Huangzhou Shaomei Steamed Dumplings 黄州烧梅

Huangzhou Shaomei Steamed Dumplings (黄州烧梅) are sweet steamed dumplings from Huangzhou (黄州), the old town in Huanggang (黄冈), Hubei. Each has a pleated waist like a pomegranate, a top shaped like a plum blossom and a red dot on the crown. They are also called Dongpo shaomei (东坡烧梅), and Hubei Daily counts them among Huangzhou's "three wonders" of food.

Ingredients

Hu Youzhi (胡友志), a Huanggang-listed heritage bearer of the craft who has made shaomei for over thirty years, says they take more than ten ingredients. He names the traditional base as steamed bread (mantou), rock sugar, red dates, longan and osmanthus, and adds sesame, candied winter melon and candied orange. Hubei Daily credits heritage bearers including Hu with a newer filling of white steamed bread, white and rock sugar and black sesame that is toasted and crushed. Customers can choose a sweet filling with meat, a meat-and-vegetable one, or a purely vegetarian one.

How it is made

The filling is wrapped in a white skin, and skilled makers pinch eighteen or more pleats into the waist so the dumpling gathers like a pomegranate. The top is marked with a dot of cinnabar red, and the dumplings are cooked in steamer baskets. Straight from the steamer the skin is white and almost translucent. Hu Youzhi says his shaomei keep for a year, and one maker with two helpers can turn out several thousand in a day.

Where it comes from

Local legend ties the dumpling to Su Dongpo (苏东坡), the Song-dynasty poet exiled to Huangzhou, who is said to have praised a red-dotted pastry that his neighbour Pan Yanming (潘彦明) served at a harvest feast. The shape carries a wish, "the plum brings five blessings, the pomegranate a hundred seeds" (that is, many children), and shaomei appear at wedding and funeral banquets and as the closing dish of Huangzhou family celebrations and festival meals. Tradition holds that in the Ming and Qing dynasties Huangzhou was the examination centre for eight counties of eastern Hubei. Candidates bought shaomei for luck, because the red dot on top recalled the red button of an official's hat. According to Hubei Daily, the dumpling was named a China Famous Snack by the national cooking association in 1997 and entered the Hubei provincial heritage list in 2009.