Dumplings

As a Christmas present, Amy gave me a cooking class on how to make Chinese dumplings. My kids have been hounding me lately to cook some of the recipes we learned, so yesterday I recruited them to help me make pot-stickers. It's a meat dumpling (I chose pork this time) with a little soy sauce, sugar, salt, pepper, oil, sesame oil, and Chinese chives, which I had never cooked with before (got some from H-Mart). The chives really add a lot to the recipe-- they have a nice sharp zingy taste, kind of like a garlicky scallion. We made the filling, then did the wrapper dough in the food processor. Here's Ethan filling a dumping:

Lydia decided to wear the "onion goggles" since she was chopping the chives. Very fashionable...

Lydia crimping the edges...

Here are some of the completed dumplings:

The kids had fun experimenting with different sizes for the dumpings. In the following photo we have what the kids christened a "Mega-Dumpling" and a "Mini-Dumpling". After that came of course a "Micro-Dumpling" (sorry, no photo), and there was even some talk about making a "Nano-Dumpling", but this idea was eventually vetoed due to concerns that it might blow away or be accidentally inhaled.

This is a pan-fried dumpling; you heat a little oil in a non-stick frying pan, put in a layer of dumplings, cook them until the bottoms are brown and crispy, then you ladle in a 1/3 or 1/2 cup or stock or water and immediately jam a lid on top of the pan (there is a big "poof" of steam) and let them absorb the liquid for a few minutes. Very yummy:

The session went well-- I was even able to recruit Ethan for another session later on to make dumplings into the freezer. Making dumplings is very time-consuming, so it helps a great deal to have an extra pair of hands.

Big and Small

Ethan liked this:

  http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/

Pretty cool.