(Joyful music) (audience applauding) - Hi, welcome to Yan Can Cook!

I see you smiling at home.

Everybody in the studio is smiling too.

You are all so happy.

You must have just come back from a dim sum brunch.

In China, brunch means a lot more than between breakfast and lunch.

To us Chinese, brunch means a big lunch.

But seriously, dim sum brunch is a very, very unique idea of serving breakfast as well as for lunch.

You start it out around four or five o'clock in some restaurant, they open around five or six o'clock.

You eat until three o'clock, and then you serve a variety of different delicious morsels.

It can be deep fry it can be steam.

Nobody ever really know what the origin and the history of dim sum.

Basically, what it is, whatever is left over, you chop them all up, you put them in the little dumpling.

You can pan fry them, you can braise them, you can deep fry them, you can steam them, and you can serve them in what is called a dim sum brunch.

Here, the first thing I want to show you is something very, very unique, very interesting, very easy to do.

Everybody knows that in a Chinese dim sum restaurant there are all kind of stuff.

There are spring roll, wonton, everybody is familiar.

But some of those are a lot less familiar.

Dim sum, the key to dim sum, is the variety.

When you touch your heart, you should touch your heart lightly, like this, not like this.

This will give you heart attack.

(audience laughing) The idea, variety means a lot of turnover in food, which brings us to my first dim sum dish.

I call it golden meat-filled turnovers.

Here, all you have to do is use glutenous rice.

Use glutenous rice flour, it looks like this, in packages, you can buy them and they are nice flour.

They have a very similar consistency and coarseness of regular wheat flour.

What you do is you make it into a dough with approximately 2/3 a cup of wheat flour and about 1 1/2 to two cups of glutenous rice.

Just use about 3/4 cup of hot water, and then use about one cup of boiling water or just regular cold water.

Mix them up, make it into a dough.

After you make it into a dough, you shape them into little balls like this.

Look at this.

Little ball.

Of course, you can also add a tiny.. to give a little taste to the dough.

And then after that, you shape them into, this is how the Chinese do it, you shape them into a little pancake, small pancake-like disc everybody can see that?

If you want, you can even roll it up with a little rolling pin, see, trying a little bit of this flour.

And then you can roll it up like this.

But make sure they are not too dry, otherwise it will crack.

The Chinese normally would prefer to do it by using the finger.

Do it like this.

Do it like this.

Okay.

Shape it, and make sure you have enough.

Do about three or four of these at one time.

Don't do all of them in the last minute.

Set them aside, put it over here.

And then you have to make the filling.

Here we turn the heat up and I use approximately, let me get some oil over here.

We have a little oil.

Always get ready some oil.

The farther you put away, the more exercise you do.

(audience laughing) We'll put it over here.

Stir, and then I'm gonna use approximately half a pound of ground pork.

Stir.

Because you've gotta make the filling.

And then some dry shrimp, about a quarter of a cup.

Dry shrimp.

About half a cup of water chestnuts, and about about half a cup or three tablespoons black mushroom.

Soak them in water for half and hour, and then chop them all up, and then also don't forget to put two to three green onion, chop them up, thinly sliced.

Stir-fry them, stir-fry them.

And then add white pepper, or black pepper, soy sauce, about two tablespoons of soy sauce, about one tablespoon of wine, and a tiny, tiny bit of sesame seed oil.

About one teaspoon at the most, okay?

And after this, you get a nice filling, like this.

Can you see that?

You shut it off.

And then you put in the fridge and let it cool down a little bit because when it's too hot it will not be convenient.

It will be too hot to fold it because the moisture.

So you've gotta set it and put it, let it cool down.

Now, in the meantime, I want to show you how easy it is to fill one.

Right before you fill this you heat up your wok because you're gonna do some deep frying.

Look at this.

You put about one teaspoon to one tablespoon of this filling.

If you put too much, not only you're not able to close it, it will look like dumpling is nine months pregnant.

(audience laughing) Okay?

You see how to do it?

You fold it, fold it into a little h.. Little moons like this.

I remember when I was growing up, I loved to have this.

That was many, many moons ago.

(audience laughing) Fold it like.

Can you see that?

Half.

And then if you want to make it fa.. you can use a little fork.

Go one, two, three, four, five, six.

Then shape into little nice turnover, like this.

Now, after this, you have to deep fry it, okay?

We'll put this over here and deep fry this.

Make sure the oil is about 360 degree to 375 degree, but not too hot.

