Cabbage & Pork Dumplings

Today, I went to one of my favourite Chinese dumpling haunts for brunch of Cabbage and Pork Dumplings. Whilst there I watched one of the young chefs make the dumplings. A dough of tang flour (rice flour) and water is rolled into a thin snake like shape and then cut into about 1.5cm lengths. Each length is then flattened with the palm of one hand then rolled with a thin dim sum rolling pin. After the dumpling wrapper is formed, the dough is cupped in one hand and a small flat dim sum spatula is used to insert the filling in the middle. The hand holding the wrapper is then cupped to close the dumpling then it is pleated with the thumbs of both hands. The chef making the dumplings was extremely fast and apparently many Chinese are taught this method of making dumplings when they are small children. I also asked if the chef added cold water to the boiling water each time they are cooked but he said that this is an old method which is used when you can't control the cooking temperature. The water in the restaurant was temperature controlled so this method wasn't required.
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