Food that "touches the heart"

But it is the skilled hands of the dian xin chefs that create totally different snacks that look and taste different. That is the heartfelt art of dim sum making. A good dian xin chef may have a repertoire of several hundred snacks, all prepared with the freshest of seasonal ingredients.

Dim-sum or dian xin is a collective noun for all the little snacks and platters.

Steamed dumplings, for example, may come in all shapes and sizes, some shaped like a goldfish, others with bunny ears, or even some looking like little hedgehogs - depending on the dexterity of the chef's hands.

The most famous dumplings are the shrimp dumplings, called har gow, which are shaped like fat ingots, and the little round open-topped pork dumplings called siew mai (shao mai). The first is made with pounded shrimp paste, chopped shrimps and shredded bamboo shoots. The skin is made with a gluten-less dough, which gives it a transparency through which the pink prawns glow.

Siew mai is minced pork with water chestnuts and spring onions wrapped in a yellow skin and pinched into little barrel-shaped dumplings. The more luxurious versions often have crab meat and a topping of crab roe. These days, however, many chefs substitute the crab roe with Japanese flying fish roe or tobiko.

Here is my version of the ubiquitous siew mai and its variations. All you have to do is to prepare a basic minced meat filling. After that, let your imagination take rein.