Directions

1. Soak 8 pieces of dried shiitake mushroom and 1/3 cups of dried shrimp for 1 hour or until soft. Cut the mushroom into small pieces. Drain the shrimp and mince them.

2. Slice 2 piece of Cantonese sausage into thin pieces. If you cannot find Cantonese sausage, you can switch it with other types of sausage.
3. Soak 6 pieces of lotus leaves for 40 minutes. The leaves are quite big, you might need to find a big container and use something heavy to press the leaves under the water. Each lo mai gai uses 1/2 of the leave.
4. Marinate some boneless, skinless chicken with 1 tsp of dark soy sauce, 1 tbsp of oyster sauce, 1/2 tsp of white pepper. Let it sit for 30 minutes.
5. Wash 2.5 cups of glutinous rice several times until the water is clear. Drain it completely. Add 3 cups of water to it. Set the rice cooker to rice setting and just wait for the button to pop. The water amount depends on your cooking tool. If your cooker does not seal well, you might need to add more water.
6. While waiting for the rice, you can precook the filling. Add a tiny touch of oil. Heat up the wok a little bit. Put in the sausage first because as we sauté it, the sausage will start producing oil. In about 3 minutes, you can see the oil starts releasing from the sausage.
7. Then add the minced shrimp. Stir them over medium heat until you can smell the shrimpy flavor. Set this aside, we will use that later.
8. Add more oil to the same wok, add 1 tbsp of garlic. Put in the chicken. Sauté this for about 3 minutes on medium heat. Put in the mushroom. Add 1 cup of the water (Use the water that we soak the mushroom and the shrimp with. It has more flavors), 1 tbsp of Chinese cooking wine, 1.5 tbsp of light soy sauce, 1 tbsp of oyster sauce, 1/2 tsp of five spice, 1 tsp of dark soy sauce, some cornstarch water to thicken the sauce a little bit. Taste to adjust the saltiness. It should be a little saltier than what you normally like because we will take out the chicken and the mushroom. Save the sauce for the rice.
9. The rice is ready. Put it in a big mixing bowl. Pour in the sauce, and mix it until you don’t see any white rice.
10. Now you have everything ready, let’s wrap the lo mai gai. Take half cups of rice. Put it on the lotus leaf. Flatten it and form it into a rectangle shape. Then add some chicken, mushroom sausage and shrimp on top. Add another layer of rice on top of it. Start folding it from one side of the leaf. Roll over the rest of the leaf like that. If you see any extra leaf standing out, you just fold that in as well. Now you finished one lo mai gai. You just keep doing the rest.
11. Once you are done with all of them, put them in a steamer. Steam it above boiling water on high heat for 30 minutes.