Leung was ahead of his time because he felt strongly that his

daughters were valuable in their own right, and that even though

they weren’t the much longed for sons, they too would contribute

to the all-important family tree. Their efforts might not bear fruit

until a future generation, but they would not be wasted. My

grandmother took this conviction, and her own natural self-belief

and determination, and changed her destiny; in doing so, she

changed the destiny of her daughters and their daughters in turn.

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From Submission to Resistance

Tender mothers, miserable concubines, brave revolutionaries and innocent princesses are some of the archetypes in East Asian literature. They can be roughly into two categories — traditional and non-traditional. For centuries, women have been expected to be passive and dependent, but their counterparts demonstrate self-assurance and self-determination. Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club and Helen Tse’s Sweet Mandarin present images of women cast in different molds. Both authors show that women, having undergone a transition from submission to resistance, are slowing emerging from victimhood.

Ishiguro, Tan and Tse portray women of the last generation as obedient, exemplifying the kind of submissiveness expected of them by mainstream society. Etsuko in A Pale View of Hills, for one, does all the housework and serves Jiro, her husband, and Ogata, her father-in-law. Likewise, Tai Po in Sweet Mandarin also is subservient to her husband Leung and belongs to his family – to be used at their whim. Although Etsuko and Tai Po take care of their entire families respectively, neither has a right to speak for herself or anyone else. Being a wife, the responsibilities are to keep the house tidy and to cook – as well as bear a son to the household. That era believed women do not have any sense for serious matters. In A Pale View of the Hills – his colleague demonstrates an equally patronizing attitude towards women when he criticizes his own wife for being an ignorant voter in elections. “My wife votes for Yoshida just because he looks like her uncle,” he says. “That’s typical of women. They don’t understand politics. They think they can choose the country’s leaders the same way they choose dresses” (Ishiguro, 63).

In The Joy Luck Club, women’s submissiveness can be attributed to their lack of self-determination. Lindo Jong, one of the mothers, is forced to marry a boy younger than she. An-mei Hsu, another mother, is taught by her mother not to speak up and to bear whatever that is bestowed upon her. It is fate that one cannot resist, according to an old Chinese saying. In that historical period, a woman was seldom allowed to exercise her free will.

Women of the last generation, however, have changed with the times and have learned to be brave survivors of human tragedies. Although Mrs. Fujiwara in A Pale View of Hills has lost her son and husband in the war, she manages to forget the pain. “But that’s all in the past now,” she tells Etsuko. “We’ve all had to put things behind us. . . .” (Ishiguro, 76). She always teaches Etsuko to be optimistic about the future as people could not reclaim what has been lost. Although nothing could compensate for her loss, Fujiwara’s stoicism helps her look forward.

Likewise, when Lily in Sweet Mandarin gives up Ah Bing for adoption, that guilt 89 years later pierced her heart yet she hardened herself to become the first woman to open a Chinese restaurant in the United Kingdom. This was a remarkable achievement for  a Chinese woman to succeed in post – war Britain because initially, the locals thought she was Japanese and boycotted the restaurant fearing she would poison them. It was Lily’s decision to hire the local loudmouth, Mavis, which saved the business and helped pave the way for Lily’s restaurant empire to take off.

In The Joy Luck Club, the mothers were once passive, but they learned to be optimistic during the war and to resist what is supposedly their destiny. Suyuan Woo, for example, brings cheer to her peers during the war by forming a club to play mahjong and hold parties. We may think that she is escaping into a world of fancy, but “to despair was to wish back for something already lost,” she says. “What was worse, we asked among ourselves, to sit and wait for our own deaths with sombre faces? Or to choose our own happiness?” (Tan, 25). She knows perfectly well that she could not change the course of the war, but she could take control of her attitude toward her life.

As for Lindo Jong , she succeeds in devising a clever scheme to annul her “blind marriage” to a child husband. Meanwhile, An-mei Hsu, having learned from her mother’s suicide, rejects the self-destructive path she has taken. She comes to realize that bearing one’s suffering quietly only intensifies the pain, and decides to speak up, claiming what she deserves.

