A morning of folding dumplings

The restaurant is at its best at half past nine in the morning. The lights are half on, the extraction is off, and there is a tray of lamb filling on the pass with a stack of wrappers beside it.

Folding is not difficult, but it is unforgiving. Too much filling and the dumpling splits in the pan. Too little and you get a mouthful of dough. Seal it badly and the whole thing opens up in the water and takes its neighbours with it.

Why we still do it by hand

Machine-made wrappers are perfectly even, which sounds like an advantage and is not. A hand-rolled wrapper is thicker at the pleat and thinner at the base, so it holds together where it needs to and stays delicate where you bite. You can feel the difference immediately.

By eleven the trays are stacked and covered, and the kitchen turns to stocks. By the time the first lunch table sits down nobody remembers the morning at all. But it is there on the plate.