Dim Sum Cooking Demo

© Ellen Blonder

I haven't been posting because I've been prepping for a dim sum cooking demo I'm giving tomorrow at the City College of San Francisco, and signing books. Here's some of the art from the book, Dim Sum: The Art of Chinese Tea Lunch. I'm making two of the recipes in the picture, the potstickers and greens, and will also show ha gow (shrimp dumplings), siu mai, and lotus-wrapped rice. We'll finish off the afternoon with almond cookies. See you there?

Dim Sum-Final

© Ellen Blonder

Because this is painted so loosely and on a pretty coarse canvas, I think I'm done. From the upper left, going clockwise, I painted a pork and shrimp steamed dumpling, a sweet sesame-flavored roll, a xiao long bao (Shanghai soup dumpling), spinach-dough dumpling, an unusual tomato-filled dumpling and a leaf-wrapped rice flour roll with sweet bean filling.

In Shanghai, I watched a dumpling crew make the soup dumplings with astonishing speed. Each one is rolled out, filled with a meat filling that includes jellied broth, then closed up with an impossible number of pleats. The broth melts during steaming, making a little soup inside and accounting for the slightly saggy shape. I didn't paint the shreds of ginger or vinegar that usually go with these.

Dim Sum-Day 2

© Ellen Blonder

I've changed some of the dumplings to balance colors and shapes better. Still needs a lot of work, though.

Dim Sum-Day 1

© Ellen Blonder

Part of the fun of China was eating different dim sum from what I've had at home. I'm just starting to work out a painting of some of them; it's pretty rough so far. I might change some of the dumplings. This canvas is 8 x 16 inches, and the dumplings are about twice their actual size.