Har Gow (Prawn Dumplings)

Ingredients

• 400 g raw prawns, peeled
• 60 g cornflour
• 40 g tapioca starch
• 80 g bamboo shoots, finely diced
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tsp Shaoxing wine
• 1/4 tsp white pepper
• 1 tsp sugar
• 4 tsp vegetable oil
• 3 spring onions, finely sliced

Method

1. Two textures of prawn

   Chop a third of the prawns to a paste and the rest into rough chunks. The paste binds; the chunks are what you actually taste. Chill the mixture while you make the dough.

2. Season the filling

   Mix in the bamboo shoots, sesame oil, wine, white pepper, sugar, salt and spring onions, and stir hard in one direction until sticky. Keep it cold — warm prawn filling turns woolly.

3. Scald the starch

   Mix the cornflour and tapioca, then pour on 130 ml of genuinely boiling water while stirring fast, and add the oil. The boiling water is the whole point: it gelatinises the starch, which is what makes the wrapper translucent and stretchy. Warm water gives you a crumbly mess.

4. Knead hot and keep covered

   Knead the dough while it is still almost too hot to handle until smooth, then keep it under a damp cloth at all times. This dough has no gluten and dries into cracked shards within a couple of minutes of being uncovered.

   5 min

5. Press, do not roll

   Pinch off small pieces and flatten each with the oiled flat of a cleaver or a smooth glass, rather than rolling. Fill and pleat, sealing firmly.

6. Steam

   Steam on oiled paper over a rolling boil for 6 to 7 minutes, until the wrappers turn from white to translucent and you can see the pink prawn through them. That colour change is the only doneness test you need.

   7 min