Broccoli-Cheddar Hushpuppies

Reblogged from Katie at the Kitchen Door:

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Happy April, everyone! I'm so glad we're done with all that January-February-March-extended winter business. I spent the weekend celebrating the warm weather (and Easter!) with some serious gardening and some playing with my new camera and some scalloped potatoes and ham. It was a much-needed break from being indoors stuck in front of a computer screen.

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These look amazing! I'm definitely going to have to give these a go. They look like the perfect comfort food.

Crispy wontons

Golden ingot shaped crispy wontons!

Not so long ago, I held a “dumpling extravaganza” to celebrate Chinese New Year with friends. When I was young, we would go to my grandma’s for a big family dinner at this time of year. Her crispy wontons were always my favourite. As such, I had a go at my own recipe this year. Not as good as grandma’s but not bad!

Ingredients

• 500 g pork mince
• 275 g water chestnuts, diced
• 24 raw prawns, diced
• 3 whole spring onions, finely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 4 tbsp chinese wine
• 4 tsp soy sauce
• 3 tbsp sesame oil
• 3 tsp sugar
• Wonton wrappers
• Vegetable oil for frying

Method

1. Mix the pork, water chestnuts, prawns, spring onions, garlic, wine, soy sauce, sesame oil and sugar in a bowl to make the filling. Leave to marinade for at least 2 hours.
2. Place 1 tsp filling in a wonton wrapper and fold. (In half is fine with a little water to seal the wrapper shut, but I folded them like ingots for good luck!) Repeat for other dumplings.
3. Heat oil in a pot. When the oil is hot, deep fry the dumplings for 2-3 minutes, or until golden brown.
4. Drain the dumplings on paper towel to remove excess oil.
5. Serve while hot!

Gombóc smacked

This is an eastern European plum dumpling recipe for gombóc. The version below has been adapted from Hungarian instructions.

Perhaps the plums I used weren’t ripe enough, but these dumplings were SOUR!  I used black plums, but many people use damson or Italian prune plums, which sound like they are sweeter. (Know more about it? Please leave a comment.)

I served these dumplings to some very forgiving friends who pulled the most amazing sour faces. It’s not an experience we’ll soon forget. The flavour was enhanced by ‘sprinkling’, more accurately ‘pouring’, sugar on top of the dumpling. The crust was a winner though, amazingly tasty. As such I might try making these dumplings again, but perhaps with apricots or nectarines, hoping for a sweeter finish.

Ingredients

• 3 medium potatoes
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/4 cup plain flour
• 6 ripe plums
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• sour cream

Method

1. Peel and dice the potatoes and boil them in a pot until soft.
2. Mash the potatoes and let them cool for 10 minutes.
3. Combine the potatoes, eggs and salt in a large bowl.
4. Add flour and knead the ingredients until a soft dough forms.
5. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 mins.
6. Boil a large pot of water.
7. Roll dough to a little more than 0.5 cm thick. Cut into 6 x 6 cm squares.
8. Remove pits from the plums by cutting each plum almost in two (but not all the way through). Fill the centre of the plums with cinnamon sugar.
9. Place a plum in the centre of each dough square and fold the dough over the plum.
10. Roll the dumpling into a ball, making sure edges are sealed.
11. Carefully drop dumplings into boiling water.
12. Cook until the dumplings float to the surface, then cook for an additional 10 minutes.
13. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large frying pan, add bread crumbs and brown them.
14. Use a slotted spoon to remove the dumplings from the pot, transferring them to the frying pan to coat them in bread crumbs.
15. Serve with LOTS more cinnamon sugar and sour cream.

Christmas dumplings (for cheats)

This is one of the easiest recipes ever. Actually, I’m not even sure you can all it a recipe. It’s more like a little embellishment … like when you say you made these yourself! It takes 10 minutes from opening the packets to finish. Merry Christmas!

