Springing Forward to Dim Sun Days
When I was ten years old at overnight camp in the woods of pine scented New England, I was feeling homesick with one of my camp companions. It wasn’t because I necessarily missed my parents, (sorry Mom and Dad!) it was that I really, really missed food. “Raviolis and red sauce”, I would whine… “An Italian sub with extra hot peppers from D’Agastino’s!”……”Pizza from Pizzeria Regina!!”. We would call back and forth to each other as if we were stranded out in the hot desert without any food or water. It’s not that we were starved, or that the food at Camp Calumet was all that bad actually…. it is just that I am really obsessed with food.
In University (in the middle of Ohio) I would eschew the stodgy chafing dishes of mashed stew-y bits in the food halls and turn to the salad bar to make these creative (or so I thought) concoctions. A bit of pasta here, a sprinkle of cheese, a bunch of raw vegetables, oil … I told myself it was “Non-cooking Cooking”. Without access to a genuine kitchen and a twelve-hour drive away from home, I would dream about food. “Can somebody please just give me my Dad’s meatballs and some mortadella!?!” “I need a Vietnamese spring roll!!!”. I mean I wore my heart and food desperation on my sleeve back in the day.
Now the world has changed in terms of culinary accessibility, but I have realised that I have not. Fast forward to present day and I am an American living in the UK. I can get nearly everything here, but I preoccupy myself with the ones that I cannot. I make Italian-American style sausages with my sausage maker, boil and bake New York “everything bagels” and I even try to recreate deli meats, pickles, salad dressings and rice packets from the US that I am so very fond of. In a way this whole lockdown life has lent itself to me as a food epiphany that was always lingering inside that ten year old desperado. The epiphany being that I love to cook, eat, create and write about it…in an obsessive way.
Take dim sum for example. Pre – pandemic one of my most favourite things to do in Birmingham would be to go and get dim sum in Chinatown on a Sunday with my husband and my two sons. “Hey, today is “Dim Sun-day!” we would exclaim and then happily get lost tucking into slurpy soups and savoury parcels. With restaurant closures I am still that little girl listing off a wish list of foods to eat… ”Shanghai Soup Dumplings!”…. “Char Siu Cheung Fun!!!!!!” I whimper.
I have been making variations of dumplings for many years now. From “Shrimp har gow”, to “Pork and chive” – they are a project. Folding a dumpling alone can take years to master (I still use a standard pleat). There have also been sob worthy moments where I have put so much into making a dough… only to have it completely flop on me.
In fact, I never truly appreciated the work and intricacy of the dumpling until now. Being able to physically go out for dim sum or anywhere at all means it is a total privilege. You get to have your pick of these incredibly hot, detailed, tasty, beautifully well mastered dishes. Of course, a great option is to get takeaway but there is something about the ambiance, the bustling noise, joyful families, the wafts of tea and the mouth-watering garlicky scents. To me there is mystical power behind dim sum. It travels far beyond the glorious food and into the realm of a human experience.
From a cold pint at a country pub to a fancy dinner out with loved ones, we are all salivating nostalgically over our own coveted magical moments. And I now truly realise that as I shouted out my most missed meals in desperation way back when, and as I recreate foods now; it is because there were and are important people, places and experiences that come along with it ( I did really miss you Mom and Dad!).
And so my heart is springing forward to those “Dim-Sum-Days”. What are you looking forward to?