Independent and self-assured, Niki in A Pale View of Hills is irritated by whatever she perceives as an intrusion into her private life or infringement on her freedom. She would chastise her mother, Etsuko, for asking such an innocuous question as what her boyfriend’s name is. She frankly challenges the concept of marriage as a respectable institution and does not think there is any problem having children born out of wedlock.

The daughters in The Joy Luck Club lack the confidence and to shape their own lives as Niki does. Therefore, they turn to their mothers for advice and emotional support in their struggle against the forces of a patriarchal society. A mother may serve as a marriage counselor, advising her daughter to assert her right to speak or to leave her husband if that is the only option left. Rose, for example, finally discovers the power of her words (Tan, 196) and claims what she deserves in her marriage while Lena decides to lead a new life without her spouse.

The next generations of Lily Kwok in Sweet Mandarin – Mabel and her daughter Helen Tse (the author) are seen to grow in confidence and the grandchildren are given opportunities to achieve success (something not available to Lily nor Mabel). Indeed the grandchildren, The Tse sisters who opened Sweet Mandarin were a lawyer, financier and engineer and education became the key to unlock this family from the poverty trap.

The women characters in The Joy Luck Club, Sweet Mandarin and A Pale View of Hills demonstrate a change of attitude towards the subservient status assigned to them. They have learned to be assertive, claiming their rights of speech and of self-determination. They strive to shape their own lives, challenge unjust practices, or at least dodge them.

Written by students of FC1750.06 at Founders College, York University Vol.1, no. 3, June-August, 1996 and adapted April 2008

(a portrait of Lion Heads in their Lion Headquarters – they are so gorgeous, you just want to scoff the lot of them now)

Q: So Lion Head, tell me about yourself

LH: Well, I’m the best lunch companion you can get from Sweet Mandarin – I am king of all the dim sums. Some call me ‘smooth and a real meaty treat’.

Q: Where does your name originate from, Lion Head?

LH: My name comes from the clan “Lion’s Head Meatballs” from 900 B.C. An old Chinese spinister who became the only woman chef to the Emperor of China made delicious pork meatballs for the Emperor’s afternoon tea. To ward off evil curses, she gave my ancestors (the meatball) the courage of a lion and the Emperor, on first sight exclaimed “Wow this mere meatbll resembles a Lions Head”. The Emperor bit into the Lion Head and jumped for joy that he had tasted Heaven.  So, that’s how Lion Head the name, and reputation stuck with us.

Q: What advice would you give to other wannabes who want to join the list?

LH: Exercise, only the trimmest meats get into the gang, and you gotta be the best you can. So even the chicken wing (heheh) can get in there, just.

Q: What are your interests?

LH: I love singing karoke, but sometimes the neighbours tell me off for singing too loud. I can’t apologise for my natural talents – that’s the roar of a real lion head!

Q: You’re an eligible bachelor dim sum. Tell the audience what your ideal dim summette would be like?

LH: (laughs) Someone who is carries herself well, smells gorgeous and loves to sing. Ahem, like the Beautiful Beef Ball – she’s mighty fine.

So, now you’ve met the mighty Lion Ball. Meet him face to face at Sweet Mandarin for lunch from Wed – Sun (inclusive) for the DIM SUM SPECIAL (EAT ALL YOU CAN FOR A TENNER).

Excerpt from Chapter One

My great-grandmother gave birth to and lost three sons, none of whom survived beyond their second birthday, and although in the end she gave Leung six children who survived to adulthood, they were all girls.

Some of my grandmother’s first memories are of her brothers’ deaths. She remembers the eldest sleeping in his cot one night, and then, the next day when he did not wake, the way her mother screamed. A dark cloud fell on the house. For months her parents were tearful and solemn; no one in the family was allowed to speak about what had happened.

