High Rise Dumplings

On Sunday evening it was time to buy ingredients for a home cooked supper, so as night and cold fell we went shopping down the closest street market . Despite it being winter in Shen yang there is fresh produce, meat, vegetables and fruit in piles, baskets, trolleys, tables and cages. Beside the stalls fast food is being cooked for people to take home. Some of the cooking techniques are quite dramatic - flame throwers singing the hair of rows of pig's trotters until they scorch and sizzle, cauldrons of broth teetering on spindly braziers, metal glowing mahogany red and here, gouts of steam in the frosty air as layers of dumplings, plump and fragrant, in their white glutenous skins are checked.