Hello Blogosphere!
This is BK with a special report! MK is currently indisposed due to unforeseen consequences of being alive. Fear not, though, as she will be back in action most likely after September. Until then, write in the comment section of this post to tell her that you miss her and can’t wait for her return. While you’re at it, why don’t you recommend a recipe for her to try when she gets back from wherever she is. Thanks, and so long, friends!
-BK
For everyone who has tried to find parking at the Whole Foods in LA.
In an effort to save money I’ve been bringing food from home for lunch during the week. Leftovers from dinner the night before are fine, but to change things up a bit I decided to start bringing sandwiches as well. Now, generally speaking a homemade sandwich is quite boring – a slightly stale piece of bread paired with a tired lunch meat and a bit of cheese. It serves it’s purpose – namely to feed you – but palette wise it can be rather unsatisfying. I did a very unscientific and limited poll on Facebook, and it seems most people (and by “most people” of course it’s only 7 people I know) seem to like hot or warm sandwiches. The responses varied from the Tuscan chicken sandwich from Safeway, grilled vegetable, pastrami and sauerkraut, BBQ pulled pork, proscitto panini, and Monte Cristo. In my mind, the common denominator between all of these sandwiches is that they are warm with varied ingredients. Most quickie homemade sandwiches always seem to end up being dry cold affairs that offer little in appetite enticement, but a warm sandwich on toasted bread – ah, now THAT is something people are going to want to eat! So I did a little experimenting in the kitchen and here is a sandwich that you just might be finding in my lunch pail in the coming weeks.
HAM AND PROSCIUTTO SANDWICH WITH A KICK
INGREDIENTS
Rye bread
1 tablespoon vegan mayonnaise (or regular mayonnaise)
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
1-2 slices prosciutto
1-2 slices black forest ham
1-2 tablespoons Chicago style pickled hot peppers
1 slice pepperjack cheese
3 tablespoons sprouts
Dash of black truffle oil (optional)
Lightly toast the bread.
Chop up the hot peppers.
Add all the ingredients of the sandwich together between two pieces of bread.
Add a dash of the truffle oil to the ingredients in the center of the sandwich.
See photos below for more details.
In the last year or so I’ve developed a liking for rye bread. I think it’s tastier than wheat bread and I read somewhere it’s a relatively healthy choice when it comes to choosing breads.
I realize that adding Chicago style sport peppers to a sandwich seems a bit random, but it was sitting in my refrigerator unused and I thought it would be tasty addition to my sandwich. I’ve also developed a taste for foods with a little bit of bite and this seemed like the perfect ingredient to add that extra spicy to keep the sandwich from being boring!
These the condiments I used. You could use regular mayo, but I like Vegenaise just as a healthier option. I buy my Vegenaise from Whole Foods in West Hollywood. Also, mustard is a must! This particular brand of whole grain mustard is not too hot flavored or overpowering as I’ve found in other mustard brands. Plus it’s fancy Stonewall Kitchen – so of course it’s going to be pretty good.
Truffle oil! ::Cue ethereal music:: Okay, I know that truffle oil is manufactured in a laboratory and it doesn’t really come from a truffle, but I don’t care! It’s still tasty, and adds an extra special little something to my sandwich. Again, this was a purchase from Whole Foods in West Hollywood and because truffle oil is made in a lab it only costs $15 per bottle instead of the crazy $60 per ounce that on average truffles cost!
NOTE: For those of you who are scratching your head because you don’t know what I am talking about truffle oil being artificially made then read this NY Times article. I was totally crushed when I learned truffle oil is not “real,” but I’ve gotten over it. Nothing beats a real truffle, but there’s no harm in keeping some of it around to add dashes of its flavor to dishes in the kitchen.
These are the meats and the cheese I used in this sandwich. As you may have noticed from previous entries I am a big fan of getting my groceries from Trader Joe’s - inexpensive and generally speaking pretty good quality.