Buy the Book: www.amazon.com

village close to the city of Guangzhou, a port on the Pearl River in south eastern China. Downstream of the city, the Pearl splits into a vast delta and spills into the South China Sea, and on either side of itsmouth lie the prosperous old colonies of Hong Kong and Macau. Guangzhou has always been called ‘the Flower City’ because it has warm, wet, monsoon weather which means that, unusually for China, flowers bloom there all year round. According to local folktales, the fields of flowers which surrounded the city first blossomed when five celestial deities rode in on five rams, each with an ear of rice in its mouth. The immortals gave the rice ears to the farmers and promised them that there would never be famine in Guangzhou. When they flew away, they left behind the rams who turned into stone and became the sculptures which now sit in Yuexiu Park in the city.  The legend is beautiful, and promises prosperity, but when my grandmother was born in the region in 1918 she only knew extreme poverty.

Lily Kwok was born in a small village in Southern China in 1918, confounding the midwife who’d predicted that she must be a boy because she had kicked so hard in the womb. That independence, strength and energy stayed with her all her life. Lily is 88 now, and still a fit, intelligent and – I’m afraid to say – stubborn woman despite all that she has been through. She and I are very alike. Lily and my mother, Mabel, inspired and shaped much of what I have done with my life: my success at school and in business; my return to the catering trade; my journey back to China to rediscover my roots, and in doing so, discovering her roots too. Her story is my story, and it’s the story of Sweet Mandarin. My sisters and I were immersed from birth in the Chinese catering business – the fourth generation of our family to make a living from food. We grew up in a family firm that was built on decades of graft and hard-earned experience, and we were expected to give up our evenings and weekends to help out behind the counter or in the kitchen. Not surprisingly, by the time we were teenagers we just wanted a way out. I became a lawyer, Lisa, my twin, a financier and Janet an engineer, but for all our efforts to escape we found ourselves choosing to follow in Mabel and Lily’s footsteps in the end. We opened our own restaurant together in 2004, and called it Sweet Mandarin. None of our friends in the Manchester Chinese community understood why we were doing it. The restaurant business is a very demanding one – the hours are long, the work hard and the economics precarious. One moment you’re in the black, the next something unexpected has plunged you into the red. It’s a tough, male-dominated world too, so why would three twenty-something professional ladies with good degrees and white-collar careers want to risk it all for something they’d seen their parents slave over all their lives? Our friends in Manchester had done everything they could to avoid taking on any responsibility for their own parents’ restaurants and takeaways, even moving hundreds of miles away so it was impossible for their family to call them up and expect them to rush home to help out. Living any nearer would involve a burden of guilt and obligation from which they were desperate to be free. I could count on one hand the number of my Chinese peers who were going back into catering.

Very little has been written about the experiences of mainland Chinese immigrants to Hong Kong and to Britain, but I knew that as I discovered more about the journey my grandmother had made, and the extraordinary things that had happened to her, this was a story that had to be told. It’s shared by many of the Chinese who settled in this country, who also carved out a place in their new homeland through the catering trade.

Here’s a date for your diaries: 8 July 08 – our launch date in the USA for the book. Eight is a lucky number for Chinese – it means wealth, and luck especially if you throw in a dash of red.

So far, this book, SWEET MANDARIN which started off with a few scribbles on the back of the greaseproof paper (used to wrap delicious morsels of food such as spring rolls) has escalated into a published book by Random House that has been distributed to 33 countries and recently been recorded as an audio book by BBC Books.

So the next step is the U.S.A. 84 days to go and counting. To celebrate this new breakthrough, and getting the book endorsed by Amy Tan and Oprah’s chef, I’m going to post a little of the book every day. That way, you can read about our family’s history and understand why Sweet Mandarin is important to us, and why when we welcome you in with open arms and a delicious meal, you are more than a customer – you are a friend of the family.

If you want to buy the book, UK stockists include bookshops like Waterstones, Borders, USA stockists include Barnes and Noble, Books & Books, as well as the department store Harvey Nichols. You can also find the book on www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, etc.

Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt,  announced the appointment of the new  appointments of the Ethnic Minority Business Forum which includes Sweet Mandarin’s CEO, Lisa Tse.

