One of my favourite dim sum dishes is steamed rice noodle rolls with prawns (har cheong fun).  We order this every time we go to yum cha (“drinking tea time”) which is a Chinese meal that can be enjoyed any time between really early in the morning and early afternoon.  You could easily substitute the shrimp with Chinese BBQ pork or ground beef or stir fried snow pea shoots to make other popular dim sum cheong fun dishes.  Personally, I’ve always preferred the texture of dim sum cheong fun to the cheong fun with dried shrimp and green onions (recipe here).  For plain cheong fun and sweet sauce (teem cheong / timzheong) recipes, see here.

Cheong Fun (Rice Noodle Rolls) with Shrimp Recipe

makes 8 to 10 rice noodle rolls; adapted from Cooking-Gallery (The video instruction here is very helpful.)

Note:  You could easily substitute the prawns with diced Chinese BBQ pork or marinated ground beef.

150 grams rice flour

3 tbsp wheat starch

2 tbsp tapioca starch

1 tbsp vegetable oil

200 ml cold water

300 ml hot (boiling) water

1/2 tsp salt

20 to 30 fresh prawns or large shrimp, peeled and deveined

sweet soy sauce (Chinese rock sugar simple syrup mixed with soy sauce to taste and diluted with water if desired)

Whisk together the rice flour, wheat starch, tapioca starch and salt in a large bowl.  Stir in the cold water and mix well.  Then stir in the hot water and mix well.  Add the oil and stir well until you have a smooth, thin batter.  Let the batter rest for 20 minutes at room temperature.

Set up your steaming equipment (see instructions here).  I set a rack in a wok of water.  Bring the water to a boil over high heat.  Meanwhile, prepare a bowl of cold water that’s large enough to put your pan in – this will be the cold water bath.  Then lightly grease as many non stick, round cake pans as you own (I use 9 inch round pans).  When the water is boiling, ladle enough batter into your cake pan to spread a thin layer across the bottom that reaches the edges of the pan.  Place the pan on the rack, cover the wok with the lid, and steam for 3 minutes over high heat.  Scatter 2 or 3 prawns in the pan and steam for 2 more minutes.  Do not overcook the prawns.  Remove the tray from the steamer and set it in the cold water bath.  While it’s cooling, pour the batter into the next prepared pan and repeat this process.  You may need to re-grease your pans between uses.  When the steamed rice noodle is cool enough to handle, run a rubber spatula around the pan to release the edges of the rice noodle.  Then gently peel the rice noodle from the pan as you fold it over itself a few times to get a flat roll.  Set the flat roll aside on a clean plate and tuck in the ends.  Repeat the process until you have used up all of the batter.  Pour sweet soy sauce over the rolls and serve warm.  Once cool, the rice noodle rolls can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 days.  Or they can be frozen.  Reheat in the steamer.