Andrew Wong: When you mention dim sum outside of China, people tend to visualise small, bite-sized steamed dumplings. In the UK there’s a more sophisticated understanding, but still, the idea of texture in dim sum hasn’t been explored to its full potential, so I really wanted to celebrate both char siu and the idea of texture. The idea behind dim sum is to feel something glutinous, and to enjoy the stickiness, and to bite through the crunch; it’s about letting the eater play with all those textures in a single mouthful. On top of all that, I wanted to add a taste dimension to the textual variety: a sweetness, a savouriness, a barbecue-ness. It’s a representation of dim sum as a whole.
Mukta Das: Your steady pushing of dim sum's boundaries reminds me of the elite Cantonese tearoom culture of 1920s and 1930s. Tearooms had to come up with the most innovative dim sum to stay ahead of intense competition and chefs drew on inspiration from both China and abroad. Chefs started to reproduce regional and international snacks but in smaller bite-sized portions, lightening the flavours, introducing more subtlety and playing with ideas of freshness.
AW: All over the world, dim sum chefs have to stick to a kind of global chef discourse of freshness. All our ingredients are fresh but in reality, there are so many levels of preparation in dim sum that ‘fresh’ is a kind is misnomer. There are other adjectives that better explain how well a chef can handle and use an ingredient for the health and pleasure of the eater, for example the crunchiness of a prawn. The crispness of that prawn doesn’t only equate to freshness but speaks to all the qualities of preparation and cooking too. Then there is freshness from a western perspective, which when talking about seafood is all about the smell of the sea and how long is has been out of the water. So the scallops I use in this dish are on a train by 4pm the day before, reach our kitchen by 7am and are served by lunchtime. If there ever was a dim sum that celebrated freshness from both Chinese and western perspectives, this is the one.
MD: That said, there’s a real emphasis on freshness, partly reflected by the popularity of raw fish during the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD). Strips of fatty, fresh raw fish were traditionally dressed with sauces, seasonings and dips made with mustard seed or spring onion, much like Italian pesce crudo. Some of these seasonings sound surprisingly full of bite or heat when we compare this to the present-day ways of eating sushi in Japan with minimal amounts of condiments. But the Tang very much enjoyed their spices and aromatics and traders travelled across oceans to buy spices, such as cloves from Indonesia and black pepper from Myanmar.
AW: The sauce that it is served with this dish is made of red chilli paste and vinegar, which is not the usual accompaniment to cheung fun. Traditionally, cheung fun is served with a seasoned and slightly sweet soy sauce. But I want to get people out of the mindset that if they’re eating a cheung fun or another type of dumpling then it has to be with a particular sauce. I want people to start question that, and ask why can’t you enjoy these dim sum with a heavier, spicier sauce or with a bit more umami.