.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yes, good tip, good tip. It's also funny because the
place I usually go it is one of the more
i would say traditional places where they run out of food.
Oh sure, yeah, so it's more of a brunch place time,
but I'm too shy to do. I was reading about
this and they were like, you can run up and say, oh,
(13:58):
this is the dish I've been waiting for instead of
waiting for the cart to come to your table. I'm
too shy to do it. But there are several dishes
that you were listing. I was like, yeah, I think
we only got those spare ribs once at all. It
was delicious. Maybe this year I'll have a little bit more.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
A lot of the a lot of the articles that
I was or you know, blog posts are just just
interviews that I was reading about all of this. We're like,
be brave, be bold, like go after those carts, like
like what they look so busy though, yell just yell
across the restaurant. I don't know, don't take time to
say please or thank you. The professionals don't, and they
(14:41):
get the good dishes.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
It is true. This is one of the reasons. And
I actually adore this, but I sometimes I'm like, I
could barely get by Advandarin, but I can do some stuff.
And a lot of friends of mine will ask me
to go with them, oh there, like worried they won't
be able to commune cater or whatever, and I'm like,
you can. If you can point to something, you're gonna
(15:03):
be Okay. I'm flattered, but it means I can invite
into a lot of dim sum events, which is great,
but I think you'll be fine. You'll be fine.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Yeah, oh yeah, No, I speak.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
If it's not clear for my pronunciations above, I speak
absolutely zero Chinese Mandarin or otherwise. And uh yeah, I
get along just fine. It's if you're hungry enough and
you kind of make I just make a lot of
like football shapes.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
That's just like glutinous rice. Everything, the fried. I want
the fried.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Thank you. Yes. Well, that's one of the interesting things.
And we're going to talk about this a bit more later,
but that's one of interesting unique things in my experience
with dim sum is that you get to see the
food and point to it. And that's when I was
in China. That's how I kind of survived At first.
I was like, yeah, that one good, let's try that.
(16:02):
So yes, yes, yes, yes, Well what about the nutrition.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
No, No, that depends. That depends.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Dim Sum can be very calorically dense. Lots of fatty meats,
lots of fried foods, carbs of plenty.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
You know. Treats are nice. Treats are nice.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yes, dim sum is very nice.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Oh heck it is.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Oh my, well, we have a couple of numbers for you.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, kind of sort of I kept reading about this
one dim Sum place that was the first one I
believe to receive a Michelin star, and it kind of
it's tagline to this day is like the cheapest Michelin
star restaurant in the world. Dim Sum can be expensive, certainly,
(16:50):
but very oftentimes it's it's quite reasonably priced. So I
looked a little bit further into it, and there are
currently fourteen Michelin selected seen bib Gourmand and one Michelin
starred dim Sum restaurants.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Around the world. Quite a selection, I must.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Say, though there are a lot more than that. As
of twenty nineteen, there were some thirteen hundred dim Sum
restaurants in Hong Kong alone. Yes, and a lot has
been written about dim Sum in Hong Kong. Oh yeah,
oh yeah, one of the centers, Yeah, one of the centers. Well,
(17:29):
we have quite the history for you.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
We do.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
But first we've got a quick break for a word
from our sponsors, and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
thank you, okay, So yes.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
The history of drinking tea in China is a long
one and is closely intertwined with the story of dim Sum.
I know. We have done episodes based on tea. But
I feel like that is a whole that's a whole world.
But we have done a.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Couple Yeah, yeah, more shall follow in the future when
we're feeling similarly exuberant.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yes, I like how we're already preparing to be tired.
But according to most sources looking into dim sum, it
most likely originated thousands of years ago out of teahouses
established along China's Silk Road, which was a trade network
spanning across parts of southern China, India, and the Middle East.
