dumplings...

i miss yamcha. i miss those dang delicious dumplings and chicken feet and blackbean pork ribs, and everything else that comes in dimsum. oh well. i got one of those asian dumplings book so yesterday while hubby's home i tried to make the pork and napa cabbage water dumplings. the author (andrea nguyen, same author as my vietnamese cookbook) made everything sounds so complicated, but in reality it's really simple.

ok, for dumpling skin you can just buy them in the supermarket. but here we don't have asian grocery, and the ones available at safeway were only for wonton so it's not suitable for dumplings. so i had to make my own. it's simple.

2 cups of flour
3/4 cups of just-boiled water (i added another tablespoon). boil the water and then set aside (not longer than a minute)

in a bowl pour flour and create a hollow in the middle. pour water and (at the same time) mix the flour with a wooden spoon. do until the flour's moist and then using your hand knead them a bit so it'll create a ball. take the ball out of the bowl, and knead some more using hand for around 2 minute until it bounced back (but leaving a dent) when pressed with finger. put in freezer plastic bag, squeezing the air out and leave in room temperature for more than 15 min but not more than 2hr.

filling:
2/3lbs ground pork, fattier kind prefered but i use 80/20 ground beef, and i use around 1lbs
1/4 cup of chopped green onion
2 cups of finely chopped napa cabbage (sawi putih kalo orang indo bilang). after chopped, put in bowl, sprinkle with 1/8 tbs salt and leave for 15 min. then rinse 2x with water, and then squeeze the excess water out by using cotton cloth (i just use saringan sama peres pake tangan lah.. manual)
1tsp minced fresh ginger
salt
soy sauce
black / white pepper

how to make filling:
mix everything together. gampang kan? :D

how to assemble:
prepare a workspace, yg lebar ya.

dumplings:
- take dough ball out of plastic bag, divide into two. roll the dough into a 1 inch thick log (se-buku jari) and then divide into 16 pieces. sprinkle some flour on the cut side so they don't stick together, put back in plastic bag.
- take another plastic bag, cut 3 of the sides, put one of the dough inside, close, and press it with bottom of glass. and then roll the dough until it's quite thin (according to the recipe it should be 1/8 inch thick but i don't know how thick that is so i just 'kira2'..... but according to size it should roll out to be a bit smaller than your palm). then press the edges with your finger so that the edge is thinner than the middle part.
- fill with filling, putting the meat slightly off centered. then fold the edges together, pressing with your thumb to create a pocket. set aside. repeat.

before eating, boil the dumplings for a few minutes until they float and looks puffy and glossy.


any filling left-overs can be frozen in a vacuum bag or use ziplock bag and squeeze the air out.
any skin left can be refrigerated for up to 2 days but it's better to just make the dumplings, and then freeze those. to freeze dumplings: place on top of parchment paper then freeze for 1hr. after that put into vacuum bag, and it should last up to a month or two.


well, here's the result. not bad, ey?


oh ya, sauce. gampang.
soy sauce (1/4 cup? depends on how much you wanna make)
1 tsp sugar
minced garlic
chile oil. kalo gak ada bikin pake peanut oil + red pepper flakes. caranya panasin peanut oil sampe hot hot hoooot, trus masukin (alias goreng) red pepper flakes for about a minute. leave to cool. i was too lazy to fry the flakes so i just put the peanut oil in the microwave, and microwave it for about 1.5 minute, and put the flakes inside, and microwave again for another 30sec.