The first step is to remove the skin from the pork belly and slice it into small, semi-thick pieces.Use a knife to slice all the meat up so it turns into mince. This can be tedious work, but meat that is minced by hand has better elasticity that prepackaged mince, and can be combined better with shrimp meat. If you find this is too hard, you can buy 250g of low fat pork mince from the store.
The second step is to cut the shrimp into small pieces of about one centimeter.
Next, chop the bamboo shoots into tiny pieces. The smaller the better. If you use canned bamboo shoots, which contain more water, you can squeeze the water into the filling with your hands. The meat can easily absorb this liquid.
Combine the pork, shrimp, bamboo shoots, kale leaves, sesame oil, salt, and pepper together and stir well with a stainless-steel spoon. You will need to put the amount of pepper you want in, depending on how much you like. Also make sure you put a moderate amount of salt and sesame oil in.
Now, it is time to do the last step: assembling the dumplings. There is as much expectation on how a dumpling looks as how to how it tastes. For example, there must be a round bulging part below the top of the dumpling, with 10-12 pleats. If there are not enough pleats, it means that the master chef’s skill is poor. Don’t expect to get this exactly right straightaway, it will take a few attempts to get it down pat.
The first step before assembling the dumplings is to get your steamer ready. Fill it with sufficient water and bring it to the boil on high.
While you are waiting for the water to boil, assemble the dumplings.
First, cut a portion out of the dough with a knife roll it with your hands into a strip of about 2.5 cm wide.
Cut this into about 8 equal portions.
Using a rolling pin, roll out each portion in a circle with an 8-10 cm circumference. The chef who specializes in making shrimp dumplings uses a round-shaped cutter to make the circles. This is a fast and good method. If you do not have a cutter, you can use a rolling pin. It takes a lot of effort and patience to pick it up, because the elasticity of the dough is really strong. Next, as with other dumplings, place some of the filling on the side of one of the portions of rolled dough and gently use a small spoon to shape it:
Starting from the edge near the filling, crimp the edges ¾ of the way around the dumpling, leaving ¼ uncrimped.
Then press the remaining part against the pleated section and pinch the edges together firmly, to ensure that the two do not separate. This completes our first shrimp dumpling!
The last and simplest step is to steam the shrimp dumplings. Place some nonstick baking paper inside the steamer. When the water in the steamer begins to boil, place the shrimp dumplings into the steamer. Make sure there is enough space between the dumplings, otherwise if they stick, it is not easy to pull them apart and their appearance is ruined.