Both my parents are Hakka descendants and when we were little wewere taught to speak our parents' mother tongue, Hakka. As we grew older, English quickly became our preferred language as we were surrounded in English language through school, television and our friends. We still had to speak Chinese at home to our parents though and we even went to Chinese School to learn how to read and write in Cantonese. Nowadays, we mainly speak Cantonese at home.
Mealtimes were almost always Chinese meals and often Hakka specialities. Sometimes mum would make Hakka snacks, one of these were Radish Dumplings 蘿蔔粄 (Law Pet Ban).
It has a soft dough that almost sticks to your teeth without being tough and chewy and is filled with shredded radish which is seasoned with lots of white pepper, sweetened with dried shrimps with ground pork and Chinese mushrooms for added flavour.
She made these back in November (I've been meaning to blog about so many things! I have a backlog building up!) and although I wanted to help her - the technique she used to roll the dough skin seemed tricky. She was precise with the dough skin, it had to be a certain thickness and if it wasn't right she would scrunch the dough up and start again.
Here you can see her rolling the dough around an orange. This is so it will have the 'cupped' shape which is then generously filled.
Stuffed and steamed ready for sampling! Mmm! Reminds me of my childhood days!
