International Dumpling Incident Party

It’s time for another International Incident Party hosted by Penny from Addictive and Consuming, and this time we’re bringing dumplings to the table. When I started thinking about what I was going to make, I immediately thought of the mother of all dumplings (imho) – Shanghai soup dumplings / xiao long bao. But after a bit of research on the internet I decided it would be too much trouble and tried hard to think of an easier alternative.

I walk past a butcher on my way to work every day and as well as all the usual cuts of meat they also sell a lot of offal. Last week I noticed they had a tray of pork skin in the window – and since pork skin is one of the components of the broth that goes in the xiao long bao I decided it was a sign that it was meant to be!



For those uninitiated in the magic of xiao long bao, they are dumplings with a meat filling that contains jelly made from a savoury soup. When the xiao long bao are steamed, the jelly turns into a piping hot soup inside the wrapper. They are WONDERFUL. After picking up my pork skin and chicken carcasses, I set to work.

Stage one in making the dumplings was to prepare a broth out of chicken bones, pork skin, ginger and onions. After the broth was ready, I added flavourless gelatine to set it into a jelly.

On Sunday morning I got up early just so I could make them. First I made the dough for the xiao long bao wrappers. The dough had to rest for thirty minutes, so while that was happening I put together the meat filling, which has the jelly mixed into. I wish I had read the filling recipe before I made the jelly, because it turns out only 1 & 1/2 cups of jelly is required - but the recipe said to make 4 cups of jelly. Rah! I was a bit annoyed - maybe because I was up early and hadn't even eaten breakfast yet!

After that it was time to roll out the dough and pleat the dumplings. I started off by rolling out the dough and using a cookie cutter to cut out circles, but eventually found it easier to roll the pieces of dough thinly into circles. The thinner the dumpling dough was, the easier it was to pleat (and the better they are to eat as well). My pleating was not great - but hey it was my first time!



The xiao long bao were steamed and, after giving them a bit of time to cool down, it was time for a taste test. It probably took me about an hour to make forty xiao long bao – but it certainly didn’t take that long to eat them! I thought my wrappers were still a bit thick, but the filling was tasty and, JOY OF JOYS, the steaming hot soup was contained inside. We ate them with vinegar. Nice! I was rather pleased with my effort - they weren't complicated to make, just time consuming. The hardest part was not losing the soup after they had been steamed - the little buggers had a tendency to stick to anything and everything!

I also made har gow / prawn dumplings, apparently because I hadn't spent enough time making dumplings! I found the har gow much harder to make than the xiao long bao. I could tell when I went to roll out the har gow wrappers that it was too stiff. Because the dough was relatively stiff, I couldn't get the wrappers to be as thin as I wanted them, and I also couldn't pleat them nicely. You really want a very thin wrapper for har gow, because the best ones have that translucent, thin skin when steamed.



The har gow were, as I expected, not great. Bro said they were better than the xiao long bao, but Alastair wasn’t a fan. I didn't think they were terribly great, although not THAT bad for my first attempt. However, I don't think I’ll try making har gow again – it's too much effort to master the wrappers.

So that's it for my contribution to the International Dumpling Incident Party. See Addictive and Consuming for the round up, I'll update this post later with links for all the party goers.

Recipes:



For the xiao long bao, I found Steamy Kitchen's post very useful.



For the har gow, I followed this recipe on About.com.

Dinner at ours: Mushroom dumplings, spicy pork in pancakes and almond jelly

The previous weekend, while I was in the middle of Super Flu 08, my pal Jo came over. Before I had succumbed to Super Flu 08, I had invited her over for tech support and dinner. By the time Saturday rolled around I mistakenly thought that I was recovering so opted to keep the date. I felt strong enough to cook, but could barely taste anything. Cooking with no sense of taste was an interesting experience!

Because I had been feeling so crap during the week, I only decided on what to cook when I woke up on Saturday morning. I went for something relatively easy.

For starters, we had mushroom dumplings. I threw together a rough filling, and sat down to pleat the dumplings (recipe at the end of this post). I watched the video below to learn how to fold them - she works quickly so I watched it a LOT, over and over, until I had figured it out. Mine didn't look as good as hers, but I pretty much had the hang of it by the time I finished wrapping.... 50 dumplings later!.





After dumplings, we had spicy pork in pancakes (recipe below) which is eaten in the same way as peking duck. This was pretty good and I would definitely like to try it again when I'm not sick!



And for dessert, we had a Chinese restaurant special – canned lychees and ice cream! I had also made some almond jelly (recipe below), but because I couldn't taste anything, I added more almond essence than was desirable. Judging by the way Alastair recoiled when he tried it for me, it was a bit too intensely almond flavoured! So I only served a little bit of the jelly - thank goodness for the ice cream and canned lychees.



And this is what we ended dinner with - flowering tea. I don't own a clear teapot, so here it's in a coffee plunger. Isn't it gorgeous?



Mushroom dumplings

Makes about 50 dumplings

1 small onion, peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
2 cm piece of ginger, peeled and grated
6 dried shitake mushrooms, stems removed and soaked in water for at least 30 minutes
220g can whole water chestnuts, drained and rinsed
300g mushrooms
1/2 tablespoon Chinese rice wine
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 egg, lightly beaten
Salt & pepper
500g packet of jiaozi wrappers

In a frying pan, cook the onion, garlic and ginger on medium heat for 5-190 minutes until soft and cooked through.