The Ethnic Minority Business Forum is an advisory non-departmental public body which strengthens the Government’s dialogue with black and minority ethnic (BME) business communities over Government policies and services which affect the ability of BME entrepreneurs to start and successfully grow their businesses. EMBF members are ethnic minority entrepreneurs from across the nine English regions and include people of different ages, gender and backgrounds.

Lisa Tse took up her appointment on 1 April 2008, and said “I am honoured to represent the Chinese community on the EMBF Board and be a voice for the Chinese people to Government level. Indeed at the EMBF Awards 2008, I was delighted to have nominated Wing Yip, who ultimately won Business of the Year 2008. It shows that the Chinese community, which has predominantly been silent within the media and political arenas are nonetheless strong performers and excellent business minds in the entrepreneurial sphere.”

The EMBF reports to the Secretary of State and meets the Minister for Small Business, and the Chief Executive of the Small Business Service on a regular basis.

This is Lisa Tse here, CEO of Sweet Mandarin. People often wonder what makes me tick. How do I juggle everything and how come you are everywhere? The question I often get asked is “What do you do in your spare time?” I look at them and smile. Do you really want to know what I do in my spare time? hehehe What spare time?

I’ve just been appointed on the board of the UK Government body EMBF which helps start ups and new businesses grow – how to be more entrepreneurial I guess.

Another exciting ‘spare time’ activity is representing TIE as the Manchester Regional Head. I love what I do. Therefore it never feels like ‘work’. I’m not tied to the rat race. I’m not tied to the monthly pay cheque. I meet the most fascinating of people from Liz Hurley to politicians to local businesses. I learn every day and I love my life.

 So, what do I do in my spare time – I would say that I ‘go out with friends’ – and we talk business, build business and have a whale of a time. If you want to learn more, come and join me at TIE.

What is TIE ?

TiE Members are entrepreneurs and professionals with an interest in entrepreneurship, either in a start-up context or within a larger company. They represent a diverse set of industries, including academia, software and information technologies, biotech, legal, financial, and other services.       Membership is open to individuals of all backgrounds and experiences with the payment of annual dues. 

If you fancy joining, drop me an email at sweetmandarin@gmail.com

All the best,

Lisa

In this series, I will explore with you a few dishes that we serve at Sweet Mandarin, an award winning restaurant in Manchester (www.sweetmandarin.com) run by three twentysomething sisters (including me).

(c) Food of the Orient – Shanghai by Helen Tse, published by Chinatown Magazine

As a British Born Chinese, I have lived a very British way of life being educated in Manchester and Cambridge University. However, throughout my life, I grew up with the backdrop of serving and cooking in the family food business and continue my involvement in the catering empire as a co-owner of Sweet Mandarin. Chinese food has had an overwhelming presence in my life and been the catalyst for my hunger for understanding China and the significance of food in its culture. This series explores the cities where I stayed, the lives that crossed my path and the amazing food with a story to tell. China is a captivating and vivacious collection of diverse cities, provinces and regions. In the south, Guangdong, the Cantonese speaking region is renowned for its steaming, boiling and stir frying and dim sum feasts which we have become accustomed to love in the western world. Beijing in the coldest area of China boasts the Emperor’s banquet, the world famous Peking Duck and hot pot. In the east, Shanghai offers its famous Shanghai Dumplings, whilst the Sichuan provinces easily provide the hottest and spiciest cuisine.

This week, I stayed in Shanghai and fell in love with the city. In the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai was home to gangsters, warlords, 24-7 nightclubs and hotels that supplied heroin on room service. Its people were a mix of British, Chinese, Americans, French, Gernans, Japanese and White Russians and life was an extreme pole of poverty and wealth.
Today, Shanghai appeared as alien to my idea of China as it did to its residents in the 1920s. However, a century later, Shanghai remains a foreign influenced metropolis on Chinese soil. From the dazzling new skyscrapers to the imperial British architecture on the Bund, Shanghai is a grand, eclectic mix of East and West. No wonder it is the haven of the new generation of Chinese from Hong Kong and the expatriates.
The beauty that lies before me in Shanghai is breathtaking and silences the noise and confusion on the busy roads. There is grandeur in the heart of the bustling city of Shanghai juxtaposed with absolute poverty and a return to the last century only a few miles out of the city in Zhujiajiao.