(18:33):
And these tea houses were places where people traveling along
the Silk Road could stop, take a break and enjoy
some tea, which many believed helped with digestion. So these
tea houses started offering snacks and were what many consider
the first examples of dim sum these snacks. However, quick
(18:54):
note some sources are more likely to put the origins
of dim sum way closer to where we are now,
like the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
Oh yeah, yeah, sure, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
And I think this has to do with how we
think of dim sum today versus this early version that's
being described here. And more than one source pointed out
the history of tea and snacks in China is far
older than this, and even when looking at the name
dim Sum, it's much more recent than the words for
(19:25):
tea and snacks in that area in the written record.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Sure yeah, yeah. There is also a bit of argument
about where the name came from and what exactly dim
sum means. I've seen translations claiming that dim sum literally
means something like dot the heart or touch the heart,
which would be an idiom intending something like hit the spot.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
I've also seen translations claiming that that's poetic nonsense, and
that it more literally means to eat a little bit
of something so you know, which could hit the spot,
which can also so hit the spot.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Sure it's true. Yes. Another big piece of the story
of dim Sum was the transport and trade of wheat flower,
which is a key ingredient in dough and a lot
of the classic dishes. We think of transporting that along
the Silk Road, and it was along this route that
the ingredient that became key to so many classic dim
(20:23):
Sum dishes really made inroads in China. I did find
a story. In twenty sixteen, headlines were circulating about how
archaeologists discovered dumplings, one of the most popular dim sum
categories in tombs in northern China that could be traced
all the way back to two hundred and twenty to
five eighty nine CE.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
They also found some that were more recent, but they
were apparently like mostly intact points.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Wow yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Traditionally, as with many Northern Hemisphere areas, Northern China is
wheat growing, Southern China is rice growing. So yeah yes,
So it is interesting how the weed got into these
more southern areas of the of the area rates.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Well. As demand grew for these teahouses this dim sum,
more and more teahouses started opening, and not just along
the Silk Road. The art of dim sum was really
hammered out in Southern China, at least in terms of
how a lot of us in the West think of it.
Cantonese cuisine in the early days of dim sum already
(21:33):
included many of the popular dishes served today, like chicken
feet and awful, and it became common to have these
smallish snacks, often dumplings and cakes, served with tea for
breakfast or brunch to give you energy throughout the day.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Canton now known as Guangdong Province. I hope I'm not
butchering that it's along the southeast coast of China where
the Pearl River reaches the South China Sea, like just
north of Hong Kong.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
So it's an.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Area with like a lot of trade, a lot of travel,
and a lot of industry, and some of all of
this developed as street food culture for these workers heading
in for the day. Vendors would carry long poles with
dishes balanced on one end and cooking equipment balanced on
the other and set up, you know, wherever foot traffic
was busy. This morphed into sturdier portable stalls and carts,
(22:27):
and then those carts started being brought indoors for a
sit down meal instead of like a grabbing go.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Rights, And by the nineteenth century, a whole culture around
dim sum had been established in the area, and a
brief search indicates a lot of the most famous dim
sum dishes like cargoo likely were created in this area
at the time. I tried to do like a brief
where did this come from? Where did this come from?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
And I got overwhelms But yeah, too much, too much,
too many, huh.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
As dim sum made its way across China, regional dishes
were developed as well.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yeah, and in some areas like the then British colony
of Hong Kong, dim sum got fancier as restaurants tried
to one up each other, adding like chandeliers and statuary
and encouraging business meetings and like power breakfasts, you know,
the equivalent of the three martini lunch.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
And this is where we began to get the new
tradition of like banquet hall dining rooms for dim sum restaurants,
which many of them are these days. But that's more
like in the twentieth century. And I'm getting a little
ahead of us right.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Well. The nineteenth century is when historians think that dim
sum was introduced to the US with a wave of
immigration from southern China and especially from port cities and
the surrounding areas.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Yeah, a lot of Guandong Province immigrants came over to
the American West during the Gold Rush, and as we've
talked about before, a lot of people opened up restaurants
with traditional and new dishes.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
One of those opened in Chinatown and San Francisco in
the nineteen twenties, and it was called the Hong A
Dim Sum tea House and it is believed to be
the oldest dim Sum restaurant in the United States. It
is still open and it's really interesting to read about
the history of it. I found a lot of it
quite endearing.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Oh yeah, yeah. There is another long running one in
New York City, the Namoa Tea Parlor, which opened in
nineteen twenty. Supposedly, one of the employees there, one Wally Teng,
who eventually bought the place from the original owners, innovated
the egg roll there as a riff on traditional dim
sum sometime after the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Ooh. The earliest known written reference to dim sum in
the US was in an ad for a restaurant that
was published in the San Francisco Examiner in nineteen thirty nine.
