Chinese Food
ByMay
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At a recent Chinese cooking lesson, we learnt how to make these Chinese pork dumplings that you might find in dim sum restaurants.
For Chinese New Year, some Northern Chinese families will come together to make these dumplings. They will wrap it in such a way that the dumpling resembles old gold ingots. By eating loads of these dumplings, it will mean you will have much prosperity in the new year.
You need to have nimble fingers to wrap these dumplings. It’s a bit like food origami. After careful observation of the technique, we attempted to wrap some ourselves with mixed results. But they still tasted great. With a little bit of practice, I’m sure we’ll be able to make perfect dumplings.
To make these at home, just buy the ready-made pastry from an Asian supermarket. They come either fresh or frozen. I don’t think it’s worth the hassle of making the dough yourself unless you feel inclined to experiment. If you don’t like pork, you can use minced chicken or prawns for the filling instead.
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Jiaozi Chinese Dumplings
This is quite time intensive to make as it takes a while to get the hang of wrapping the dumplings. It's a great fun activity to do in a group.
Prep Time30 minutes mins
Cook Time10 minutes mins
Total Time38 minutes mins
Ingredients
The Dough
- 225 g plain flour
- 150 ml cold water
The Filling
- ½ bunch of coriander
- 3 spring onions
- 1 cube of ginger I used about an inch1 clove of garlic
- 5 Chinese mushrooms if dried, soak in warm water
- 1 bunch of Chinese chives
- ¼ of a cabbage Chinese or Western
Marinade
- 2 teaspoons sesame oil
- Salt to taste
- 2 tablespoons light soy sauce
- ¼ teaspoon sugar
Instructions
The dough
Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl
Gradually add the water, while mixing with a fork/hand
Once all the water is added, fold into a ball
Knead for 5 minutes on a hard surface until slightly elastic consistency is reached (this should be a ‘play dough’ consistency – you may need more/less water for the correct consistency – use the measurements as a guideline only)
Once consistency is reached, roll out the pastry to roughly 1-2mm thick
Use a 70mm diameter circular cutter to cut out as many pastries as possible
The filling and marinade
Finely chop all filling ingredients
Mix with marinade
Mix with any of the above fillings
The wrap
Place filling in the centre of the dough
Fold the bottom centre over the filling to form a semi circle and pinch the top tight
Pinch the 2 corners of the semi circle together leaving 2 symmetrical ‘Mickey Mouse ear’ shapes between your centre fold and the corner folds. Not the folds are assymetric.
Now pinch the ears in towards you to make 4 layered folds
Fold over into a ‘half moon’ shape so that the dumplings sit easily on a plate
We learnt to pleat the dumplings too, not too successfully.
Cooking ( we had ours deep fried on the night but you can cook it like this below)
Heat 2 tbsp vegetable oil in a frying pan to a high heat
Place dumplings in pan – base down
Now turn the heat down to medium and fry dumplings until base is golden brown
Using a lid as a shield, pour hot water into pan until dumplings are 1/2 covered. Cover quickly with lid
Cover with lid for 5-10 mins on medium heat until all water has evaporated
Once pan is completely dry of water, allow dumplings to crisp up on the bottom for a further minute
Serving
Serve with a mixture of equal amounts of soy sauce, vinegar and matchsticks of ginger.
Notes
You can use wantan skins to make these dumplings too. They tend to be thinner and might be more difficult to handle and easier to tear.
This recipe is from the School of Wok.
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