Mushroom Dim Sum (Vegan)

Day 24

Sometimes Laura craves dim sum, so she makes it. She gets no argument from me, although, it's not a quick meal by any means. There are many steps to the dim sum process; it's friggy, as we say around here. Mainly just a lot of chopping. And wrapping the buns up.

Mushroom Dim Sum

Ingredients

Fresh garlic
Fresh ginger
Fresh cilantro
Coconut oil
Mushrooms
Rice wine vinegar
Sweet chili sauce
Soy sauce
Spring onions
Red chili
Sesame oil
Coconut milk
Self-rising flour
Sea salt
Sesame seeds
Hoisin sauce
Baking cups

So yeah, there are a lot of ingredients for this dish. Amazingly enough, the only things we didn't already have were the cilantro, coconut milk and mushrooms, so my grocery list was light.

Filling

3 cloves of garlic
1 thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger
½ bunch of fresh cilantro
1 tbsp coconut oil

Peel and mince the garlic and ginger. Separate leaves from cilantro stalks and mince the stalks. Reserve the leaves.

Clockwise from top left: garlic, red chili, 

cilantro leaves, cilantro stalks, ginger

Fry in the coconut oil for 3 minutes or until garlic is golden. So far, it smells like heaven. We plan to look for candles that smell like that. If you ever want to make your house smell good, fry up some ginger, garlic and cilantro.

Frying until golden

1 lb mushrooms, sliced
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp sweet chili sauce
2 tbsp soy sauce

Add the sliced mushrooms and cook 5 - 10 minutes until moisture has cooked out.

Mushrooms cooking

Then add the vinegar, chili sauce and soy sauce. Cook another 5 - 10 minutes until no liquid remains and mixture begins to caramelize.

Transfer to a bowl.

4 spring onions
1 fresh red chili
1 tbsp sesame oil

Chop the green onions fine and toss the white parts into the bowl. Reserve the green parts. Mince the chili and add half to the bowl. Reserve the other half. Add the sesame oil to the bowl. Mix all the stuff in the bowl.

Voila! Filling is complete.

Filling

Dough

400 g coconut milk
4 cups self-rising flour, plus extra for dusting
Sea salt

Supposed to use a food processor to mix this but we don't have one (see granola bar incident) so Laura mixed the dough by hand and found it to be just fine and dandy to do it that way. Once a ball is formed, roll into a sausage shape and then divide into 12 equal-ish parts.

Ball of dough

Dough, divided into 12 parts

Assembly

Flatten each ball to a 1/2" disc and add a tbsp or so of the filling to the center. Wet the edges of the disc and fold together at the top.

Filling the discs

Steaming the Buns

Place each bun on a lightly greased baking cup and steam for 12 minutes. Our steamer is too small to cook more than 3 at a time, so it took us 12 minutes x 4 batches to cook them all. 48 minutes. Booo.

Buns steaming

Garnish

4 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted
Reserved minced red chili
Reserved finely chopped green onion
Cilantro leaves, torn to bits

Hoisin sauce, to serve. Super yummy.

Garnish: red chili, green onion, cilantro

Sprinkle the sesame seeds, chili and green onion over the steamed meat buns. Serve with Hoisin sauce.

Mushroom Dim Sum on ma plate

Reviews/Comments

Well worth the time and effort that went into these. SoooOoooOOOoo good. So, if you ever get a hankering for some yum dim sum, just go make some. I rate supper a 10. Laura's going with 12. I particularly loved the cilantro leaves, like a piece with every bite.