Another article published around the time suggested that non Asian
Americans at large may have believed dim sum referred to
one specific dish, and that dish could vary based on
(25:06):
personal experience, so like dim sum could be like a
spring roll or an egg custard tart depending on.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Who heard there.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Yes yeah, dim Sum restaurants gained popularity in New York
City during the fifties and sixties, though there's still there
still seemed to be a lot of confusion around the
name for non Chinese folks. Dim Sum grew more and
more popular and started spreading across the country in the seventies,
and more and more articles were written about it, which
(25:35):
further increased the popularity and also clarified for non Chinese
folks what it was. Here's an article, a headline from
nineteen eighty eight from the Chicago Tribune that made me
chuck all dim sum has come a long way from
esoteric to mass popularity, now, okay, yeah, yeah, sure. Also,
(25:59):
I didn't know about that, and I would love for
people I was racking my brain to think if I
encountered this when I was in Australia. But I would
love from blister for listeners from Australia to write in
about this.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
In the nineteen forties, dim sim or Demi's became popular
in Australia. Briefly, these are a type of Chinese dumpling
that can come steamed or fried with a variety of fillings.
A Chinese Australian businessman named William Chen Wing Yung often
gets the credit for making these dumplings what they are today.
(26:30):
His daughter was very clear He didn't invent them in
an interview, but he kind of made them the thing
that they are in Australia. The story goes that in
nineteen forty two, Chin observed both older Chinese men who
had come from China to Australia for the eighteen hundreds
gold Rush that were now without jobs and the growing
(26:51):
popularity of dim sum in Australia and in particular Shoe Mai.
So Chin decided to find a way to mass produce
Shu Mai then offered the jobless men work selling them
out of food trucks. Because a lot of Australians struggled
with the pronunciation of shumei, he called them dim sim.
(27:12):
In the early days, the company called Wing Lee had
four women making the dumplings, including Chin's wife, but as
demand grew, they expanded, and, as the story goes, while
on his way to make delivery, one of Chin's sons
got distracted talking with a friend who owned this fish
and chip shop and they ended up going fishing. But
(27:36):
then they came back and fried the dumplings that he
was supposed to be delivering, and the friends served them
at his restaurant. The next day. The friend called and said,
everyone was asking where he got them, and demand drew
even more, and Chin worked with an engineer to come
up with a machine to mass produce the dim sim.
(27:59):
They are a bit bigger than Schumi from what I understand,
and the ingredients have changed based on availability over the years,
like in World War Two and their meat shortages and stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Sharing a change.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
But they became a popular side dish at fast food
establishments and were sold in grocery stores too, like pretty
soon after all of this, and from what I can gather,
they are still really popular in Australia, Like there are
groups based on love of dim.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Sum, all right, cool, Yeah, let us know, please.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Let us know. They're bringing us more to the modern day.
In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion,
some very regionally specific, like around Hong Kong, about the
future of dim sum in terms of rising cost, aging,
workforce and clientele, efforts to preserve traditions, techniques and dishes,
(28:51):
changing trends, especially like around veganism and stuff like that.
Because yeah, historically the act of having dim sum is
about more than the food or the tea. And during
the pandemic they really took a hit. Yeah, and I
missed it terribly during the pandemic. That was one of
(29:12):
the big things. I just, yeah, it just was really
want because it's comfort food.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
It's comfort food, and it's also a comfortingly clamorous environment,
you know. And we were we certainly weren't going out
and doing that then.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
No, And we were not the only ones. I missed
it many people. I found a lot of articles that
wrote about it, and yeah, a lot of dim some
places were hit pretty hard. The racist rhetoric about where
COVID nineteen came from did not help at all. And
many of the restaurants specializing and in some change from
(29:48):
a roving card experience to a more standard piece of
paper menu experience, which some of them were always doing
as you said, which, of course, yes, adapting and surviving
is great safety measures, yes, but yeah, part of the
beauty of dim Sum is that you get to see
and smell the dishes before you order them, like I
(30:08):
was saying, and you might get something you weren't anticipating
and end up loving.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Every time a cart comes out, it's like so exciting
wondering if the food is on it. And it is
very communal, as you said, like it's a meal you
share because you want to try a bunch of stuff. Yeah, yeah,
And I was thinking about this when I was reading
about it and writing this outline. I was introduced to
(30:38):
dim sum in China, but of course I'd had things
like dumplings or buns before, like I'd had the foods
of it, but that was like the first time I
did the experience of dim sum. Yeah, and so when
I say dim sum, because i'm that's how I was
introduced to the term. That's what I mean. It's sort
of the slow, participatory, relax next meal with friends where
(31:02):
you choose foods from carts and you share and you
drink tea and you enjoy people's company. And I get
that according to some articles, at least, I'm not using
it correctly, but that's what I That's what I think
of when I think of gymsum. That's what I mean.