I started by toasting the bread then I put the sprouts along with the Vegenaise. BK told me that if you add the condiments directly to the middle ingredients it helps all the other elements of the sandwich stick together. A helpful tip!
I stacked on top of the sprouts pieces of the ham and put on a generous amount of the whole grain mustard. The vegenaise I put below helped the ham stick to the sprouts.
Next I added the chopped peppers – again it stuck well to the mustard below it.
Pepper jack cheese finishes off my stack. Pepper jack tends to be mildly spicy which adds nicely to the sport peppers as well.
The crowning finish with a few dabs of truffle oil throughout the middle ingredients. It added an earthiness to the sandwich that made it a little bit different than the usual ho-hum sandwich affair.
The finished product! Nom nom nom – a perfect blend of freshness from the vegetables plus spicy and a dollop of aromatic tuffles. Delish!
This is the second recipe that utilizes the leftover chicken you may have from the Herbed Roast Chicken recipe I posted last week. Like most people, I don’t like eating leftovers very much. I eat them out of necessity, but it’s always nice to reinvent a leftover into a brand new dish. In this case everyone wins – no wasting food, stretches the pricey farmer’s market chicken and it tastes good too!
CHICKEN PENNE PASTA
INGREDIENTS
Leftover roasted chicken – meat stripped and shredded from the carcass
1 package whole wheat penne pasta
2 tablespoons fresh thyme
2 tablespoon fresh sage
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning (optional)
1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup chicken broth
1 small onion
6 garlic cloves
2 tomatoes
Goat cheese
Salt and pepper to taste
Take the leftover roast chicken and strip the remaining meat from the carcass. You can roughly shred them with your hands into bite size pieces.
While you are stripping the chicken you can boil the water for the pasta. Cook the pasta as directed by the package.
While the pasta is cooking you can prepare the herbs that will be used in the pasta sauce. Take the leftover fresh sage and thyme that you used from the herbed roast chicken and put it into the food processor along with 6 cloves of garlic. Grind the herbs and the garlic together into they are finely minced.
Roughly chop the small onion and quarter the tomatoes.
When the pasta is finished cooking drain it and set aside.
Using the empty pasta pot put in the olive oil along with the ground up garlic and herbs. Let that cook for about 2 minutes then add the onion and let that cook together for another two minutes. Add the tomatoes, chicken broth, shredded chicken pieces and bring that to a boil.
Add the Italian seasonings, salt and pepper to taste then turn down the heat to a simmer and let the sauce simmer for about 10-15 minutes.
Add the pasta to the pot and toss it well with the sauce. Turn off the heat. Serve the pasta with grated goat cheese on top. Bon Apetite!
Before you begin preparing everything cook the pasta as directed by the package.
Take the leftover roast chicken and strip the meat and shred it up into bite sized pieces.
These are all the ingredients laid out and ready to be used.
Put the herbs and the garlic in the food processor and grind them until they are finely minced together.
The goat cheese grated on top of the pasta adds that extra bit of pizzazz to make the pasta extra tasty. I like buying goat cheese from Trader Joe’s – it’s inexpensive and it keeps well in the refrigerator.
I like adding Italian seasoning to pastas. It’s usually a mix of dried herbs that add an extra bit of flavor.
In the pot put the olive oil, garlic, onion and chicken broth together.
Add the tomatoes and the chicken and bring the whole mixture to a boil.
After simmering the broth for about 15 minutes combine it with the pasta.
Serve the pasta with grated goat cheese on top and a nice glass of wine. Enjoy!
As promised I am posting the first recipe of two recipes that can be made with a whole chicken. In trying to keep with a more “sustainable” but economically viable philosophy toward food I tried to stretch the pricey chicken I bought from the farmer’s market into two meals for dinner. It’s true that I found out later the chicken I bought may be from a farm with a questionable reputation (see previous week’s entry), but even if I won’t be buying from that farm again these recipes can be used with any whole chicken.