If it's too hot, the dumpling outside will be burned, inside will be cold.

So make sure.

Then we remove all of these.

So, now after this is done, I wanna show you, this is beautiful, I wanna show you how it looks.

This is beautiful.

When it's nice and done, it will look like this is golden meat-filled dumpling.

Isn't that wonderful?

(audience applauding) I love it!

Now, how may of you have been to a dim sum restaurant?

For those who have never been there let me take you there.

Dim sum is a smorgasbord on wheels.

The waitress call our orders available in the cart.

Some dishes are steamed, like the har gau and siu mai.

Some are deep fry, like the spring rolls.

She'll even cut it for you.

This is my cousin.

See the handsome resemblance?

Mm, good.

Look at all this different type of dim sum.

These guys are going to try everything.

They are real connoisseurs.

There are over 100 variety of dim sum.

These two will be here for a long time.

I just got a card from those two!

They are still in the restaurant, hot at work.

I don't know how much longer they're gonna stick around.

They probably have, in order to try about 100 variety, they probably have to be there for about two years.

Dim sum is more popular in southern part of China.

In fact, go to northern part of China, there's no such thing as dim sum.

In fact in big Chinese restaurant where they serve dim sum, dim sum departments allow a lot of people because everything is made by hand manually, and because of the variety, you cannot make too many and try to freeze them.

In good restaurant, there's no such thing as frozen dim sum.

Everything is made to order.

They make it that particular day.

So dim sum chef normally go over there and go back to work maybe about five or six o'clock in the morning, and then they can open around eight.

Now you start, see the thing is the variety is the key of dim sum.

When you are at dim sum, when you order dim sum, you wanna make sure everything is nice and is fresh and steamy, so you should not really make this ahead of time and try to freeze them.

Of course you can do that.

I'm gonna add a tiny bit of steam to this show so I'm gonna make one of my favorite called steamed juicy bun.

Or you can call it juicy steamed bun.

It doesn't make any difference.

(audience laughing) And I start with the dough, which I use one package of yeast.

And also about half a cup of boiling water.

Or use warm water, because you've gotta dissolve the yeast and let the yeast dissolve a little bit.

And then you use approximately two cups of wheat flour about two tablespoon of sugar and about one to 1 1/2 tablespoon of lard or shortening.

Make it into smooth dough, let it set, let it rise a little bit, and push it down, and then you end up having dough rolled it out into long cylindrical, and then you cut it into about one inch ball, and then shape the ball, and I will show you how easy it is to shape it.

In the meantime you can ahead of time, everybody can see, one, turn it around, one, one, one, one, one, one.

When you do it, you gotta keep on saying one, one, one, one to remind yourself you're actually doi.. One, one, one, one.

It should be perfectly round.

Like this, look at this.

Should be perfectly round.

What I'm doing is I'm rolling the edge so when I fold it, it's perfect.

Now, when this is done, I get ready.

This filling, I have a quarter of a cup of broth which I dissolved with some gelatin.

And then also some ground pork.

It depends on what kind of buns that you wanna make.

This is chaozhou gou, you use ground pork.

Use about a quarter of a pound.

Some green onion, and tiny bit of egg.

Let's put some egg.

Okay.

And also, use about one egg.

Mix them all up and also use some salt.

About half a teaspoon of salt, tiny bit of sugar, and then some cornstarch, mix them all up.

If you want, you can even chop up s.. to put in there.

Also, you want to put a tiny bit of soy sauce, and a tiny bit, make sure it's enough juice because you call it juicy steamed bun.

Mix them all up.

This is how the Chinese do it.

This is how they exercise.

(audience laughing) See this?

Can you see this?

Nice into a thing like this.

And then you use this, and use a little scoop or spoon, you put this right in here.

You see this?

And then you hold onto this and you go one, two.

Now, the most important thing is you should not have too much, otherwise, three, now this is gonna be too much.

Okay.

One, two, three, four, five six, seven, eight, nine, 10.

You fold into a little bun like this shaped into a bun.

And then you put it over here.

Now, I have done a few of these ahead of time.

What you're gonna do is after this is done you can shape about 10 or 15, depends on how many people.

You should have about three or four of these for each guest.

And then you put them in this little bamboo steamer.

Okay, let's put this one, two, three, four, five, and then close it up, and then we're gonna steam this in this nice wonderful steamer.

Hit it up to boiling and then let it steam for about 12 to 15 minutes.

In the meantime, I wanna show you another very simple dish.

