Dim Sum With Algela Malik

Angela Malik

  I love eating dim sum, and certainly don’t eat it enough. I very rarely eat at an establishment which serves it, and I’ve thought about making it at home. So I knew that heading off to Algela Malik’s cookery school for a night of dim sum making would be a learning experience.

  The Angela Malik Deli, where the cookery school is held, is located in Acton across the road from Acton Central overground station. Half of her establishment is dedicated to retail where you can find everything from her own pesto, to crackers and cakes. The back half is where the kitchen and cookery school is located, and where myself and fellow foodies were there to try out Angela’s Dim Sum at Home class.

  I was placed with 2 other people and asked to prepare and cook 2 recipes – steamed spiced pork and water chestnut sui mai dumplings and stuffed gyoza dumplings.

  The first recipe of steamed spiced pork and water chestnut siu mai dumplings tasted as great as it sounds, and so very easy to make. You basically combine all the ingredients such as the pork, soy sauce, onions etc. into a bowl and mix together. Then you do the trickiest bit of wrapping the filling up in the wonton wrapper. This can be done a multitude of ways, therefore (lucky for me) very hard to get wrong.

  They only take a few minutes to steam, and like all dim sum recipes best eaten straight away.

Stuffed gyoza dumplings

  The second recipe – stuffed gyoza dumplings, involved a hot frying pan with oil, so I was a bit more hesitant about making this. The process of making the dumplings was the same as the steamed spiced pork dumplings, although this time we used a chicken-based filling with mushrooms, ginger and garlic.

  The filling was placed in a gyoza skin, and folded over to cover all the filling. Once the wok was hot enough, we placed the dumplings in the hot wok and waited for the side to brown then flipped them to brown another side. Once the browning of the second side was done, a tricky step (for me) was to quickly pour in 1 cup of water into the wok, cover it and allow the dumplings to steam. This should take only a few minutes, and the trick was to not let it get too cool.This cooking should only take a few minutes before they’re ready to be dipped into a gyoza dipping sauce and eaten asap.

  So it would take me a few more attempts I think to get confident enough in making dim sum, but thanks to Angela and her team I’ve certainly been shown the right way to go.

  More information on these recipes and her cookery school is found on Angela’s website. Or, you can pop into The Angela Malik Deli at 6 Churchfield Road, Acton, London W3 6EG.