Lo mai gai

Lo mai gai

Categories: Cantonese Cuisine

City: Guangzhou

Introduction: Lo mai gai is a southern Chinese food of the Han nationality and belongs to the Cantonese cuisine. It contains glutinous rice filled with chicken, roasted pork, salted egg yolk, Chinese mushroom, etc. The ball of rice is then wrapped in a dried lotus leaf and steamed. A bite of steamed rice mixes with fragrance of lotus leaf and meaty aroma of chicken. It is said that luo mai gai was stemmed from the night market of Guangzhou before 1949, and the first version was steamed in a bowl. Peddlers changed the bowls into lotus leaves in order to carry luo mai gai along with them for sale. Luo mai gai is traditionally large so that it almost amounts to half portion of a meal. Sometimes lo mai gai is divided into smaller wraps, which are known as chun chu gai, literally meaning "pearl chicken" in Chinese.