Everybody know that chicken in China is called gai, egg in China is called dan.

Gai dan means chicken egg.

Here I have, I'm gonna show you how to make something called dan tat, egg custard.

Here I have some pastry dough here which I shaped ahead of time.

When you have magnetic personality like me, (audience laughing) the dumplings will go like this.

You see this?

I'm gonna set this, I thawed these ahead of time and put these ..

This particular pastry dough have a tiny bit of lard and unsalted butter, you can use salted butter, but I use unsalted butter.

About a quarter of a cup of unsalted butter and about 1/8 and also one to 3/4 a cup of flour and a tiny bit of vanilla flavor.

And also I use a tiny, tiny bit of ice water so to make sure that when I work with it it's easier to work with the dough.

And then for the filling I have approximately 2/3 a cup of boiling water.

Nice, hot water.

Also approximately 2/3 of a cup of sugar.

Mix it up you can use a little bit more water if yo.. and then also I have a tiny bit, tiny bit of vanilla.

And then also have a tiny bit of evaporated milk.

Mix them all up.

We'll just whisk some egg.

Okay.

You do not have to add too much.

I use approximately, let me put this away, four eggs.

That's all you need, about four eggs.

Mix it all up.

And then you filter through this because you want to make sure you get a nice smooth texture.

Filter through this.

Look at this.

And then when it comes out you're gonna fill this up.

Let me remove this and put this over here.

And then we're gonna have wonderful things.

Fill this up very, very carefully.

Then you pick them very carefully.

You should do it right next to the oven.

Don't hold onto this and then run around the block.

(audience laughing) Look at how wonderful.

When this is done, you'll fill them all up, when this is done, and you bake them approximately 45 minutes, about 300 to 325 degree.

And then it will come out magical, like this.

Look at this.

When it's done, very important.

(audience applauding) Look at this.

Isn't that magical?

When it's done, you set it over there.

You have the done tart.

This is the tart tin.

Remind me of my own name, Martin.

(audience laughing) Tart tin.

This is also done.

We'll show you.

You never, never do this like this.

Always remove to make sure the heat is turned off and you open it like this.

Wow.

(audience applauding) This is beautiful, look at this.

What goes best with dim sum?

Tea.

In fact, in Chinese yum cha means going to dim sum lunch.

Yum means drink, cha means tea.

Now when you say let's go to have dim sum, you say let's go yum cha.

Order yum cha.

In fact, before us, drinking tea is not just a bag on a string.

I'm gonna show you how the Chinese drink tea.

They have been doing it for thousands of years.

Here, you start with a tea set like this.

You can have any set.

This is gorgeous looking set.

Wood carving set.

This tea set include a tea bowl and a tea pot, tea pitcher, tea funnel, and all these tea cups.

You have six people, you have six little baby teacups, and then gorgeous looking expensive tea.

And they even have teaspoon, everybody knows, this is a teaspoon made from bamboo.

First you put it into this little funnel because this is about $85 a pound, so you don't want to lose any of this.

And then you warm up your teapot, see this is the teapot.

See, you warm up your teapot like this.

And then you use the water from the teapot, you warm up your tea pitcher.

You want to make sure everything is warm.

And then with the tea pitcher, you want to warm up your teacup.

Why you have to warm up teapot, tea pitcher, tea.. (audience laughing) And everything?

Because you want to make sure when .. everything is nice and warm, because when it's warm it's more aromatic, you see.

Warm up all of these, okay?

Look at this.

This boiling, rolling water.

And then this is our tea bowl.

You put this for waste water so you don't have to go all over 3000 mile to figure out where I'm gonna put this.

We are gonna put it right here.

This can hold 16,000 gallons.

(audience laughing) And then, the next thing I wanna show you is use the tea spoon, put the tea through this tea funnel.

This way, you don't waste any tea leaf.

You use about half the volume of tea with about this much, with about one portion of tea.

Hot water, one to two.

And then you put this back.

Now the first brew, you do not drink the first brew because the first one you basically loosen up rehydrate the tea leaf, and loosen up the tea leaf, the release, the aroma.

And then this is how you do it.

This time, we are going to brew it for about 50 seconds.

A good tea leaf you can brew it for approximately 10 times.

Cheap tea leaf, one time.

You see this?

We put this because we don't want t..

The tea cup is already hot.

Look at this.

And then when this is hot, about 50 seconds.

You put this, instead of pouring the tea right from the teacup or teapot to the teacup, you put it into the tea pitcher first.

