Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Make Food
Pork dumplings
I love dumplings. Or wontons. Depends on how precise you're being. But I love them. I love how they're flavour packed, and taste great either steamed or in a soup with egg noodles, or when your arteries can handle it, shallow-fried. Of course you could deep-fry, but really - leave that to those with a real deep fryer. Yuk - the mess otherwise!
Anyway, over the last year or so, I've slowly developed my own recipe for dumplings. Recipes are never set in stone - experimentation always recommended - never know what gold might be discovered!
You can get wonton wrappers of varying density in Asian grocery shops like Tai Ping and the Tofu Shop in their refrigerated goods sections. For the hoisin sauce and oyster sauce, I like the Lee Kum Kee range.
Ingredients:
400g pork mince
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 tsp chinese five spice
1cm fresh ginger, finely chopped
freshly cracked black pepper
Wonton pastry
Method
Place pork mince in a bowl with all the other ingredients and mix until well combined. Take a piece of wonton pastry and moisten all four edges with water. Place approx one teaspoonful of the pork mince mixture in the middle of the wrapper. Fold the pastry firstly in half to form a rectangular shape, carefully sealing all the space around the filling so that there are no air pockets left in the dumpling. Moisten the long edge of the pastry with water (the side where the edges meet), and fold down once to seal the edge. Moisten the two short side edges and fold both side edges to the middle, overlapping slightly. The end result will look something like an old-fashioned nurses' hat.
Depending on the thickness of the pastry you have, you might even like to create dumplings that resemble the Thai moneybags pastries- the above is just one way of making them.
To cook - boil for about 10 minutes in beef stock with a stick of celery, and serve with egg noodles. You can also steam the dumplings for about 20 minutes, or lightly pan-fry over a medium heat for about 20 minutes or so.
Pork dumplings
I love dumplings. Or wontons. Depends on how precise you're being. But I love them. I love how they're flavour packed, and taste great either steamed or in a soup with egg noodles, or when your arteries can handle it, shallow-fried. Of course you could deep-fry, but really - leave that to those with a real deep fryer. Yuk - the mess otherwise!
Anyway, over the last year or so, I've slowly developed my own recipe for dumplings. Recipes are never set in stone - experimentation always recommended - never know what gold might be discovered!
You can get wonton wrappers of varying density in Asian grocery shops like Tai Ping and the Tofu Shop in their refrigerated goods sections. For the hoisin sauce and oyster sauce, I like the Lee Kum Kee range.
Ingredients:
400g pork mince
2 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1/2 tsp chinese five spice
1cm fresh ginger, finely chopped
freshly cracked black pepper
Wonton pastry
Method
Place pork mince in a bowl with all the other ingredients and mix until well combined. Take a piece of wonton pastry and moisten all four edges with water. Place approx one teaspoonful of the pork mince mixture in the middle of the wrapper. Fold the pastry firstly in half to form a rectangular shape, carefully sealing all the space around the filling so that there are no air pockets left in the dumpling. Moisten the long edge of the pastry with water (the side where the edges meet), and fold down once to seal the edge. Moisten the two short side edges and fold both side edges to the middle, overlapping slightly. The end result will look something like an old-fashioned nurses' hat.
Depending on the thickness of the pastry you have, you might even like to create dumplings that resemble the Thai moneybags pastries- the above is just one way of making them.
To cook - boil for about 10 minutes in beef stock with a stick of celery, and serve with egg noodles. You can also steam the dumplings for about 20 minutes, or lightly pan-fry over a medium heat for about 20 minutes or so.
# posted by City Girl @ 8:46 pm 
