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Yum Cha - Hong Kong Brunch Tea

Have you heard of Yum Cha? It is also known as going for dim sum, which is a type of Chinese style brunch tea and involves drinking Chinese tea and eating dim sum. Yum Cha is very popular in Hong Kong and Guang Dong area which is Cantonese-speaking regions in China. And it has spread to other regions worldwide due to the presence of overseas Chinese.​ I saw many restaurants that serving this in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, and I went there many times.

Cantonese people don't like fried foods early in the day, so, steamed dishes dominate most dim sum menus. There are also "snack-sized portions of pan-fried, deep-fried, and steamed food served in bamboo steamers, which are designed to be eaten communally and washed down with tea." People can go to Yum Cha with families, co-workers, or a group of people. So, it is a place for people to get together talking and eating. People sit in a single table waiting, and call for the dishes that they favor.

There are several dishes that are very popular for Yum Cha. One is called Chicken Feet.Most of the edible tissue on the feet consists of skin and tendons, with no muscle. Their many small bones make them difficult to eat for some old people. Being mostly skin, chicken feet are very gelatinous. This is also one of my favorite dishes. You can see that they put the chicken feet into some mixed sauce and pickle the feet for a while. Then they taste very flavarous.

One is called Sticky rice in lotus leaf which is also one of my favorite dishes. It can also be called Lo mai gai in Cantonese. The dish is also called by the literal English translations such as "steamed sticky rice with chicken in lotus leaf wrap." It is mostly a southern Chinese food which contains glutinous rice filled with chicken, Chinese mushrooms, Chinese sausage, scallions and sometimes dried shrimp or salted egg. The ball of rice is then wrapped in a dried lotus leaf and steamed. They are also served in some cities of America.

This one I am introducing to you is called steamed vermicelli roll. It is also called Chang Fen in Cantonese which is very popular in Guangzhou and Hong Kong area. It is thin, aromatic, smooth and tasty. In this dish, rice is spread across a multi-layered box or cloth to steam and then enhanced with meat, fish or shrimp. After re-steaming, the tasty rice is rolled into a long strip, snipped and served. It is filled with different types of meats or vegetables inside, but can be served without any filling. Because it is a little sticky when I taste it, I don't really like to eat it. However, it is still taste good.

I believe everyone must know this dish, the egg tart. Tart is one of the most popular dishes among myself, mt families, and my friends. Most of them really like the tart because it tastes very sweet but not over sweet. Cantonese style Egg tarts originate from early 1900s when Hong Kong was under the British rule. There are two main styles commonly sold in Hong Kong – the puff pastry ones and the pie crust ones. The ones you will find at Yum Cha are likely be the puff pastry ones. And it is often cooked by baking.

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