asian food

I LOVE DIM SUM (點心, 点心, diǎnxīn, dímsām)! I love it so much in fact that over the years I’ve learned to make quite a few of my favorite dim sum dishes, and make them pretty regularly. (A few times a month if I’m being honest.) I love how the simplest of ingredients can turn into something so complex and mouthwatering that people will drive for hours, spending hundreds of dollars for a meal of it! Not only is dim sum delicious, it’s also a wonderful way to bring friends, family and even strangers together in a way that is sadly missing in today’s fast-paced world.

Growing up we didn’t have a lot of money. So my family was always looking for a way to stretch a buck. One way we did that was by growing a portion of our meats and vegetables. The times we did buy meats at the stores were normally the cheaper cuts, or when the store would have a sale. One of the things I remember my mom cooking is pig’s trotters. Or as we call them in North Florida, pig’s feet. I remember my younger brother and I thought they were gross. Being kids we’d always start laughing about stinky old feet until mom would get mad and tell us “it’s just bacon with extra fat”. Thinking back now she had us believing most of the pig was bacon. The cooking methods were always one of 2 ways. Either boiled in a pot of collard/mustard greens or rice; or pickled. (95% of the time they were boiled in our house.)