HERBED ROAST CHICKEN
INGREDIENTS
1 4-5 pound whole chicken
3 tablespoons fresh sage
3 tablespoons fresh rosemary
3 tablespoons fresh thyme
4 cloves fresh garlic
1/4 cup kosher salt
1 tablespoons black pepper
2 tablespoons garlic powder
2 cups olive oil
Take the whole chicken out of its wrapping and check to see if any innards have been left inside – throw into garbage unless you intend to use it for something else.
Wash the chicken thoroughly under cold water. You may choose to scrub some salt on it as well and then wash the salt off. Now the chicken is clean and ready to be marinated. Set aside while you prepare the marinade ingredients.
Wash and dry the thyme, rosemary and sage. Pluck the leaves off the stalks and put the leaves into a food processor so it can be ground up together.
Using the food processor grind up the herbs and fresh garlic for about 1-2 minutes until they are all nicely chopped up. It will smell fragrant.
In a large bowl combine the olive oil with the freshly ground herbs, pepper and and garlic powder. Mix it all together.
Coming back to the chicken rub salt all over the chicken and especially inside the cavity.
With the marinade in the bowl pour it all over the chicken and you may even choose to make a pocket under the skin to get the marinade underneath there as well. Make sure to add some marinade to the inside cavity as well. This is rather messy but it yields a tasty chicken!
Put the chicken into a covered container and let it marinate in the refrigerator for up to 4 hours or overnight.
After the chicken has marinated take it out and let it rest at room temperature while you prepare the roasting rack. Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees.
To make clean up easier wrap the bottom part of the roasting pan in heavy duty aluminum foil. It saves a lot of time and scrubbing later.
Place the chicken on the roasting rack and put it into the over.
Roast the chicken for approximately 45 minutes – 1 hour. Check in the chicken after 45 minutes and you may even cut into the side of it to see if it is done and ready to eat!
Start with a whole chicken. I like using a giant mental bowl as the container for the chicken with the marinade.
From the left – fresh thmye, sage and rosemary. Also bought from the Hollywood Farmers’ Market – three bunches for $1 per piece.
Grind the fresh herbs and 4 cloves of garlic in a food processor.
Combine all the marinade ingredients in a bowl except for the salt. Rub the salt all over and inside the cavity. Pour and rub into the skin.
After the chicken has been marinading for several hours or overnight put it on the roasting rack and roast that baby!
The meal ended up being a perfect Sunday night supper. I served my roast chicken with some long beans and brown rice. The rice tastes especially good with the chicken dripping from the roasting pan. Bon Appetite!
As per my previous entry I vowed to try to support organic or local and sustainable food sources when I could – in particular chicken. So in keeping with this new resolution I decided to go to the Hollywood Farmer’s Market to buy some chicken from one of the local farms.
I enjoy shopping for food in almost any setting, whether it be in the neat orderliness of a western grocery store or in the bustling and pungent air of an Asian market, but there’s something wholly unique about farmer’s markets. The atmosphere is so much more communal, and the Hollywood Farmer’s market is no different. The farmer’s market takes place every Sunday from 8AM to 1PM on Ivar and Selma Avenue. The streets are closed off and there are vendors of all kinds (mostly produce, but some meat and seafood as well) selling their goods directly to the public. You can also buy cooked food for a quick meal or even various arts and crafts. The experience of walking into the Hollywood Farmer’s Market is similar to walking into a convivial food party. People are stopping to chat with vendors and there is usually a motley assortment of street performers singing or playing instruments on the sidewalks. Vendors have plastic bags available to customers but many people choose to bring their own reusable bags (always earth friendly of course), and the sight of everyone carrying their own hodgepodge of bags makes it seem all the more personal and “authentic” to what I feel the standard image of a farmer’s market is.
Anyway, so I went to the Farmer’s Market, and I walked around till I found a vendor selling fresh chicken. I decided to buy a whole chicken from a farm called Healthy Family Farms, located in Santa Paula, and purchased a 5 pounder for about $13. I was quite happy with my purchase and that night I made a tasty roast chicken for dinner, and a day later with the leftovers made a delicious chicken penne pasta (recipes to follow in upcoming posts). I was quite pleased with myself. I had supported a local farm and I used every part of the chicken, which means I got good value for a chicken that was a little pricier than normal.
