BrokenTune

Tasks for Dōngzhì Festival: If you like Chinese food, tell us your favorite dish – otherwise, tell us your favorite dessert. (Recipes, as always, welcome.)

I love Chinese food. Having just spent a long weekend on a Chinese food trail - seriously, the friends I traveled with had their priorities set straight on food, which meant that we constantly sought out all kinds of hawker stalls and restaurants to find different kinds of food - mostly Chinese, some Indian, some Malay, some Thai (only because we couldn't find the Chinese one they were looking for).

My friends are all fluent in Mandarin and Malay (Bahasa Malaysia) and English and without them I would have had difficulty navigating around the different offerings - especially since there are some differences in understanding of what is "vegetarian"...

Anyway, there are quite a few different Chinese dishes that I consider favourites but probably none more so than steamed or fried dumplings and pao (or pau or bao or ... ). 

This one (above) had a filling of red bean paste, which I prefer over the one with lotus paste. 

The one in the centre below (which you can't see properly) is a charcoal pao with a sweetcorn filling, which was also super delicious.

There were a few other kinds, too, like a specialty one with a (boiling hot!) sweet egg yolk custard filling. And of course, there are several non-vegetarian versions.

Unfortunately, we didn't find any veggie dumplings. :( But I am motivated to learn how to make them myself when I get home. If I feel adventurous, I might investigate making pao, too, as I can totally imagine pao with a savoury veggie filling, which isn't something that people seem to have caught onto, yet, in the places we visited on this trip.