Eight years ago, Dexter and Linda Jou were caught up in the whirl of big city life in Taiwan’s capital city Taipei, juggling the demands of running their own graphic design business with a busy family life with two young sons. Exhausted by their fast-paced lives, they decided it was time for a change.
Encouraged by Dexter’s sister – who had moved to the Northern Rivers several years before – and with a desire for a healthier lifestyle and better future for their children, they sold their business, sold their house, and moved to Mullumbimby.
These days their life is a world away from the one they lived in Taipei, and they couldn’t be happier.
“It’s like a magic area here,” said Dexter. “Good weather, good place. People are together and everything is happy. That is really important.”
Coming to Australia was also the perfect opportunity for Dexter and Linda to realise a long-held dream to start their own food business, which came to fruition as a dumpling stall at the Mullumbimby Farmers Market.
Dexter and Linda create traditional Taiwanese-style dumplings with a Mullumbimby twist. The wrappers are hand made from rice flour and potato starch so they are gluten free, and the dumplings are filled with only the best quality organic meats and fresh local vegetables available, including vegetables picked from their own backyard. Everything is made fresh each week and entirely by hand.
Dexter, who has always had a creative streak, now channels his design skills into his dumplings. He gives each variety a different coloured skin, and meticulously hand pinches each variety into its own distinct and unique pattern: “I don’t like machine made dumplings because the mark is always the same, he explains. “I like to challenge myself,” he said.
Find Radiance Kitchen dumplings at the Mullumbimby Farmers Market every Friday.
Story and photos by Kate O’Neill.
