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China

Interestingly enough, especially in the midst of Chinese New Year, we hit China on our journey around the world.

I decided to tackle Chinese dumplings (known as jiaozi) since they're a traditional New Year dish. Happy Year of the Monkey!

About a year ago, we were invited to dinner at our neighbors' house. They are a wonderful couple from Shanghai. They taught us the art of dumpling making. It was delightful if not time consuming. For our country night, I decided to brush out my notes from that dinner and the results were delicious.

I used pre-made dumpling wrappers so I guess that's cheating. Oh well.

Pork Dumplings

Ingredients
1 and a half packages of dumpling wrappers
1 cup ground pork
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine
3 tbsp sesame oil
3 green onions chopped
1 1/2 cups of shredded napa cabbage
1 tbsp minced fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves minced

Preparation

 Mix all the ingredients for the filling.

Place 1.5 tsp of filling in each wrapper. Using a touch of water, seal the wrappers in a half moon shape.

Place a large pot of water on the stove. Once it boils, add half of the dumplings and then immediately add 1/2 cup of cold water. Once the water boils again add another 1/2 cup of water. Do this a second time adding cold water again when it boils. After the pot boils for the third time the dumplings are done.

If you like crispy dumplings, you can now fry some (or all) in a pan with cooking oil.

Serve immediately with your favorite dipping sauce.

H's Rating: Solid 7
Husband Rating: 7 (though with the addition of sriracha the rating goes up to 8)
M's Rating: At least an 8.5 (she had 3 crispy dumplings and 3 boiled dumplings)




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