All of this was well and good, but I unfortunately came across some bad news about Healthy Family Farms a few days later. As I was preparing to write this post about my experience at the farmer’s market I came across this link in a Yelp review. The link took me to a site describing the not-so-organic (fraudulent even) practices of Healthy Family Farms as discovered by a private investigation. Now I am not hating on the Hollywood Farmer’s Market nor do I know if the report put together by the private investigation is totally accurate because it seemed very one-sided. As I’ve written about before in the very first entry on this blog – the problem with the explosion of foodie culture on the internet is that every Tom, Dick and Ulterior-Motive-Know-It-All-Harry gets to voice their opinions, and the information put out there could be misleading, misinterpreted or wrong. However, even so, after quickly perusing the report it did make me question Healthy Family Farms enough so that given the choice I will probably not be buying from them in the future.
As some would say it was a “teachable moment.” There’s this wonderful movement toward bringing our food source away from big commercialization back to local, sustainable or organic. But with any earnest movement there will always be some people who may want to take advantage of others’ good intentions so it’s important to keep that in mind. I posted a video that made fun of people who are obsessed with knowing exactly where their food came from, but hey, maybe it isn’t such a bad idea after all!
Check out the Hollywood Farmer’s Market for yourself – it’s still a fun experience and, oh, don’t forget your bags!
Food Inc. - Directed By: Robert Kenner
So I finally saw the documentary Food Inc. The film was released in 2008 so I am a little “late to the party” on this one. I’ve known about the film for quite some time from hearing about it, I but resisted seeing it because as the poster promises I knew I would “never look at dinner the same way.” And it’s true, since watching it I don’t look at food quite the same. Yet, while the information presented was eye opening by the very same token it was not at all surprising. I know that sounds contradictory so let me explain
For those who have not seen the film. Food Inc. is an unflattering insider look at the big business of global food production. It explores the negative environmental and ethical consequences that have occurred because the food industry is controlled by a few but very powerful multinational corporations. Before I had seen the film I had an inkling that something wasn’t quite right. In the media I would hear about about how Americans were getting fatter and more unhealthy on cheap fast food and on top of that E.coli and salmonella break outs kept happening in items like spinach and peanut butter. Something was wrong with our diet and food supply, and while news events like these made me anxious I didn’t think too closely about it. And also, I reasoned, I was and still am not a typical food consumer. For the last five years with the boom of the organic food movement I cut back on the fast food I eat and I buy organic foods when I think the price is appropriate because being the lefty Californian that I am I had some vague notion that it was better for me and the environment, but even so I never really understood what it meant to advocate an organic food option versus a regular one until I saw Food Inc.
So I sat down to watch the film and as I said I learned a lot of things I did not know before, but at the same time because I had heard so many negative news items in the last few years it did not surprise me that there are fundamental problems in our food system. Mostly, the film proposes that the food industry has gone awry because economics rather than environmental concerns drive the companies to adopt bad or unethical business practices with the farmers, assembly workers, animals and crops that are used and sold. I won’t go into all of the nitty gritty of details about how the film talks about these aspects of the global food chain, but suffice to say it’s definitely a film that everyone should watch for themselves.
The main takeaway at the end of the film is that the everyday consumer can incite change in the way the major food companies produce food by what products they buy whether it be organic, local or sustainably grown – it’s a choice that can steer the food industry in a more environmentally respectful and responsible direction. Yet, even if this is true I also know that buying organic or local tends to be more costly so I wondered how I could make a difference without breaking the bank.
I believe in the organic movement, but I am also a realist. Cheap food is thriving because it sustains so many people who cannot pay more for what they eat. And quite honestly, I don’t think I could even afford everything organic and local, but I still want to do my small part to translate some of the lessons I learned into my life so I came up with two recipes that were simple enough to make but also stretched the extra dollars I spent on the organic or locally grown foods I bought.
