The Dimster, December 2021, Issue No. 243
The newsletter of the Melbourne and international dim sim appreciation society
Editor: Guy Rundle
Founding editor: Guy Rundle
Publisher: Guy Rundle
Patron: the late Sir Rupert Clarke
Hello Dimmies!
A big welcome back to all Melbourne’s dim sim enthusiasts, here and all over the world! Through the dark days and months of lockdown in dim sim city, we never doubted that the fluoro lights would flicker on and the bains maries start steaming once more!
I’d like to extend a special welcome to Crikey’s readers, as this edition of The Dimster is being reproduced in the Daily in full, due to their generosity in spirit and failure to read all the clauses in the contract I drafted.
It’s wonderful to see the city come alive again, but, ahhhh, what a loss there has been in the availability of dim sims — and especially of that connoisseur’s staple, the steamed dim sim. Worse, we have watched with horror, as that imposter, that usurper, that mutant of the South Melbourne Market has started to spread and pullulate as the fleshpots of actual dim sims have retreated.
Nevertheless, there have been new supplies, and some old regulars have returned — so let’s look on the positive and cut to a review or two.
Review: Flinders Street Station, Platform One, snack bar
Platform One survives! Even before COVID, the scourge of the bain marie, the faceless Metro conglomerate had removed kiosks from numerous platforms and stations. But the Platform One kiosk is on the station’s heritage listing, and so persists.
We have previously expressed concerns about the dim sim product here: in our completely subjective opinion, overcooking has led to overbrowned belling, tightened flanges, and… ah, but where are my manners? We have some frozens (dimmie neophytes) in the house! Here’s a brief glossary of dimmie critical terms:
Valete: those we have lost in the bain-demic
South Yarra station takeaway — removed to extend access to the station or some other frivolity, the unnamed cafe at South Yarra station was renowned for using a light oil and having the blondest dimmies in town.
The Southern Cross station steamer — no, not a weird sex trick but the facility at the station’s snack bar, which provided a rare CBD outlet for steamed dimmies. The steamer has broken and there appear to be no plans to repair it. Fried dimmies are overcooked, with braise-burnt skinning and ridged flanging. Blackened belling has been observed.
WARNING: BUTCHERS DINER (Bourke St, near Spring St) IS A SOUTH MELBOURNE MARKET MEATCAKE ZONE ONLY! The food is excellent, but their DS range comprises only the usurper!
Other lost bains maries: Hoddle St near Johnston St, Collingwood; Richmond pie shop, Swan St (closing 31/12); Hamburger, fish and chips, Carrum — we have information this has been converted to a branded hamburger outlet, with no bain marie, which seems a net loss.
There have been several more, quickening the pace of an already worrying decline. Perhaps funds from the pandemic regeneration fund could be diverted to bain marie restoration and maintenance?
Dimsimology:
The revisionist school of dim sim now contests existing origin stories of the DS, and of great interest is Dr Onor Cliz’s recent paper in Australian Feminist Food Studies, which questions the masculinist bias of stories of dim sims being sold at football venues. This has always coincided with notions of the dim sim as a hybrid Irish meat pie/light Chinese dumpling, used to retrospectively valorise ethnic marginalisation.
Dr Cliz’s paper argues that women visiting Chinese herbalists in the 1940s in Chinatown were early adopters of a food hitherto shunned by Anglo-Celtics — and their visit was often for the purpose of early herbal-based pregnancy termination. In Cliz’s Lacanian-tinged interpretation, such consumption was phylophagic recapitulation, regaining the lost object through consumption. Could be, could be. Here at Dimster, we’re simple souls. We just want someone to start a restaurant with a genuine pie race!
Steam Heat: an update on our campaigns
Letter to Planning Minister Richard Wynne, to use the heritage fund to rebuild the Golden Tower cafe/restaurant, and its distinctive wooden steamed dim sim holders: No response.
Letter to Consumer Affairs Minister Melissa Horne to have the South Melbourne Market object renamed “South Melbourne Ugly Fat Meatcake”: No response.
