Dumplings | The Kitchen God's Wife
“Back home, I told the cook girl to boil enough pots of water and to chop enough pork and vegetables to make a thousand dumplings, both steamed and boiled, with plenty of fresh ginger, good soy sauce, and sweet vinegar for dipping.”- The Kitchen God's Wife, Amy Tan
Back home, I told the cook girl to boil enough pots of water and to chop enough pork and vegetables to make a thousand dumplings, both steamed and boiled, with plenty of fresh ginger, good soy sauce, and sweet vinegar for dipping.
The Kitchen God's Wife
Amy Tan
I don’t think I’d ever really eaten a dumpling of any kind, before I moved to Melbourne. While there were a few Chinese restaurants in the country town I called home, my family never really frequented them. Instead most our eating out consisted of milkshakes and burgers at a local cafe, or fish and chips on a Friday night, called in ten minutes early to the fish and chip shop in the tiny neighbouring town that was closest to our house.
When I moved to Melbourne though I discovered the deliciousness that is a dumpling. While there may be many disagreements for where the best dumplings in the city are, my vote goes to Shanghai Dumpling House. Terrible service, tissues on tables instead of napkins and food that is usually thrown on the table without a word - however, there’s no better place to devour plate after plate of deliciously hot dumplings during the cold days, filling up on the decadent plates (15 dumplings for $7 is pretty great) and refilling cup after cup of the free tea.
I think I devoured most of Amy Tan’s novels in the same way - trying to hide away during winter and read as much as possible at once, frantically trying to finish so I could see how the story would end. It was once I’d finished, and looked back at the mentions of food throughout that I realised I’d never made dumplings. It was the following weekend that I also realised that my local asian grocer had an entire fridge utterly filled with different kinds of dumpling wrappers - if I believed in signs from the universe, this would have been a sign.
*Note: Depending where you go there may be lots of different types of dumplings wrappers available. Try and get the jiaozi ones - it’s what I used and they were perfect.
Dumplings
Makes approx. 3 - 4 dozen
Ingredients
Dumpling wrappers *see note (at least a pack of 50)
3 tbsp vegetable oil + 1/4 cup
2 tsp minced ginger
1 brown onion, very finely diced
1 carrot, finely grated
2 cups shiitake mushrooms, very finely diced
1/2 head white cabbage, very finely sliced
1 cup gallic chives, very finely sliced
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp white sugar
Fresh pepper
1/2 cup of water
To serve (whatever you want really)
Soy sauce
Sweet vinegar
Chilli oil
In a large wok or frying pan heat 3 tbsp vegetables oil and add in the ginger and onions. Cook for a few minutes or until onion is translucent.
Add in the mushrooms, cooking for around 5 minutes until just tender. Add in the carrots and cabbage and continue to cook until all vegetables are tender - remove from heat and transfer to a bowl.
Add into the bowl the garlic chives, sesame oil, fresh pepper, soy sauce, sugar and remaining 1/4 cup oil. Stir until all the filling is nicely mixed (if the mixture is a bit too wet at this stage, I tend to pop mine in a fine meshed sieve and let a bit of it drip out so the dumplings aren’t too soggy).
Now for the fun part: assembling them. Dip your fingers into the water and dampen around the edge of the dumpling wrapper before spooning a small amount of the vegetable mix into the middle. Working from the edge, pinch together the sides of the wrapper using the water to press the edges together more when necessary. Place onto a lightly floured surface when done. Repeat with all remaining vegetable mix.
To steam the dumplings, you can either use a bamboo steamer or a regular vegetable steamer - just make sure you place a bit of cheesecloth inside the steamer first or otherwise the dumplings will stick badly to the pan.
To fry, heat a few tablespoons of vegetable oil in a frying pan, placing the dumplings into the pan when the oil is hot. Allow them to fry for about two minutes before adding a small layer of water to the pan, reducing the heat and covering so they can steam. Once the water has evaporated you can remove the cover and let them fry for another couple minutes.
Serve immediately with your choice of dipping sauce.