Otherwise I'll just order dumplings for delivery, which is also great,
don't get me wrong. But the experience, Yeah, the experience
(31:24):
does matter, and it makes it distinctive, Like it's it's
one of the rare times for me where I sit
and slowly enjoy a meal and talk to people as
opposed to like, oh, we've got to be to this
thing next, or.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
We're going to go to the share and yeah, just
kind of scarfing it down for the sake of getting
calories into your body in that moment. Yeah right, Which
it's still like you can have great meals that way,
but it's it's the experience of like waiting for the
carts to come out and be like, you know what,
I think we can try this.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
I know we're all full, but what about yeah, see
this one, let's try that. I've never tried this before.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Or oh no, that one hasn't been around yet, and
I need some of that before we go or write share.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
Even if you're like sitting in your chair.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Slow dumpling yourself. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
And there are really good articles out there that you
can find listeners if you're interested, where people just give
really personal takes on their experience growing up with this
with their family or whatever it was. Yeah, and I
even read one that was like, sometimes it didn't have
to be the best food, but it was the most
lovely experience because you were appreciating that time together. Yeah,
(32:45):
but it is really delicious, Oh that too. Yeah, all right,
the Siege of cravings.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yeah, need to need to make this happen, all right.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Yes, yes, well, listeners, this is one where I'm sure
you all have your favorite dishes. Help you have your
thoughts about it, Please write in and let us know.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Oh oh yes, we do already have some listener mail
for you though, and we are going to get into
that as soon as we get back from one more
quick break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Thank you, sponsors, Yes, thank you, and we're back with
listener man. H that's how dim sum makes me feel. Yeah,
nice hug.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Aeriel wrote, I was listening to your Pitzele pitzele now
I'm all confused about the pronunciation episode and was delightfully
surprised to hear a reference to the Western Pennsylvania cookie table.
Have family from the area, and a cookie table is
(34:02):
always necessary.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
If not required, for a wedding. People are more excited
about the cookies than the cake, usually because your great
aunt Helen only makes her special cookies for Christmas and weddings.
While I can't speak to the history, my dad grew
up in rural Pennsylvania and has said that or he's
from cookie tables were a way to provide more food
without spending the money to also have a meal. A
(34:26):
typical reception was coffee, cake and cookies, the three c's.
In our family, when someone gets married, we get together
and bake cookies in the weeks before the wedding. It's
a great way to be part of the wedding and
show off your best cookies. Part of the fun is
showing up and seeing what cookies are there and catching
up with friends and family over a good cookie. And
(34:47):
the best weddings will have to go containers for you
to take the cookies home. Now that's a wedding favor
everyone will like. Thanks again for your educational and entertaining episodes.
I enjoy bringing out tidbits from them at get togethers,
especially at weddings around the cookie table. Oh, I love it.
I love it. I'm I'm a big fan of this.
(35:14):
I love cookies. Yeah, and I've really I'm enjoying hearing
from all of you about this because we've already gotten
several messages and I like, I personally like the trendim
C where the cake is sort.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Of like yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
But then you have you can have so many different
types of cookies. There's so many different types of cupcakes
or pies even.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Oh oh, I love a good pie wedding. I've had
a couple of friends have like a pie table as
their dessert at a wedding and it was delightful.
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yes, I have as well, and I you know, I
think the cake has got a lot of like tradition
to it. It's not bad at all, but I think
there's something fun about. Yes, I'm a I can take
home a like favor box of different types of cookies,
Like you see what different types of cookies people made, Because,
(36:09):
like I said, I used to I would get requests
and it was fun to kind of get the like
who made this Oreo stuffed cookie? I be oh that
was me?
