Thursday, June 2, 2005

ShuMai Supreme


the mother of all shumai


In a quaint little Chinese coffee shop, tucked away in heart of Taiping town, a bunch of old guys make the best ShuMai on the planet.

ShuMai, if you've every eaten DimSum, is the signature dish for this evergreen Chinese cuisine. It is a small, bite-size steamed dumpling of shrimps, crab meat, pork, water chestnuts and other stuff, enveloped in a thin rice pastry and garnished with shrimp roe on top. In most DimSum restaurants around the world, ShuMai is served in a threesome of dumplings, in a saucer. However, in Kwan Kee Restaurant in Taiping they serve their ShuMais in twos. Because at Kwan Kee, they don't just sell ShuMais, the sell the Mother of all ShuMais!!!

Our ShuMai in Taiping, like most things from Taiping (*ahem*), are larger than life. Hehh! Actually, they're double the size of most ShuMais you get in Malaysia. With a generous helping of ingredients packed compactly in every dumpling, you get the springiest ShuMais in the world. And here at Kwan Kee their family recipe, an heirloom passed on from generation to generation, is a closely-guarded secret. Which is why the Kwan Kee ShuMai remain peerless in this little town of Taiping.

Mom brings the stuff from Taiping every time she visits. This time around, she brought a couple of thousands. However, since she is staying over at my uncle's this visit, I was not able to hoard the stuff all to myself. As a result my relatives, the ravenous wolves that they are, devoured everything in sight leaving only a measly three dumplings for me. Buttheads!

Perhaps it's time to go home to Taiping once again. :) And oh, if you're looking for the place, it's a few doors down from the Taiping Old Clock Tower along Jalan Kota, opposite the Guardian Pharmacy.

11 comments:

  1. james, you should go back more often (well, very easy to say hor?)...we were there 2 weeks ago and my daughters were having a great time blowing, chasing and catching the bubbles in the BEAUTIFUL lake garden...

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  2. that's it! i am having dim sum for lunch today. jalan ipoh, here i come!

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  3. Double the size? Tak jelak ke? My younger sister can whack 10 plates of siu mais (one plate of 4). *jelak*

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  4. Nowadays, it's hard to find DimSum with genuine ingredients coz crab meat is substituted with crab stick, shrimp roe with coloured sago seeds, etc.
    If you think Taiping ShuMai is big, check out those in Hong Kong! They even have a selection with spareparts! =PpPp

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  5. i luv dim sum but i rarely indulge in it.... though penang have many dim sum restaurants. having dim sum is not an everyday affair thingy lah. usually i will have it only on some occasion or when out-station/foreign friends come a visiting.

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  6. Funny ... I can never seem to get over how delicious Foh San's green tinted shu mai are. That's always my favorite, I don't know about these, because I've never had anything better than Foh San's lol ... and my dad being close friends to the owner helps :P

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  7. Now you really made me miss home, Beauty! :)
    MeeBon, Belacan?
    Not when it's good, Primrose!
    I'm hungry all the time, Anjali!
    Ugh AhPink! Always with the spareparts...
    Yah Lucia. Dim Sum is also expensive. But not in Taiping!!! :)
    You must be an Ipoh Girl, Gwen! :)

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  8. Haha, no ... born and raised in KL :P But my mom is from Ipoh :)

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  9. There's a Foh San in PJ now, Gwen. Not that great if you ask me!
    Those are from my home in Taiping, Babe. Our house is a place time forgot. :)

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