Shanwei Vegetable Rice Dumplings 汕尾菜粿

How it is made

The dough is indica rice flour stirred into boiling water with a little salt and oil, turned into a paste and kneaded by hand, then pressed into round pieces. The maker holds a piece in the left palm and turns a pottery ball, the guolin (粿躏), round and round on it until it becomes a thin hollow cup. According to the Shanwei Daily, the skin is the key: it should be made from newly harvested long-grain and glutinous rice ground to flour, so that it comes out thin and springy.

The filling can include shredded radish, cabbage, mung bean sprouts, jicama, celery, garlic, diced pork, dried squid, dried shrimp, peanuts and dried flounder powder. Each dumpling is closed into a spindle shape with the ends pinched tight, laid in rows on a rack of reed or bamboo strips called a langbu (朗埗), and steamed over a fierce fire in an iron wok.

How it is eaten

Straight from the steamer the dumplings are brushed with raw oil and scattered with coriander, then eaten hot with a dipping sauce; the Shanwei Daily treats this as the mark of a top-quality caibaoguo. The skin is soft and sticky and the filling salty and savoury. Besides the vegetable version there is a fish version filled with a fish called hai wuyu (海乌鱼), for which Jinpanwei (金盘围) is known.

Where it comes from

In the past the dumplings were made only for the traditional festivals of the year and were also taken as a gift. A Shanwei culture-and-tourism feature recalls that households once made them only on New Year's Eve to serve guests; today they are an everyday street snack. In Gongping (公平) the local equivalent is a triangular dumpling with a different shape and more meat in the filling.