Letter to Nobel Committee re. posthumous honouring of Wing Lee: sent.
End-of-Year Party
The Dimster gathering will be at Mernda station’s Red Engine Cafe this year. Please RSVP for final dim sim numbers, as the bain marie will have to be cleared of all that other garbage. There are no photos of last year’s gathering due to a malfunction. According to my camera guy, cameras won’t work if the pictures are “too sad”.
Amalgamation Proposal
The Sydney Seafood Stick Society has approached us with an offer to join forces. If there is anyone who hahaha thinks it would be a good idea to join with these fans of an invariant fried food, and our organisation which has identified 756 separate dim sim states, be sure to let us know.
Recent Adjudications
The Committee has decided that crisp cooking, which creates separated flanging edges, will hitherto been known as ‘flange ravines’, not ‘ridging’ or ‘guppy lips of fat’. The resolution passed 9-0. The annual proposal by Dr Nunquam Askew-Baillieu to redefine “dim sim” to include the South Melbourne Market object was declared out-of-order, inquorate, ultra vires and incoherent. We wish Dr Askew-Bailleau well after his recent (and latest) speedboating injury. In Ballarat.
Bookshop
Volume 16 of the Collected Dimster: Key Theoretical Documents is now available. Collecting controversies on the fried-steamed/revisionist-fundamentalist debates, natural vs cut flanging, and inner sleeving as accidental vs essential attribute. Clothbound, $199.99. Documents on the emergence of the South Melbourne execrence have been sealed until 2051 or the demise of ’80s TV star Jacki MacDonald — whichever is first.
That’s it for this year! As we recover from the bain-demic — the bain-demic of having no dimmies — and the bains maries fill with boiling water and the white steam rises, we can say once again…
HABEAS DIMMY!
An inspirational report, Guy, on a long neglected subject.
I am similarly committed to South Australia’s Cornish pasty (& approved variants).
I fear the impact of CoVid may be deeper and more long-standing than we initially took it to be. I, for example, in a pandemic-induced crisis of the spirit, have renounced the classic dim sim and turned vegan. I now follow the way of the vegetable gyoza.
Seems that 621 and the emulsifiers have reached saturation point for Guy, the Murdochian dark forces[CIA} couldn’t get him with the high pitched squeal emitted from his PC however there is always a back up plan.
It may be too late but don’t be surprised if the next march on parliament includes a small placard ” Save Guy from the dimmies!”
The miller’s wife at Lower Dimsim, the small village near Bakewell in Derbyshire, England, actually invented the dimsim during the 1656 drought. While Bakewell is famous for its tart, Lower Dimsim never attained the fame it justly deserves. Indeed, until the Leeds to Macclesworth canal was built it remained purely a local delicacy. Its fame only became widespread when Walter Frizzle, the cook on a clipper ship, was put ashore in the small fishing village (as it was then) of Singapore, for having set fire to the officers’ heads. Unable to procure an onward position on another ship he fell back on providing snacks for the local fishermen. The delicacy of his dimsims made his fortune, and explains why the dimsim became synonymous with Asia, just as China has adopted the Queensland Macadamia nut. Unfortunately, the name of the miller and his wife has been lost to history, probably because of the chaos caused by the plague which passed through the area around 1680. The first written recipe known is in the diary of the head cook at Chatsworth House, who noted it as “A capital snack with sherry”. Interestingly the recipe called for steaming, with no mention of frying. It is assumed that Frizzle either steamed or fried it, but that assumption is apocryphal: frying may be a later Chinese habit, or perhaps Japanese (who are known to have fried them in camellia oil in the 19th century).
A very comprehensive report on the current status of the humble Dim Sim. However a major omission from your report relates to your thoughts on the bar-b-queued dim sim available at many local sporting and pony club events (pre Covid of course). Some think it a heresy to dim sim hood however I am quite partial to them. I would have been interested in your thoughts about the legitimacy about this particular cooking method.
Anathema.
Wars have been fought for less.