I decided to try something with local or organic chicken, because that part of the film made the biggest impression on me and also just because chicken is something we eat so often. To quickly summarize, in the film, a chicken farmer with a major food company contract, explains that the company has a “science” to raising chickens in 49 days rather than 3 months. Clearly, accelerated growth of chickens leads to more profits, but at the very same time there are drawbacks to their method. Another chicken farmer explains the accelerated muscular / skeletal growth of the chickens makes it difficult for their organs to keep pace and therefore the chickens have a hard time walking. The chickens are also kept in crowded and unsanitary conditions. Hundreds of them are stuffed into chicken coops where there is very little space for them to move and they are standing in their own feces and urine all the time. One farmer showed how it was “normal” for chickens to die in the coop and because it is so dirty inside it’s easy for disease to spread. The chickens are all vaccinated with antibiotics, but because antibiotic resistant bacteria is on the rise it does not always work to keep the birds healthy and (this is my own conclusion not the filmmaker’s) therefore could be a danger to the population who eat the chickens. The film also points out that it keeps farmers “under their thumbs” because the farmers must borrow up to $500,000 per chicken coop but are only paid by the companies that give them their contracts approximately $18,000 per year. All of this is done in the name of creating a profitable business, and while I like good cheap food like anyone else, this part of the film did make me pause and think that, I, as an individual, may not be paying a lot of the chicken I buy in the store, but it may be costing us in the safety of the food we eat and the farmers who raise the chickens. So in honor of the chickens I will try to buy free range or organic as much as possible. Will I sometimes eat or buy the regular brand? Sure. It’s not easy to make the complete switch, but I can try to do the best I can with the resources I have.
I will be posting my chicken recipes in the next few days. In the meantime I recommend watching Food Inc.
With the rising cost of food prices I like to get the maximum “mileage” out of my groceries. So when I was despairing over having to possibly make a second trip to the grocery store mid-week due to my rapidly emptying refrigerator, I suddenly realized that I could squeeze out another meal using the left over chicken-and-ox-tail stock I made last week along with a giant jar of kim chi that I bought from 99 Ranch. I was going to make kim chi jigae!
For those not familiar with Korean cuisine, kim chi is spicy fermented cabbage. Now, I know for some that doesn’t sound too tasty, but I really like the simplicity and versatility of kim chi. It tastes good as a complement to almost any meal involving rice or noodles and can even be used as the main ingredient in a variety of dishes including the stew I wanted to make for the first time.
However, before I go into the details of my recipe I have to preface this by saying that I am not Korean, but living in LA for the past 9 years, and as an Asian food lover, I have had a lot of Korean food so I would like to think I have an idea of what jigae should taste like. That being said, this isn’t a traditional or very authentic jigae recipe. I raided my refrigerator for ingredients that I thought would taste good, and used my trusty Google recipe search skills to cull jigae recipes from the internet to get a general idea of how it’s made so that I could create a recipe that suited what I had already.
But anyway, enough of that! Let’s get on to the important part – the recipe and the photos!
PLEASE NOTE:
This recipe was quick and easy for me because I already had some homemade stock that I had frozen from the previous week. I’ve included the recipe below for the stock I made, but if you don’t want such a labor intensive recipe you could easily just use plain water or canned stock. Experiment with what you think would taste good.
CHICKEN / BEEF STOCK
STOCK INGREDIENTS
1.5 pounds chicken feet
1.5 pounds ox tail
8-10 cups water
6 large dry shitake mushrooms
2 tablespoons dry wolf berries (aka goji berries – optional)
Salt to taste
Before you begin if you are using chicken feet you must clip the claws off of them (I like to think of it as giving dozens of pedicures). You don’t have to use the feet – any part of a chicken plus bones will do. I just find using chicken feet to be cost effective and because there are so many bones it usually makes a tasty soup.
