By: Izzy Cheung, Staff Writer
Documenting recipes is important because it allows future generations, such as you and I, to learn a bit about those who came before us. As a Chinese Canadian, I sometimes find that I have no real connection to the place I “come from,” as I was born in Vancouver and have lived here my entire life. This Asian Heritage Month, I tried to strengthen my roots by learning my grandma’s Har Gow recipe.
One of the more popular traditional Chinese dishes, Har Gow are shrimp dumplings typically eaten during Dim Sum, but can be enjoyed at any occasion. Like other dishes, Har Gow are best made at home with the guidance of loved ones. This recipe consists of a crystalline wrapper, a filling of shrimp and water chestnut, and the story of a Chinese immigrant who learned to call Canada home.
THE WRAPPER / STRONG FOUNDATIONS
Boil water and pour into some wheat starch. Use a chopstick to combine the starch and hot water.
Water sources in Macau allowed my grandma and her siblings to catch their own shrimp. As children, they’d make a net out of a cloth and bamboo, put bait in the middle of the trap, and drop it into the water to lure in the shrimp.
Once the wheat starch and water are combined, add tapioca starch and cornstarch, and begin kneading the dough. If the dough sticks to your hands, it’s too soft — add more wheat starch if it’s too soft, or more water if it’s too thick.
Thick mud provided entertainment to them when toys weren’t available. Playtime consisted of making pots, stoves, dolls — you name it — out of mud from the fields. Things were different there, but not in all aspects. Schooling took place in a big building, similar to here, and was grouped in classrooms sorted by grade. Sometimes, teachers took them to see movies, but getting to the theatres required a long walk.
Form a ball with the dough and break it into pieces around the size of a fist. Roll each ball into a rope. The thickness of the rope will dictate the size of the dumpling you make — the usual thickness is one inch, per my grandma’s instruction.
Instruction came easy for my grandma, being the eldest child in her family. With her mom hard at work in the rice fields and her father helping to generate electricity for the city, she cooked for the entire family and brought water home from the well using large buckets placed on her shoulders. That was the way things worked — the younger siblings would take on the smaller duties, such as washing the dishes, while the eldest shouldered the brunt of the heavy work.
Cut the rope into one inch pieces and roll them into a ball. Later, you’ll roll the rest of the fist-sized dough balls into ropes.
Ropes were used to help get food from street vendors. Living on the fifth floor of their building meant going to grab food from the street vendors would require heading down to street level, then coming back up to eat. Instead of wasting time, they would call out to the street vendors to see what food they had. If they liked it, they would place their order and lower a basket down to the street with money in it. In turn, the vendors would take the money and put the food in the basket. For a city as big as Macau, food-based screaming matches such as these were typical — practically tradition.
Using a tortilla press or the side of a cleaver, press the ball into a one-millimetre-thick disk-form, shaping it with utmost care.
Caring and respecting those who came before us was central to the typical Chinese household. They would burn incense every day as a tribute to the ancestors — which was an activity that everybody participated in.
Tip: doing all the wrappers at once will dry out the dough — make one rope and fill one fist-sized ball worth of dough with filling before making the others.
FILLING THE DUMPLINGS / ARRIVING SOMEWHERE NEW
You can either use a whole shrimp or cut it into pieces. To make things easier, take five to six separate shrimp and chop them into a paste. This will allow the other ingredients to stick together.
Sticking together was important for grandma’s family, but she understood what she had to do in order to create a better life for the next generation. She found out about my grandfather through a mutual friend, took one look at his photo, saw that he was already in Canada, and agreed to marry him. Six months worth of letters later, she immigrated to Yorkton, Saskatchewan, to start their life together.
Mince the water chestnut and add it to the shrimp and shrimp paste. Add salt, sugar, sesame oil, and MSG (optional). Mix until combined.
Combining her Chinese culture with the small-town life of Yorkton was tough. Macau was bigger, had more things to do, and of course, was home to her family. Working with my grandpa at their bakery took over her life. The language barrier made interacting with the rest of the community difficult, so it was hard to make friends. However, as time went on, bigger occasions like Chinese New Year resulted in groups getting together to play mahjong and have dim sum.
Take one heaping teaspoon of filling and put it into the middle of the disk-shaped wrapper (measurement not rigid, gauge based on the size of the wrapper — there should be enough wrapper to fold over the filling).
Filling the stomachs of her and her husband required some experimentation. The Chinese community in Yorkton was small, so there was a lack of diverse food options. Since there were no restaurants that served the food she was used to, she begun developing her own recipes in order to eat the food she knew from home.
COMBINING THE TWO
For aesthetics — cup your left hand and hold the dumpling in your palm. Use your right-hand thumb and pointer finger to pinch the end closest to you. With your left thumb on the inside, push the filling against the sealed end. Pleating the dough with your left pointer finger, pinch the edges closed with your right fingers. Continue until you have three to four pleats. Pinch the left-side end of the dumpling to seal it.
For efficiency — fold the dough so it covers the filling and pinch the edges so it’s sealed inside.
Inside and outside, grandma was ecstatic about moving to Vancouver. After all, she was born in Macau — a big, busy city — so coming to Vancouver from a small town was a welcome change. Here, transportation is more convenient, and there are more things to do. More opportunities to share culture, more places to try Har Gow, and more people to play mahjong with. Grandma loves to gamble — but only when she’s winning.
Fill a pot with hot water. Depending on the size of your pot, place the dumplings on a steamer basket with holes OR an oiled plate/bowl. Put the basket/plate/bowl over the boiling water and let it steam for 5-6 minutes.
Minutes turn to months, and months turn to new millennia. Time wears away at memories, eating away at them like faded photographs kept at the bottom of a box. Throughout the years, the message stays the same. She moved to Canada in search of a better life. Now, everybody is here, in North America, and the homeliness that she once associated with memories of Macau have become exactly that — memories.
“Right now,” she tells me, “Vancouver feels like home.”
