In a good size mixing bowl thoroughly stir together all the ingredients except the diced shrimp. You want to make sure the sugar and salt become fully dissolved into the mix.

When that’s done, carefully – and I mean carefully - stir in the shrimp so that it just gets barely coated with all the other ingredients. You want the shrimp to stay diced, and not get stirred so much that it all turns to mush. Good. Filling ready.

Thoroughly stir all the ingredients into a pretty, microwave-proof serving bowl.

Heat the sauce on high in the microwave for 1 minute. Why heat the sauce? Well, it’s a great way to pull out the flavors of the chili and garlic in particular, and also encourage all the other ingredients to blend together nicely.

Stir again thoroughly to really make sure the sugar has all dissolved. Sauce done.

You should be able to fill each dumpling wrapper with about 2 heaped teaspoons of the shrimp filling. I was using square wrappers, so made slightly squarish dumplings.

Spoon the filling diagonally across the wrapper’s centre so it forms an oval shape that’s higher in the middle than at its ends. You want the ends of the oval shape to extend to within about a 1/3 of inch of the wrapper’s two opposite corners. The middle of the oval heap needs to stay about 3/4 of an inch from the other two corners. Good.

Now use a little water on your fingertip to slightly wet a ¼-inch all around the wrapper’s outside edges.

Pull two of the sides together so that they meet over the top of the filling at its highest central point, and pinch them firmly together. You’ll now have a tringle shape with the filling in the middle, and two ends of the wrapper still open.

Fold one open end up to meet the top of the triangular parcel and pinch it shut. Now spoon a little more of the filling into the open end. Nearly done.

Now close the other end so it matches its opposite number, and pinch it shut at the top of the dumpling.

It should now look like an almost square dumpling with sides that rise up to join at the top. Grand. Repeat the process until you’ve used all the shrimp filling.

A 12-inch, bamboo steamer with three trays and a lid is grand for this, but a steel steamer works just as well. The important thing is to line the steaming trays with some lightly oiled, greaseproof paper. Lightly oiled is really important – it makes sure that the dumplings don’t stick to the paper as they steam. I used a little plain coconut oil for this, just enough to give the paper a glistening coating on its upper surface.

I cut out some rounds of greaseproof paper slightly smaller than the trays’ insides, and then used a sharp-pointed knife to carefully pierce a dozen or so ¼-inch slits all over the paper as it sat in its tray. This bit of effort matters because it will allow the steam to flow up and around the dumplings as they cook.

Space the dumplings across each lined tray with a good inch between each dumpling – they do swell slightly as they steam, and you don’t want them expanding into one another and sticking together.

When the water in your steamer is at a good boil, add the dumplings and cover the steamer. Make sure the water stays at the boil and let the dumplings steam for 6 minutes. That’s it – dumplings done.

Serve at once with the dipping sauce alongside so folks can help themselves.