PRE-BOIL MEAT: When boiling ingredients for soup there is always fat and coagulation from the meat that rises to the top of broth that you may want to eliminate to improve the texture of your soup. You can do this by either skimming it off the top with a spoon or you can pre-boil the meat ingredients for 10 minutes then strain the liquid and boil a fresh batch of water and put the meat back in. Now there will be no more of that scum at the top.
Add 8-10 cups of water to a large stock pot and bring it to a boil. Add the chicken feet and the ox tail and let it boil at medium to low heat for 2 hours.
Along the way add some salt to taste.
While waiting for the meat to boil reconstitute the dry shiitake mushrooms by heating up some hot water. It does not have to be boiling but it should be very hot. Pour the hot water in a bowl and add the mushrooms. The mushrooms should soak for about 30 minutes.
When the mushrooms are ready remove the stems and cut the mushrooms into quarters.
Follow the same procedure to reconstitute the dry wolf berries.
After 2 hours add the mushrooms and goji berries to the soup and let it boil for an additional two hours.
When finished you have a nice soup to eat with dinner! This recipe makes a lot of extra so you can freeze the extra for up to two weeks. Be sure to strain out the meat, mushrooms and goji berries and use it for another recipe such as the kim chi jigae one I have below.
KOREAN CABBAGE STEW (KIM CHI JIGAE)
INGREDIENTS
5 cups soup stock
1 pound pork tenderloin cubed
2 cups kim chi
1 package soft tofu cubed
1 small onion roughly chopped
2 tablespoons miso paste
4 Scallions
4-6 cloves minced garlic
Siracha Hot Sauce to taste or
Dash of Salt
Dash of Pepper
Using a large stock pot use 5 cups of the pre-made stock and bring to a boil.
While waiting for the stock to boil cut up all your ingredients: cube the pork and tofu, roughly chop the onion, slice the scallions and mince the garlic. Set aside.
Using a 12 inch frying pan turn on the stove to medium to high heat. Add some oil and cook the onion and garlic for a two minutes until slightly cooked and fragrant.
Add the pork tenderloin to the pan. Add a dash of salt and pepper and stir fry the pork with the onions and garlic until it is nearly cooked.
Add 2 cups of the kim chi and stir fry everything together for a few minutes.
By now your stock should be boiling nicely. Add the pork, onions, garlic and kim chi to the boiling stock and let all the ingredients simmer together for at least 15 minutes. Add a dash or so of Siracha hot sauce.
To finish add the scallions at the very end.
Serve the stew over rice and enjoy!
Strain out all the ingredients from the soup you made. Turn on the stove and heat up the remaining liquid.
Gather all your ingredients. Cube the pork. On a side note, this is a new brand of kim chi that I was trying. I liked this brand and will probably buy it again. Just the right amount of spiciness without being overpowering.
Roughly chop the onions and slice the scallions. As you can see in the background I made rice while I was preparing everything else.
At the last minute I decided to add minced garlic to this recipe. Put oil in the pan and add your onion and garlic. After a few minutes add the cubed pork. Add a dash of salt and pepper for taste.
I forgot to add a picture, but after the pork is almost cooked I added 2 cups of the kim chi and stir fried everything together for another few minutes.
Add everything from the frying pan to the soup stock, which should be boiling by now. Look at the nice red color! Let the soup simmer for at least 15 minutes.
Cube the tofu while you let the rest of the stew simmer.
To add some more heat put in a few dashes of siracha hot sauce. Have your sliced scallions ready.
Add the tofu and the scallions and let the stew simmer for another 15 minutes.
When you are finished I spooned the stew over rice. It was a delicious and hearty one pot meal! Bon Appetite!
Chinese dumplings make me happy. There’s something subtly elegant about a good dumpling – a little package of delectable delight with a lovely combination of flavors wrapped up in one or two bites. I love that! There are many kinds of Chinese dumplings, but one of the most common is jiao zi. Every dumpling consists of a dough wrapper that encases some kind of filling – usually meat or vegetables or some combination of both. Jiao zi is different from won tons or soup dumplings (xiao lung bao) in that their dough casing (jiao zi pi) is made of different ingredients than the other two kinds of dumplings and it is also usually thicker and chewier in texture. Jiao zi is dvided into various categories depending on how they are cooked – boiled (shujiao), steamed (zhengjiao) or pan fried (guo tie – literally pot stickers). I’ve had a life long love affair with Chinese dumplings, but I’ve never really tackled making them. So I set to make my very first batch of pot stickers completely from scratch.