It was in these little villages lost to the 21st century, that my first dish of Shanghai dumplings was savoured and enjoyed. The residents continued their daily chores in traditional Chinese cotton jackets with simple butterfly buttons. Babies were strapped to their grandmother’s back with a piece of red cotton and the fat baby’s rosy cheek hung out over the tightly bound material, as his ink black eyes stared in awe at me, a stranger in this untouched and abandoned village, that fell through the net of modernization. Houses were primitive and doors opened, a sign that trust still existing amongst its residents and the bare home life with nothing worth stealing. There were no cars and only the odd bicycle rode by a young boy with wild hair. A blind woman no taller than four feet weaved beautiful straw ornaments. Husband and wife teams huddled around open stoves which cooked dozens of Shanghai dumplings and the aroma of hot, savoury dumplings permeated throughout the street. The glossy pastry bronzed as it slightly stuck to the pot (hence the nickname “pot stickers”). I became hungry just smelling the dumplings. I bought a portion (four beautifully pinched dumplings) to eat and after devouring them, bagged a portion for the road. The dumpling pastry was delicate and broke easily. The juices from the filling were clear and sweet, and the filling was a wholesome meat mince and vegetables. They were just what I needed for the cold winter’s day.
The legend about these Shanghai dumplings was that in the Eastern Han Period (Dong Han) an official called Zhang Zhongjing invented a kind of food to help poor people keep warm in the bitterly cold winter. The original recipe created the dumpling with ears and the filling consisted of mutton, hot pepper and medicinal roots (which helped to circulate the blood). The people loved the taste of the dumplings and started to make them themselves with whatever filling they had available. The dumplings are semi circles shaped like a gold ingots and are a regular dish at dim sum and Spring Festivals. They are eaten to bring good luck and fortune for the new year and probably also because they are delicious. From such a simple dumpling held a piece of political history! I cavorted with the residents until they showed me how to cook the dumplings in the authentic style. The sacred ingredients are detailed below.

Shanghai Dumplings (“Pot Stickers”)

INGREDIENTS
• 4 1/2 cups (500 g) flour
• 9 oz (250 g) lean boneless pork, minced
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 5 tsp rice wine
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, chopped
• 1 tsp salt to taste
• 3 1/2 oz (100 g) leeks
• 3 1/2 oz (100 g) sesame oil
• 1 tsp flour mixed with 2 tbsp water

Mix the pork with the soy sauce, rice wine, ginger, MSG and salt. Stir in one direction, adding 5 oz (150 ml) of water, a little at a time until the pork becomes sticky. Add the leeks and sesame oil and blend well, and divide into 60 portions. Set aside.

Stir 7 oz (200 ml) of water into the flour. Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. Let rest for 30 minutes. Roll into a long cylinder and cut into 60 portions. Flatten each piece and roll into a circle about 3 inches (8 cm) in diameter. Place 1 portion of the filling on each circle and fold over in half. Pinch tightly to seal the edges and form a semi circle. Repeat until all the dough and filling are used.
Arrange the pouches in a large pan. Heat to moderately hot, then add water to cover the pouches one-third of the way up. Cover the pan and cook over high heat until the water is almost absorbed. Trickle the flour-water mixture around the pouches. Cover the pan and saute over low heat until the flour forms a crisp film that link the dumplings together. Sprinkle the dumplings with a little sesame oil, cover again, and saute until the pouches are browned on the bottom. Remove with a spatula and serve. Saute and serve the dumplings in batches.

Juicy Steamed Dumplings
The dumplings can also be steamed rather than fried. Place the dumpling in a steamer and steam for 5 minutes over high heat.
Note: These dumplings are delicate in appearance and taste. the wrappers are thin and the filling deliciously juicy

Come and visit us to try these delicacies - or we can outdoor cater for your events in Manchester.

