Lo Mai Gai (Glutinous Rice and Chicken Steamed in Lotus Leaf)

Variations

• Banana leaf is a container; a lotus leaf is an ingredient. Four dishes here are wrapped in a leaf — fish amok, ilish paturi, ikan pepes and bougna — and every one uses banana leaf, which is chosen for being broad, tough and heat-proof rather than for any smell of its own. Amok folds it into a cup, ilish paturi uses it as a lid to trap mustard's volatile pungency, and ikan pepes deliberately scorches it over coals so the smoke goes inward. A lotus leaf is chosen for the aroma, and that is why this dish has a second name — ho yip fan (荷葉飯), lotus-leaf rice — that names the leaf and not the filling.
• Against ikan pepes, the same job by a different carrier. That one burns the leaf and takes its smoke; this one seals the parcel and traps the steam. Aroma compounds are volatile, and inside a closed parcel there is nowhere for them to go but into the rice. Which is also why this one is never allowed near a flame.
• Zongzi is the opposite arrangement. The Dragon Boat parcel uses bamboo leaf around raw rice and is boiled in water for hours. Boiling lets water in, so raw rice is possible. Lo mai gai goes into a steamer, where no water can get in, so the rice has to be cooked first. Different leaf, different state of rice, different medium — and all three follow from one decision.
• Vegetarian. Leave out the chicken, lap cheong and dried shrimp; double the shiitake and add bamboo shoot and dried beancurd skin. The mushroom soaking water stands in for the oyster sauce.
• Dim sum size. Restaurants wrap them small and serve four to a basket. A large parcel takes the aroma better and is likelier to come out cool in the middle.
• Salted duck egg yolk divides Cantonese households. It concentrates the salt and the fat into one spot and pulls the whole parcel towards it.

Tips

• Buy dried leaves, not fresh. A fresh lotus leaf is grassy and tears; drying concentrates the aroma, and soaking brings it back far enough to fold. In that respect it behaves like lavash — a thing dried hard whose drying is reversible.
• Steam the rice, do not boil it. Glutinous rice has essentially no amylose (daifuku has the number), so it takes up water fast and the grains cling. Boiled, they lose their shape and collapse into porridge; steamed, each grain takes only what it can hold and stays a grain.
• And that is where the rule about cooking it first comes from. There is no free water in the parcel at all. The second steam moves the aroma and marries the filling to the rice; it cannot hydrate raw rice. Wrap raw rice and what comes out after 25 minutes is hard rice.
• Cool the filling before it goes in. A hot filling condenses on the inside of the leaf and the rice goes sodden — the same reason beef Wellington chills its duxelles.
• Seam-side down. Steaming names drips off the lid as the commonest failure; here the parcel is its own lid, so the drips land on the leaf. Keeping the seam underneath is the whole of it.
• A leaf is used once. A steamed leaf has already given up its aroma. Used again it is just wrapping.