Of course I had a little instructional help with my dumpling making quest. I recalled long ago when I was just a tweener that my grandmother had spent an afternoon making won tons at home in San Francisco and I tried to recall all the steps I had observed. Even though she had made won tons, and I wanted to make jiao zi, the process is still the same. For convenience she had used store bought won ton skins, but I remember how she had taken the skins into the palm of her hand, filled it with a little bit of meat filling and then sealed it up tight so it wouldn’t fall apart during cooking. My grandmother passed away a few years ago, and it had been ages since I thought of this memory, but it was nice to think of my grandmother again standing in our kitchen methodically putting together dumplings to be eaten. This was useful observational learning, but I also consulted two Chinese cookbooks for further details about how to make the dough and what to put in my filling.
I have mentioned before that Eileen Yin Fei Lo has a fabulous book, Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking and I definitely recommend trying her pot sticker recipe. For my purposes though I like looking at many sources for a recipe, so I also consulted my other Chinese cookbook Yan Kit’s Classic Chinese Cookbook. I really like this book for its recipes, but what stands out from the other books from my collection are the step by step photos of Chinese cooking techniques, such as the how to cut up different ingredients (vegetables and meats) and how to properly stir fry in a wok.
So after reading up on two different recipes for pot stickers I adapted them both into my own recipe below.
Pot Stickers (Guo Tie)
Makes about 60 Dumplings
INGREDIENTS FOR DOUGH
1 1/4 cup cold water
3 cups plain flour
INGREDIENTS FOR FILLING
19 ounces ground pork
2 cups green onion
1 tablespoon grated ginger
1 egg lightly beaten
3 table spoons hisao xing cooking wine
4 table spoons light soy sauce
1 teaspoon salt
4 table spoons sesame oil
3 tablespoons sugar
3 table spoons corn starch
3 dashes white pepper
NOTE: You can put whatever ingredients you want into your dumplings. From my own experience, usually there is some kind of ground meat combined with a vegetable and marinated with various ingredients. For this recipe I only had limited ingredients at home so I just stuck to a simple combination of ground pork with scallions.
Prepare the pork filling: First slice up the onions thinly and grate the ginger. Then in a large metal bowl combine all the ingredients listed above. Using a wooden spoon mix together all of the ingredients until it becomes cohesive. Cover the bowl and put it into the refrigerator for six hours or overnight so that it makes it easier to put inside the dumpling wrappers.
Prepare the pot sticker dough: In another large metal bowl put in the flour and make a well. Then gradually add all the water and combine it with the dough with a spoon and your fingers.
Using a large cutting board lightly flour the surface then knead the dough until it becomes smooth and pliable. The kneading should take about fifteen minutes.
Cover the dough with a damp cloth and let it rest in the refrigerator for about 1.5 hours.
When the dough and filling are ready, take them out and get ready to make the dumpling skin. Using a large cutting board lightly flour the surface again.
Break off a piece of dough and roll it into a long cylindrical roll that is about 1-2 inches in diameter and 10-12 inches long. Cut up this cylindrical roll into 1 inch pieces. Use a damp cloth to cover the bowl that has the remaining dough.
Take one of the 1 inch pieces and using a Chinese cleaver flatten it into the cutting board. Then take a rolling pin and flatten it out further till it becomes a 3 inch diameter circle.
Take the flattened dough circle into the palm of your hand and fill it with 1 tablespoon of pork filling in the center.
Fold the dough skin into a half moon shape and close it up tight with your finger tips.
Lightly dust a cookie sheet or maybe even some plates with flour and place your finished dumpling there while you make the rest.
