I finally realized the gratification of making your own food. I spent almost 4 hours making Chinese dumplings from scratch tonight and I truly enjoyed every second of it. It all started with a few simple instructions and an online recipe from Yahoo for the dumpling dough and I made up my own recipe for the filling. With minced fatty pork, shrimp, green onion, Napa cabbage, sesame oil, Chinese shaoxi cooking wine, light soy sauce, salt, sugar, fish sauce what can really go wrong. Well...trial and error can always fix some mistakes, I admit that the first 10 dumplings didn't turn out that great because the dough was too thick and the filling lacking in seasoning. My conclusion is that making Chinese dumplings is like making hors d'oeuvres, you want to pack as much flavours into those fillings as possible because you need to balance out the blaneness of the dough, also there are only a few bites in a dumpling so the more flavour the more memorable the bite.
After assemblying almost 10 dumplings, I decided to boil a few to try out the taste and find the flavours of the filling lacking so I decided to dump more soy sauce, sesame oil, white pepper, fish sauce into the filling mix and the filling finally looked liked what I have seen on TV or at those specialty dumpling stores. What exactly should it look like you might ask? It should be shiny with all the sauce and seasoning and the filling should be darker in colour not dominated by the light pinkish colour of the minced pork. The filling needs to be almost sticky like and should smell awsome not of raw meat or shrimp at all.
Why make dumplings when they are so readily available at Chinese supermarkets that are only 15 minutes drive from my house? Well, I believe that with all good food...you have to work at it, for me I want my dumplings to be MSG free. The feeling of being able to make my own dumplings is so amazing, I guess dumplings has always been a staple at my house rather I am aboard or at home in Vancouver. Chive and pork dumplings and watercress and pork dumplings were my buddies back in Beijing as a very late night dinner or late breakfast.
Biting into my very first dumpling tonight was an indescribable feeling, from kneading the dough to mixing the filling to assemblying everything together and then boiling it in water. I was responsible for every part of it and I knew exactly what went into this little morsel of goodness. This is a staple in many Northern Chinese family and making this dumpling feels like connecting with my Chinese roots. There is nothing like satisfying your tastebuds, improvishing on an ever-changing recipe as you go and tasting and adding more whatever is needed because you know exactly what good dumplings should taste like from eating it for the last 24 years of your life.
Here is a picture of my dumplings uncooked - after 20 dumplings I have gotten a hang of it and they were starting to look quite uniformed!
After assemblying almost 10 dumplings, I decided to boil a few to try out the taste and find the flavours of the filling lacking so I decided to dump more soy sauce, sesame oil, white pepper, fish sauce into the filling mix and the filling finally looked liked what I have seen on TV or at those specialty dumpling stores. What exactly should it look like you might ask? It should be shiny with all the sauce and seasoning and the filling should be darker in colour not dominated by the light pinkish colour of the minced pork. The filling needs to be almost sticky like and should smell awsome not of raw meat or shrimp at all.
Why make dumplings when they are so readily available at Chinese supermarkets that are only 15 minutes drive from my house? Well, I believe that with all good food...you have to work at it, for me I want my dumplings to be MSG free. The feeling of being able to make my own dumplings is so amazing, I guess dumplings has always been a staple at my house rather I am aboard or at home in Vancouver. Chive and pork dumplings and watercress and pork dumplings were my buddies back in Beijing as a very late night dinner or late breakfast.
Biting into my very first dumpling tonight was an indescribable feeling, from kneading the dough to mixing the filling to assemblying everything together and then boiling it in water. I was responsible for every part of it and I knew exactly what went into this little morsel of goodness. This is a staple in many Northern Chinese family and making this dumpling feels like connecting with my Chinese roots. There is nothing like satisfying your tastebuds, improvishing on an ever-changing recipe as you go and tasting and adding more whatever is needed because you know exactly what good dumplings should taste like from eating it for the last 24 years of your life.
Here is a picture of my dumplings uncooked - after 20 dumplings I have gotten a hang of it and they were starting to look quite uniformed!
1 comment:
hihi veron! my mommy used to make chinese dumplings when i was small (and i helped out with the wrapping haha!). we didn't make our own dough but bought the "skin" instead ^^
love ur 'eat your heart out' picture up there! maybe i should personalize my blog when i hv time :)
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