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Yeah those were hit Oh absolutely, Oh I bet, I
bet yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
Good cookies are so good.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Yeah mmmmmmmm.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
All right, trying to figure out if I can have
an excuse to have a cookie table at some kind
of function.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Oh, I'm sure, I think that'd be easy to come
up with an excuge. We're trying to play in our
next Dungeons and Dragons. We could just bring a bunch
of cookies. You know who likes cookies? Super Producer Dylan,
he would love it.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
It's true.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
See the.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Problem solved, Christine wrote, and this one is fun with pronunciations,
so bear with me. I'm sorry, okay, I'm currently tucking
into a truly divine pantoni. I missed buying one last year,
and I remember writing to you about it. And this
year I happened to go into a supermarket as the
shelf stalkers were putting out a fresh load. Normally I
(37:18):
get a particular mass produced brand, which is quite okay. However,
this year there was a second Panatoni available. It was
more expensive and they're in much smaller numbers. The package
itself suggested the panatoni was half the size of the
other one, but when I picked them both up, the
smaller and more expensive one was heavier. Intrigued, I bought
one of the smaller, more expensive ones. Oh my, it
(37:41):
is so good. It has a wonderful mix of dried
fruit instead of just sultanas, and there is so much
more fruit. The bread slash cake is very moist but
still very light and has a delicate spice flavor. Looks
like I'll be getting the more expensive panatoni for good now.
Along with your recent episode on Pazzella. I can get
the Electric Maker in Australia. There's also been a bit
(38:04):
of buzz online about other Italian holiday treats. One in
particular was the oh Schnike's U torciglione torciglione.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Sure Christine has no idea on the pronunciation either.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Ah Yes.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
This is an Umbrian cake of almond paste and fruit
which is coiled so it resembles a snake. It's thought
to date back to the Etruscans, so even older than Rome.
There's also the Verenese Pandoro, which is baked in an
eight armed star shape. The mix looks similar to pantone
but has no fruit inside, and the cake itself is
dusted and powdered sugar. This brings me to my favorite
(38:39):
German Christmas treats, Stolen and Puffefernouse. Stolen is another bread
and also contains dried fruit and candied peel, and also almonds.
The better ones are also flavored with cardamom. The whole
thing is then covered in marspan and is youm Piffeffernoose
are ginger aniseed cookies with a fairly firm texture, covered
(39:00):
in a white sugar glaze. Pepfort News have been around
in Australia since I was a small child. However, Stolen
has really only become known since Aldie arrived in Australia.
Both have interesting histories if you need ideas for Christmas
next year, And this has led me to realize I
don't know anything about French, Spanish or other European Christmas treats.
More research projects, I guess, as though I need them.
(39:22):
I hope you and your super producers and all your
families have wonderful holiday seasons.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Well, thank you as always, Christine, because this is great.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yes, yes, I also do love Stolen. Stolen is great,
but I love anything Marzapan involved. So yeah, that's a
whole situation.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Yes, I am so glad that you the Panaitone turned
out well and a lot of things you wrote about
I have never heard of, and I even said to
Lauren before this, I've never seen this word in my life.
But yes, I never heard news in my life. I've
(40:06):
never seen it. That is a new one for me
and I always appreciate that. So I that is one that.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
I've definitely both seen and heard aloud, although I'm not
totally positive that I understood when I read it on
paper that that was how you pronounced it out loud.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Mmmmm, well I was at a loss, so it's maybe
the reason I put it for you to read.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Yeah, thanks Annie.
Speaker 1 (40:39):
Yeah, the best ghost. But I do love I love
how you You're like us. You've got a new projects
to look.
Speaker 3 (40:48):
Into to try.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Yeah, absolutely, it's a great project for the new years
and listeners. If you have any suggestions for Christine, please
let us know yeap, yes, and for us as well.
We do love looking into these treats for episodes alway,
thanks to both of these listeners for writing in. If
(41:13):
you would like to write to us, you can our
emails hello at sabrepod dot com.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
We're also on social media.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
saver pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor is production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts in my
Heart Radio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
You listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard.
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Dylan Fagan
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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