Ingredients

• 80 g white chocolate melts
• 12 dark chocolate Royals biscuits
• 12 Jaffas
• 3 spearmint leaves

Method

1. Cut each of the spearmint leaves into four smaller leaves.
2. Place the white chocolate melts into a microwave-proof bowl. Microwave on medium, stirring every 30 seconds until fully melted.
3. Pour the melted chocolate into a small plastic bag. Cut off one corner of the bag. Use the bag to pipe white chocolate on the biscuits. It should drip as if it were custard.
4. Pop a Jaffa and a small spearmint leaf on top of the white chocolate on each biscuit.

Where did she go?

I haven’t been making quite as many dumplings as I’d like. Instead I’ve been writing 50 000 words as part of National Novel Writing Month! Now it’s all over and time to get stuck back into the dumpling making. I’m looking forward to trying out some Christmas recipes.

Here are some hedgehog shortbread biscuits I made recently from a recipe I found on Pinterest*. They are as cute as dumplings, but they don’t quite count according some dumpling definitions. Although they’re time consuming, they’re quite simple to make. I think they’d be great as gifts.

*Note that I swapped the walnuts in the recipe for blanched almonds.

12 days of Dumpling

Looking for something adorably entertaining this Halloween? Here’s a French bulldog called Dumpling, who has been dressed up in 12 different food-themed Halloween costumes. Don’t worry, there’s more!

Do you know your dumplings?

There are a few dumplings on this poster I haven’t tried. Time to investigate! Artwork by Eliza Stein.

Daifuku dumplings

A short intro to daifuku from the show, “Cooking with dog”.  Fortunately, as they say, “it’s not what you think”. Enjoy!

Mouthwatering Melbourne

In the not too distant past, the people of Canberra enjoyed a long weekend. Dan and I skipped town and drove to Melbourne for dumpling adventures.

Shanghai Street

A golden Shanghai Street dumpling.

This is THE place recommended to me by Dan’s family. James is in there once a week for a fix of xiao long bao. He’s not the only one. There was a cue out the door and onto the street, even on the drizzly cold night we dragged ourselves out for a bite to eat. Coincidently we even ran into our old friend Claire, who we hadn’t seen in years.

When you walk through the door, the smell of vinegar hits your nostrils and makes you feel warm from the inside out. The pan-fried dumplings are crispy, the wontons are delicate and there’s a fine balance of textures. There’s as much love that goes into the wrappers as the fillings in this place. The menu isn’t huge, but the varieties they do have taste like heaven.

This place serves the best dumplings I’ve eaten since I started this blog. It’s also reasonably priced. If you can, go now.

HuTong

What can I say – we walked through the door – they asked if we had a booking – I said no – they laughed. HuTong is possibly the most famous dumpling house in Melbourne. Is it a wonder we couldn’t get in on a Sunday morning? Can’t blame a girl for trying.

Having a bite at the Shark Fin Inn.

Shark Fin Inn

After being the joke of HuTong, we gave the Shark Fin Inn a go. Their yum cha isn’t bad. It’s actually better than anything we can get here in Canberra, but it’s no Shanghai Street!

Bonus tip

If you’re a cheese fan – and we certainly are – make sure you head to the La Latteria mozzarella factory when you’re next in Melbourne. Before jumping back into the car and heading home, we filled the esky with $60+ of fresh cheese and learnt a few stretching tips for making our own mozzarella. Well worth the visit!

Good hobbies and great dumplings

It wasn’t long ago, when I first heard of Postcrossing. Taryn and I were travelling through Spain and we had plenty of time to relax and discuss our hobbies over mojitos.

I showed Taryn how to find small plastic containers hidden in shrubs using hi-tech satellites (otherwise known as Geocaching). She taught me how to send postcards to strangers across the globe and get some back in return (otherwise known as Postcrossing).

Postcrossing is a great way of exchanging bite-sized bits of cultural info. Here’s a card I received, with an intro to Taiwanese dumplings!

Front

Back

Jean then got in touch with me with a recipe that she recommends for boiled dumplings. I look forward to trying them out!

More information

• Postcrossing
• Geocaching