(the photo shows one of our house special dim sums – the chicken satay skewers – with meaty chunks of chicken breast meat, fresh green peppers lightly grilled and drizzled with a satay peanutty sauce that takes you away to Penang, Malaysia! – you should try it )

We’re launching a special offer – Unlimited Dim Sum for a Tenner for lunch at the weekends. Why? Because its to celebrate the run up to the Beijing Olympic Games 2008.

 Here’s our article on dim sum that was published by Chinatown Magazine. We also conduct Dim Sum Masterclasses for schools and private corporate events.

Food of the Orient Series ©: Sweet Mandarin travels to Guangzhou by Helen Tse

As a British Born Chinese, I have lived a very British way of life being educated in Manchester and Cambridge University. However, throughout my life, I grew up with the backdrop of serving and cooking in the family restaurant and continue my involvement in the catering empire as a co-owner of Sweet Mandarin Restaurant (www.sweetmandarin.com). Chinese food has had an overwhelming presence in my life and been the catalyst for my hunger for understanding China and the significance of food in its culture. This series explores the cities where I stayed, the lives that crossed my path and the amazing food with a story to tell. China is a captivating and vivacious collection of diverse cities, provinces and regions. In the south, Guangdong, the Cantonese speaking region is renowned for its steaming, boiling and stir frying and dim sum feasts which we have become accustomed to and love in the western world. Beijing in the coldest area of China boasts the Emperor’s banquet, the world famous Peking Duck and hot pot. In the east, Shanghai offers its famous Shanghai Dumplings, whilst the Sichuan provinces easily provide the hottest and spiciest cuisine.

I finally arrived at Guangzhou which is famous for its “dim sum”. Literally translated, “dim sum” means “to touch your heart”. Guangzhou is north of the Pearl River Delta, adjacent to Hong Kong and holds a special place in my heart as the place where my family originates from. The nickname for this province is “Flower City” because flowers keep blossoming all year round. It also holds the myth that there were five celestials riding five rams with rice in their mouth. The celestials gave the rice to the residents of Guangzhou and blessed the province with good harvests and an abundance of food.

Today, the celestials have flown away but the five rams have been turned into stone sculptures in the Yuexiu Park area. The blessings have seemingly been fulfilled and the city is brimming with masses of people, bicycles and restaurants. To date, there are over 10,000 restaurants in the city, with seats for over 500,000. The people of Guangzhou are natural born gourmets. Food in Guangzhou is famous worldwide. Indeed in 1927, Chiang Kai-Shek, the leader of the nationalist party responsible for unifying China, set up his headquarters in Guangzhou and enjoyed dining at the many restaurants serving dim sum.
Dim sum is often referred to as “yum cha” (?? which means “drinking tea”. This interchangeable expression originated from the teahouses which set up along the Silk Road. The Silk Road linked China to Syria and was travelled by merchants and farmers trading their silk, gold, ivory, spices, exotic animals and plants. Travellers and rural farmers, exhausted after working hard, would also go to teahouses for a relaxing afternoon of tea. At first, it was considered inappropriate to combine tea with food, because people believed it would lead to excessive weight gain. However, people later discovered that tea can aid in digestion. Therefore, teahouse owners began adding more variety of snacks, so the tradition of dim sum evolved.

Dim sum mania spread to Hong Kong as the Guangzhou population immigrated to Hong Kong in the 1920s. Chinese restaurants grew exponentially in Hong Kong and soon dim sum was available from 6am through to late afternoon. Restaurants in Hong Kong and Guangzhou became filled mainly with the elderly population who often gathered to eat after the morning session of tai chi exercises, often enjoying the morning newspapers.

In the west, dim sum came about as a natural result of Chinese immigrants moving to the western world. When Europe started trading with the Orient, the seaport of Guangzhou became the gateway to the West. The Chinese readily absorbed these cosmopolitan influences, and being great travellers themselves, emigrated to the United States of America and the United Kingdom. They were the first to make Chinese cooking known to the Western world and as a result dim sum has become the firm favourite of the Western world.