Why do you do that?

If you put the tea directly into this the first cup will be lighter.

The last cup will be a lot richer, a lot darker.

That means it's not uniform.

So you do it from the tea pitcher so this way every single cup with the same strength, the same color, same uniform, and then you hold onto it and you go, mm.

(audience laughing) This is a cup of tea.

Cheers!

(audience applauding) Now, this is called yum cha but I'm gonna show you how to do a very exciting dim sum I call quail egg siu mai.

This one you can steam it or you can deep fry it.

This is wonderful because this is quail egg.

I start with quail egg.

This is the live, fresh quail egg.

You can also find them in little cans like this.

Or you can buy them fresh in the market.

And then this is the wrapper.

You can buy them.

Don't bother to make them.

Of course if you have a little pasta mac.. you can make your own.

This is the regular wonton wrappers.

Square.

And this is the round siu mai wrap.. All you have to do is mix, I want to show the ingredient.

Mix about a quarter of a pound of ground pork, quarter of pound of shrimp, tiny bit of chopped water chestnut, or bamboo shoot, seasoned with soy sauce, about a tablespoon of soy sauce, a teaspoon of sesame seed oil, and a tiny, tiny bit of cooking wine, and a tiny bit of pepper.

Mix them all up.

And then I'm gonna show you how easy it is to fold this here you have a little dough.

This round dough.

And if you don't have this round dough, you just trim the square dough into.. Makes no difference.

You put this over here.

One little quail egg right here, can you see that?

Right in the center.

And then you shape this right like.. Can you see this?

And then if you are hungry you put more in here.

If you're extra hungry, you put more.

You open the pouch like this.

You open the pouch like this.

Now, the important thing is make sure this is open, so you can see everything inside.

Look at this.

Nice and everything inside.

Can you see that?

Everybody see, right?

Then you turn it upside down here you can see everything.

It's just like an open-ended deal.

Make sure you fold it up like this.

Now I'm gonna do a couple extra ones.

Big ones, small ones, it doesn't make any difference.

And then after that you put it in the steamer and let it steam for approximately 12 minutes or until it's done.

You put it over here.

Let's do another one.

So this way, we all have enough to eat.

Look at this.

Can everybody see that?

Just shape it like this, shape it look this, and it looks like this.

Can everybody see that?

It looks cute.

Now, after this, we'll put this in the bamboo steamer, we're going to steam these over here.

And steam them, while we're steaming them, I'm gonna show you some of the wonderful dim sum variety.

In fact, I just brought the whole thing from a dim sum restaurant.

I start with this favorite.

When you steam this, you notice they shrink a little bit.

This is the quail egg siu mai.

You can see the quail egg sticking out, it looks really cute.

In this little steamer like this, this is a restaurant steamer.

You can put a whole bunch of these.

Here is the quail egg siu mai.

Come over here.

It's the tarot root dumpling.

You deep fry and they're very flaky.

The dough is from tarot root.

And this is very interesting.

This is black sesame seed roe.

Sweet.

And this is curry meat-filled pastry.

You bake them.

And this is everybody's favorite.

This is the spring roll.

And this taste and looks like rice crispy, but it is actually made out of long strands of flour, and then sesame seed, and then honey.

And then you pack them up all and you cut them into squares like this.

Here we have stuffed bell pepper, and let me see what we have here.

Wow, this is one of my favorite.

This is har gao, shrimp dumpling.

This is wonderful because you see you can actually see through this.

You see the shrimp?

The dough is translucent because this is made from wheat starch.

Wheat starch is only available in Chinese store or Oriental store.

You cannot find it in supermarkets.

You start with wheat flour, then you wash all the protein away, the gluten away.

What is left?

It's the wheat starch.

In fact, a lot of Chinese dim sum variety, they use wheat starch to use as a dough.

Now I wanna show you, remember I said, variety is the key to dim sum?

This is my favorite.

Wow!

Look at this!

This is braised chicken feet!

(audience laughing) (audience gasping) Don't shake it!

Don't, don't, don't, don't!

(audience laughing) Not only have enough for myself, I have enough for everybody in the studio!

(audience groaning) (audience laughing) Chicken feet anyone?

(audience laughing) Not only that, we might even have e.. to send it to you!

I thank you very much for joining me today.

As I always say, if Yan can cook, so can you!

(audience applauding) “Goodbye!” (##!)

Thank you very much!

(Joyful music)