Dim Sum

Dim sum is the name for a Chinese cuisine which involves a wide range of light dishes served alongside Chinese tea. It can include dishes based on meat, seafood, vegetables, as well as desserts and fruit. The various items are usually served in a small steamer basket or on a small plate. Yum cha (literally "tea drinking") is the actual term used to describe the dining session, especially in contemporary Cantonese.

Name

The Cantonese phrase Dim Sum (點心) means literally "touch the heart" or "order to your heart's content". It may be derived from yat dim sum yi (一點心意), meaning "a little token". ("A Touch of Heart" is perhaps the more poetic translation.) Though the English word "dim sum" refers to the Cantonese variety, the idea of a wide variety of small dishes for lunch also holds for other regions of China.

Equivalent terms, such as dian xin in Mandarin, exist in other varieties of Chinese, as a generic term for any of a variety of snacks or small food items. The terms "northern dian xin" or "Shanghai dian xin" (dee-shin) have thus come into use. These dian xin are, however, not necessarily Cantonese dim sum, although the two still share the same written script in traditional and simplified characters. Likewise, the Korean cognate jeomsim (점심) may refer to any kind of lunch.

In Australia the word dim sim is used for a particular kind of dumpling.

[edit] History

Travellers on the ancient Silk Road needed a place to take a nap, so teahouses were established along the roadside. Rural farmers, exhausted after working hard in the fields, would also go to teahouses for a relaxing afternoon of tea. At first, it was considered inappropriate to combine tea with food, because people believed it would lead to excessive weight gain. People later discovered that tea can aid in digestion, so teahouse owners began adding various snacks and the tradition of dim sum evolved^{[citation needed]}.

In Hong Kong, and most cities and towns in Guangdong province, many Chinese restaurants start serving as early as five in the morning. It is a tradition for the elderly to gather to eat dim sum after morning exercises, often enjoying the morning newspapers. For many southerners in China, yum cha is treated as a weekend family day. Consistent with this tradition, dim sum restaurants typically only serve dim sum until the afternoon (right around the time of a traditional Western 3 o'clock coffee break); other kinds of Cantonese cuisine are served in the evening. Nowadays, various dim sum items are sold as takeaway for students and office workers on the go.

While dim sum remains a staple of Chinese culinary culture, especially in Hong Kong, health officials have recently criticized the high amount of saturated fat and sodium in some dim sum dishes, warning that steamed dim sum should not automatically be assumed to be healthy.^[1] Health officials recommend balancing fatty dishes with boiled vegetables, minus sauce.^[2]