Go to a Chinese restaurant on a Sunday afternoon and you will be greeted by a sea of Chinese families spanning three generations. Dim sum is the Chinese equivalent of French hors d’oeuvres or Spanish tapas. It’s a colourful and loud dining experience starting with the rush for vacant seats and the hustle and bustle of the gesticulating waiters selling their dim sum specials from their trolleys. Bamboo containers filled with steamed dim sum are stacked high and quickly snapped up. Waiting on staff ask what kind of tea we want to drink offering a vast array of jasmine tea, oolong tea, pu-er tea and green tea which helps to wash down the dim sum. The noise of the chatter of the diners is deafening. It’s a busy, frantic affair and there is an air of organized panic in the restaurants, which adds to the excitement and entertainment. Dim sum is an overwhelming introduction to the Chinese nation’s love of food, gregariousness and cheerful chatter.

I love dim sum. There are over 200 dishes to choose from. One Cantonese saying goes that anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies is edible. Another says that the only four-legged things that Cantonese people won’t eat are tables and chairs.

The range of cooking skills required to make dim sum is vast. There is usually a dim sum master overseeing his section of the kitchen and there is a real art involved in making the dishes. Some dishes are steamed, others are fried. Some are baked. The variety of tastes is also mind boggling – sweet, sour, savoury and chilli.

There are firm favourites such as “har gow” (prawn dumplings wrapped in translucent rice paper), “siu mi” (pork dumplings) and “char siu bow” (pork buns in a white fluffy dough). If you are feeling more adventurous, an eye opening experience with a stronger flavour is “fung jow” (chickens feet in yellow bean sauce and chillis). One caveat – this particular dish is not for the faint hearted. The sweet dishes for dessert range from the egg custard tarts which are extremely delicious to sago pudding or mango pudding which are refreshing and a great ending to the dim sum experience.

A meal in a restaurant opens the taste buds, but cooking dim sum for my friends and family widens all the senses. I learnt the authentic recipes from Guangzhou and used them at Sweet Mandarin. Together with my sisters, Lisa and Janet we made every dim sum from fresh. Stuffing and shaping wontons was the real family enterprise. We made the stuffing from a light prawn mince and wrapped the teaspoon of filling with a fine egg based pastry. We all left our individual stamp on the won tons in the way we crimped the edges. I added a flamboyant tail on these wontons, which can then be dipped in the sweet and sour dip. My everyday rituals of properly selecting produce, cooking and presenting a meal, which I have inherited from my family, have given me an insight to see the meaning of my own cooking as a metaphor for life.

I would love to share with you our recipe on making this exquisite dim sum.

Ingredients
For the Prawn Filling
250g pack shrimps
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp potato starch
1 egg white
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
Hot vegetable oil to lightly fry the wontons
Ingredients for the Wonton Wrappers
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 egg yolk
1 tsp potato starch
1/4 cup of water
2 cups of plain flour
Dressing for the wontons
Serve with Sweet Mandarin’s The General Tse’s Sweet and Sour Sauce
Method to make the wonton pastry
1. Kneed the ingredients together into a ball. The consistency is dough like.
2. Leave in the fridge for half an hour.
3. Roll out into a very thin sheet (as thick as a piece of paper) with a rolling pin ensuring there is plenty of flour to avoid sticking.
4. Cut into squares 3inches squared.
Method to make delicious and easy wontons
1. Put all the prawn mixture into a food processor and mix thoroughly.
2. Shape into balls the size of walnuts.
3. Place the filling balls into the centre of the wonton wrappers. To make the tail, gather the four edges and twist together.
4. Heat oil
5. Place wontons in hot oil for 5-6 minutes or until cooked through.
6. Drain from oil.
7. Serve the wontons with the Sweet Mandarin’s General Tse’s Sweet and Sour Sauce.

Come and try out Sweet Mandarin’s dim sum. We’re doing a special offer to launch the new dim sum menu – Unlimited Dim Sum for a Tenner for Lunch at Weekends.