Siu Mai

Method

To make the filling, peel and chop the onions. Cut the stems off the shiitake mushrooms before coarsely chopping the mushrooms. Peel and grate the ginger. Dab the meat dry, cut it into small pieces and spread it out on a chopping board. Use the back of a kitchen knife to “crush” the meat.

Place the “crushed” meat in a large bowl. Add the shiitake mushrooms, ginger, sugar, meat stock, soy sauce, egg, sesame oil and sake and mix thoroughly by hand.

In another bowl, mix the chopped onions and the cornflour well, making sure that you keep some cornflour back to use on the peas later. Add the onion mixture to the meat mixture and combine thoroughly.

Lay the siu mai skins on the worktop and spoon approx. 30 g of meat filling onto each skin. Bring up the sides of each skin so that it looks like a flower. Flatten the base of each siu mai so that it can stand up.

Dust the frozen peas with the remaining potato flour and place 1 pea on each siu mai. Place the siu mai in a steam basket (making sure that they aren’t too close together) and steam at high heat for approx. 8 minutes.

Serve the siu mai with soy sauce and mustard.

Tips: If you don’t have a steamer, lay a lightly oiled sheet of baking paper on a plate and place the siu mai on it, making sure that they aren’t too close together.Fill a deep-sided frying pan or wok with approx. 3 cm of water and bring to the boil. Place the plate of siu mai at the centre of the pan, cover and steam for approx. 8 minutes.

You can buy frozen ready-made skins for gyoza and siu mai, and you have to defrost them before using them. After they have thawed the skins shouldn’t be frozen again because defrosting them a second time will make them too sticky.

But your siu mai can be frozen without any problems, and they will taste as good as fresh ones.