When does one eat dim sum? Whenever your heart delights. Our dim sum recipes are simple and include step-by-step instructions. And at home, unlike in a restaurant, you can control what goes into the food and how it's cooked. These recipes call for steaming or pan-frying, so they're low in fat and calories. You can, of course, prepare this entire feast or just one or two dishes, if you'd rather. As for locating ingredients, won ton wrappers and gyoza skins are available at Oriental food stores.

In America, most cities that have Chinatowns have dim sum tea parlors. Cantonese for "heart’s delight" or "a bit of heart" (depending on the translation), dim sum includes an exotic variety of small, mouthwatering snacks. Carts loaded with a variety of dishes, hot and steaming from the kitchen, are wheeled around to the tables periodically. To order, customers need only point to the foods they can’t resist.

How's this for a banquet of imagination? We've prepared dumplings stuffed with pork, peanuts, shrimp, and vegetables—for instance, our Four-Flavor Dumplings , in which individual stuffings sit side by side, jewellike, inside an open wrapper. We have spicy pot stickers (a dumpling variation) filled with chicken and cabbage, and, ever true to the dim sum experience, buns filled with curried chicken (buns differ from dumplings in that they are larger and require a leavening agent). We used shrimp and flounder in our Seafood-Stuffed Bell Peppers , and our Steamed Pearl Balls are appropriately nicknamed "chicken porcupines" because of their long-grain rice "quills." Of course, a dim sum meal wouldn't be right without piquant dipping sauces, which we've also provided.

Dim Sum Tips
For our dim sum steamed dishes, we used a bamboo steamer because it's large enough to cook several dumplings at once. You can also use a less-expensive vegetable steamer, although it won't hold as many dumplings and it may take several batches to cook them all. Be sure to cover the first few batches of dumplings so they don't dry out after they've been steamed. Some of our recipes call for lining the steamer itself with steamed cabbage leaves. The number of leaves needed will vary according to the size of the leaves. The leaves can be blanched in boiling water, steamed in a vegetable steamer, or steamed in the bamboo steamer before adding the appetizers to the rack. You can discard the steamed leaves afterward.

Since offering dim sum to a group can be an ambitious task—the most time—consuming aspect involves wrapping the ones that need wrapping—you may want to prepare a sampling first. Make one or two that are wrapped and some that aren't, such as the Seafood-Stuffed Bell Peppers and Steamed Pearl Balls .

All of the fillings and dipping sauces can be made ahead of time. You can assemble the dumplings up to 30 minutes before cooking (assembled too far in advance, the ends of the wrappers will dry out); cover tightly, and refrigerate. The exception is the Curried Chicken Buns because the yeast dough has a specific rising time.