"Lotus Eat"

Yesterday I tried my hand at steaming Chicken and rice wrapped up in Lotus leaves.

I got the recipe from my Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook.


The first thing to do is soak the dried lotus leaves in hot water for about 5 minutes.

The chicken was cut into large slices and then marinated with some thinly sliced pork belly in Shaoxing wine, light soy sauce, freshly chopped ginger and scallions.

Some long grain and glutinous rices were toasted in a dry wok with some star anise until they were brittle and yellow. The smell was amazing!

The meat and rice were mixed together with a little water, divided up among the lotus leaves and wrapped into neat parcels.

The parcels were steamed for 30-40 minutes. When they were done they were served with a stir-fry of baby shanghai bok-choy, lotus root, enoki mushrooms and scallions.

The aroma when you unwrap the parcels is wonderful, it really gets your salivary glands going!
I will definitely make this again, but I will use smaller pieces of chicken (like they did in the restaurant) and will add some shrimp too.

There is also a different lotus leaf recipe for me to try in my Land of Plenty cookbook.

Desert was some custard buns; delicious steamed buns that have some sweet custard in their middles. YUMMY!