So, being unemployed has given me a whole new appreciation for the culinary arts. I love to cook. I love kitchen gadgetry and the smell of slow roasting meats. But I hate coming home from work at 8PM and having to make dinner. It made me forget how much I liked cooking. Shame on you. Bad job.Being a lady of leisure has allowed me to spend time preparing food at a pace that suits me. Really slowly. I've been experimenting with the slow cooker, I made a mean Indian meal the other night, but I may have been a little ambitious when I decided to make Shanghai dumplings from scratch for Chinese New Year.
Since coming back from China in December all I really wanna eat is dumplings. Little doughy balls filled with savory pork and crab meat and bursting with soupy juices. YUM. Just writing the words makes me woozy. I bought the bamboo steamer as soon as I got back and had been getting frozen dumplings at the Asian grocer but thought for Chinese New Year I would pay proper homage to this culinary delicacy. Instead, I may have desecrated a holy tradition. Plus... we drank Japanese beer while eating said dumplings which I don't think would be embraced by our friends in the far East.
Aspic Aspirations
Anyway, all was going well until I forgot to add the gelatin to the aspic. This is an all day affair. You have to make the stuffing (pork, scallions, ginger, soy sauce, etc.) and then you make the aspic (sake, more soy sauce, chicken stock & bones, etc.) because you need a soupy base for the filling. However... you can't stuff a dumpling with liquid - you could try but it would be messy - so you mix your stuffing and your aspic and then you put it in the fridge for an extended period of time for it to get firm. The gelatin which I forgot to add helps things to stiffen up a bit... I added it later but had already altered the chemistry of the thing beyond repair. I also didn't give myself enough time to let the stuff get firm. Ugh. When you spend a whole day making something and forget a little thing like some powder made from horses hooves (is that true?) - it's beyond annoying.
DOUGH!
So then there's the dumpling dough. Doesn't that sound cute? I made it twice which was not cute. The first batch didn't rise and I think I may have scorched the yeast on the second batch. You have to turn it into little circles, stuff them and then pleat the tops. Holy hell is this hard. I don't think my hands are small enough or something. My fingers kept getting in the way and stuffing was oozing out of the top.
I ended up having Dana finish them because I was a minute away from feeding the stuffing to the cats and chucking the dough across the house. I have done this before. It was a pie crust. Not pretty. I found pie dough for the next year in the weirdest places.
Year of the Lopsided Ox...
So we ushered in the new year with some pretty deformed looking dumplings but they actually tasted pretty good. I think they lost a lot of juice because the pleating exercise wasn't wildly successful so they weren't sealed up tight enough. I also made longevity noodles and we drank some Sapporo (Kenji was present so we were just respecting his heritage) and then we had some sesame candy from Vietnam and mango ice cream. It was like a pan-Asian celebration!
How to Make it... or Not
This is the recipe I followed. I looked at others but she simplified the aspic recipe which won bonus points because some of the recipes were really complicated. This one also has a video and you can see how she pleats them. It didn't help me cause mine still sucked but it does give you a better idea of how the technique should be deployed.
Those dumplings haven't seen the last of me. I won't be discouraged by one 14 hour, somewhat disastrous and utterly irritating dance with the dumpling shaped devil. Till we meet again my delectable little dough ball.
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