Repeat the same steps again till all your dough and filling are used.
Prepare to Cook the Dumplings: When all your dumplings are finished turn on the stove to medium heat and in a 12 inch frying pan pour in some peanut oil. When the pan is hot add a batch of dumplings and let them cook for about 3 minutes.
After 3 minutes very carefully add 1/2 cup water to the pan. Be careful of the steam that will rise up immediately! Cover the pan and let the dumplings cook for another 7 minutes.
When all the water has evaporated remove the cover and lower the stove to low and let the dumplings cook for 2 more minutes. The undersides of your dumplings should be a nice golden brown.
Remove the dumplings from the pan and they are ready to eat! Repeat all the cooking steps until all batches of your dumplings have been cooked. Bon Appetite!
NOTE: You can eat your dumplings accompanied by various sauces. I like to eat mine with some hot siracha sauce, but you can also pair it with some soy sauce mixed with sesame oil or maybe some Chinese vinegar. It’s even more fun to lay out different sauce choices at the table and you can pick and choose among the various condiments.
NOTE: If you do not want to cook all your dumplings at once you can freeze the rest to be eaten later. I wrapped up half of my dumplings in tin foil. You can sprinkle some flour so that they don’t stick together.
First slice up the green onions, grate the ginger and lightly beat an egg to be combined with the pork filling.
Combine light soy sauce, hsiao xing cooking wine, sugar, sesame oil, white pepper and corn starch with the ground pork, grated ginger and the scallions.
This is what all the ingredients look like when they have been mixed together. Mix them until it becomes cohesive. Refrigerate the filling for six hours or overnight.
Make a well with the flour and slowly combine the water with the dough. I didn’t do a very good job of slowly adding the water, but next time I will!
Using a wooden spoon and my fingers I managed to combine the flour and water and made a rough dough ball that was ready to be kneaded.
Knead the dough for about 15 minutes until it becomes smooth. I discovered quickly that kneading is a lot harder than you think! My arms hurt!
This is the dough after it had been kneaded into submission! Then I covered this bowl with a damp cloth and put it in the refrigerator for 1.5 hours.
When my dough and filling were ready I laid out all I needed to make my dough skin.
Taking a piece of dough I rolled it into a long cylindrical shape about 1-2 inches in diameter and about 10-12 inches long.
I cut up the dough into even pieces and now I am ready to use each piece to make 1 dough wrapper.
Using the cleaver I flatten the dough out.
Then using the rolling pin I flatten out the dough further.
In the palm of my hand I add some filling to my wrapper.
I fold the skin in half and then I seal up the edges with my finger tips. I know there is another way to seal up pot stickers by folding the edges into a prettier way, but since this was my first time making dumplings I chose to make them the simplest way possible. I’m a dumpling making rookie after all!
After about 2 hours BK (my editor) and I had made all these dumplings! I must say it was rather labor intensive, which only further adds to my appreciation of this food!
This is what our dumplings looked like up close. They are not the most artful of dumplings, but as dumpling novices we thought we did okay.
BK and I had worked up an appetite so we were ready to eat our creations. I warmed up some peanut oil in a pan.
I let the dumplings cook for about 3 minutes. To make sure the oil was evenly distributed underneath I would shake the oil around.
After 3 minutes I added 1/2 cup of water. As you may know, adding water to a very hot pan is tricky, so stay out of the way of the steam and oil that comes up.
After adding the water immediately cover the pan and let the dumplings cook for about 7 minutes until all the water evaporates. After 7 minutes take the lid off then lower the heat and let the dumplings cook for 2 minutes more. Transfer the dumplings to a plate and they are ready to be eaten!
After many hours of prep and cooking the dumpling feast is ready to be consumed.
While sipping my early morning coffee (Kona dark roast – nice and smooth – if you’re wondering) I came across an article in the LA Times about the Chinese-American rap group Model Minority. I checked out some of their music videos on YouTube, and found it funny that their songs mentioned the foods I love. So just for fun I’ve posted it here!
