Four-Flavour Dumplings

Finally another post.... I had wanted to post earlier, but I was either lazy or I simply didn't manage to make good pictures of the food I made. Who can give me some advice on how to make good pictures? I have an older digital camera - Sony 5.1 Mega Pixels, and I have always had difficulty making nice pictures with this camera. Throughout the day I still have a small chance making some clearer pictures, but at night my chance to make good pictures is almost zero, as the pictures would turn mostly blurry. Is it because of my camera, is it because I suck in photography, or is it because of both? If it's because I need a new camera, which brand and type do you suggest me to buy? Or if it's because I suck, what should I do to improve my photography skills? Photography was never something that interested me. A camera was only a tool for me to change 3-d things into 2-d ones. But after I've got this food blog, I of course do want to show at least some presentable pictures... Oh well..., enough ramblings...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to make four-flavour dumplings. So here they are.

The first time I saw four-flavour dumplings was from a Japanese manga, 'Master Cooking Boy' - just a comic about a boy who loves cooking and is very talented at it. He makes various dumplings and one of those is this four-flavour dumpling. I thought this type of dumpling was fictional, just made up by the comic author, since at that time it just looked so extraordinary to me somehow, but apparently it's not. I saw a four-flavour dumplings recipe from a Taiwanese cooking-book "Chinese Dim Sum" from Wei Chuan Cooking School Publication last year, and since then have been so passionate about trying it out. I of course change the recipe a bit here and there - well, I always do change recipes actually, I never can really follow recipes so religiously - I always need to rebel a bit in a way, I don't know why...

So here is my recipe adapted from the Wei Chuan Cooking Book.

Ingredients
Dumpling Skin

• 300 gr flour
• 1 cup boiling water

Filling

• 400 gr ground pork
• 200 gr shrimps, chopped coarsely
• 1 tbs diced pork fat (optional)
  
• 3 tbs oyster sauce
• 2 tbs fish sauce
• 3 tbs Shao Xing wine
• 1 tbs minced ginger
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• White pepper

Garnish (Toppings)

• Chopped green onions
• Chopped boiled egg yolk
• Chopped boiled egg white
• Chopped carrots

The dumplings before any toppings are added.

The dumplings with four different toppings: green onions, carrots, boiled egg yolk and boiled egg white.

There are of course still a lot of rooms for improvement. My dumplings still look quite messy, and the pictures do look quite blurry as well. I just need to practise a bit more (in making dumplings, and in doing photography) to get better results in the future...

The four-flavour dumplings after being steamed.