Cantonese · Starter

Lo Mai Gai (Lotus Leaf Sticky Rice Parcels)

Advanced
45 min
roughly 3 of 4 for cost

umami-deep · rich · briny · aromatic Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, richness that coats and comforts, opening aromatic and staying there.

Ingredients

500 g glutinous rice
6 dried lotus leaves
300 g boneless chicken thigh, in 3 cm pieces
2 lap cheong (Chinese cured sausage), sliced on the angle
6 dried shiitake, soaked and quartered
30 g dried shrimp, soaked
3 salted duck egg yolks, halved
30 ml oyster sauce
20 ml light soy sauce
10 ml dark soy sauce
10 g caster sugar
10 g cornflour
15 ml Shaoxing wine
3 g ground white pepper
20 g ginger, minced
45 ml groundnut oil
200 ml shiitake soaking liquid

The skills inside

Steaming: basket, leaf and lid Salted water & the float test Marinating: acid, salt and time

The words inside

Lap Cheong & the Chinese Cured Pantry Glutinous Rice Oyster Sauce

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · egg · peanuts · shellfish · molluscs · soy · alcohol

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Soak the glutinous rice in cold water for 4 hours, until a grain crushes to powder between your nails, then drain; soak the lotus leaves in hot water until leathery and pliable and wipe both faces. 240 min
Marinate the chicken in the oyster sauce, both soys, sugar, cornflour, wine and pepper for 20 minutes, until the pieces look glazed and cling to each other. 20 min
Fry the ginger, dried shrimp and shiitake in the oil until the shrimp smells sweet and the mushrooms have squeaked and gone slack, add the soaking liquid, boil 2 minutes, then fold the lot through the drained raw rice until every grain is stained brown. 2 min
Cup 150 g of rice into each leaf, bury chicken, lap cheong and half an egg yolk in the middle, cover with more rice and fold the leaf into a tight brick with no gap at the seam.
Steam over a hard boil for 60 minutes, then open one: the rice should be glossy and hold its shape under a press, with no chalky white core. 60 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Marinating: acid, salt and time 70 recipes

Contact is total: every surface is wetted, and the pieces are not welded into a clump with dry faces where they pressed together.
The stated time was kept and kept cold, read against a clock, because this is the one technique where longer is a different result rather than a safer one.
It worked at the surface and no further: cut a piece and the marinade’s colour stops a few millimetres in. A protein gone opaque and chalky to the centre before any heat reached it has been cooked by the acid.
The texture is still springy and whole, not mushy, mealy, or fraying at the surface when it is lifted.
Where the next step browns it, the surface was patted dry first: a wet surface cannot brown, and the marinade’s sugars will scorch before the food colours.

Where it goes wrong It was left well beyond the stated time on the assumption that more is better, so acid and salt worked through the thin edges: those cook to cotton and read grainy while the thick centre tastes of nothing at all.

Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes

Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.

Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.

At the Table

The Pour: Albariño
Also Right: Champagne
From the Taps: Pilsner or witbier
Zero-Proof: White grape & tonic

Shellfish sweetness meets acid, salinity, and bubbles, precision instruments for delicate meat.

Family notes

Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.

Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Lo Mai Gai (Lotus Leaf Sticky Rice Parcels) The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Cantonese kitchen