In a food processor, pulse the shitake mushrooms, water chestnuts and mushrooms until finely chopped. Tip into a bowl and add the chinese rice wine, soy sauce, egg and season well with salt and pepper. Mix together.

Place a small teaspoon of filling into the middle of each wrapper (don't add too much filling - it makes it hard to fold the dumplings). Wet the edges of the dumpling with water. Fold the dough over the filling into a half moon shape and pinch the edges to seal. Continue with the remainder of the dumplings.

Heat some oil in a frying pan over medium high heat. Add dumplings in a single layer (don't over crowd the pan) and cook for 1-2 minutes or until brown underneath. Add enough boiling water to come 1/4 way up the sides of the dumplings, then cover with a lid and cook for a further 4-5 minutes or until water has evaporated. Serve with dumpling vinegar and soy sauce.



Spicy Pork in Pancakes

From Australian Table magazine - Jan/Feb 2007

Serves 6-8

(Note: you end up with quite a lot of meat. I only cooked 1/3 of my meat and had more than enough to serve with one batch of pancakes. So you could either use less pork fillet, or make up more pancakes!)

1/3 cup (80ml) peanut oil
1 teaspoon grated ginger
2 garlic cloves, crushed
750g pork fillet, cut into thin strips
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine
2 teaspoons sugar
16 Chinese pancakes (see below)
hoisin sauce, green onion, to serve

Heat half of the oil in a wok on medium. Cook ginger and garlic for 2 minutes, until soft. Increase heat to high and cook pork in small batches for 2 minutes, until browned. Remove and set aside.

Add soy sauce, wine, sugar and 1 teaspoon ground pepper to same pan and cook on medium heat for 2 minutes, until syrupy. Add pork and toss to heat through.

Top each pancake with hoisin sauce, green onion and pork and roll to enclose.


Chinese Pancakes

Makes 16

2 cups (300g) plain flour
3/4 cup (180ml) hot water
1 & 1/2 tablespoons sesame oil

Sift flour into a bowl. Make a well in the centre. Pour in hot water a little at a time, stirring in flour until dough forms. Knead dough for 5-10 minutes, until elastic. Wrap in plastic wrap and set aside in a warm place for 15 minutes.

Divide pancake dough into four. Roll out each piece to 5mm thick. Cut out 16 circles with a 7cm round cutter. Brush each with oil and press oiled surfaces together in pairs so they'll cook without colour. Roll out each pair to 10cm across.

Heat a lightly greased frying pan on low. Cook joined pancakes for 2 minutes each side, until cooked but not brown. Peel apart and stack on a warm plate.

Almond Jelly

From Australian Table magazine - October 2006

Serves 4

1 tablespoon gelatine
1/2 cup (125ml) boiling water
1 & 1/4 cups (310ml) milk
1/4 cup (55g) caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon almond essence

Lightly spray ice cube trays with cooking oil spray. Combine gelatine and 1/4 cup water in a bowl. Add boiling water and stir to dissolve gelatine. Stir in milk, sugar, and almond essence. Pour into prepared trays. Chill for 2 hours, until set.

Wontons

I learnt how to make wontons by watching my mum make them. My parents used to own a small food business, and I worked there from when I was an awkward teen of 13 till I was 22 (gotta love family obligations). Nowadays I wonder what people thought when they came in. Even when I was young, I would be making burgers and frying up fish and chips. I wonder if that was ever considered weird.

I know that on the very few occasions when I got to a fast food "restaurant" like KFC or McDonalds I often have a little internal shudder when I see the youngies. It's another reason to not like those places – I don't quite trust teenagers cooking my food!

Right, I'll put my grandma persona away and get back to wontons. I tend to mix up a big batch of dumpling meat, then divide it into smaller batches and freeze. 200 grams of mince seems to make around 30 wontons (depending on how much meat you put in each). The recipe I use for the mince is below, along with a lesson on how to fold wontons.

Wontons can be deep fried, steamed or boiled. My favourite way is boiled in soup. I love biting into the meat and then slurping up the soft skin. I also use the same mince to make pan fried dumplings by wrapping it in gyoza skin. I must warn you though – while they taste great, dumpling burps can be something awful. Don't drink something fizzy during or immediately after eating!



I served my wontons in home-made chicken soup with fresh shitake mushrooms, bok choy, sprouts and squid (left over from the lemon herb squid evening).

Wonton mince

1 kilo pork mince
1 thumb sized piece of fresh ginger root, peeled and minced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
6 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in water for at least 30 minutes then diced finely
1 tablespoon chinese rice wine
4 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons sesame oil
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon salt

In a large bowl, combine the pork, ginger, garlic, shitake mushrooms, rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil, egg and salt. Stir until well mixed.

To shape wontons



Step 1: Take a small teaspoon of mince and place it near the top half of the wonton wrapper. Don't use too much mince, or the wontons will be hard to shape.



Step 2: Fold the wrapper over and flatten it around the mince.



Step 3: Wet one corner of the wrapper and bring the two edges of the wrapper together. Press the corners together until they stick.



Your wonton should look like this!