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Hi, I'm Annie Copps, and welcome to my kitchen. I know I always start out these things with
"I'm going to make my favorite recipe," but this really is one of my favorite recipes.
I've been in love with Chinese dumplings since I was a little kid. My parents used to bring
me to Chinatown. Sometimes they're called Peking ravioli, and I would just fill up.
We'd have to get seconds on it because I was so enamored by them.
I recently learned from my good friend, Joanne Chang, who owns a restaurant in Boston, how
to make these. It couldn't be easier. You're going to fall in love with them, too. Let's
just get started. All right? Enough of the talking about my childhood memories.
I have about a pound of ground pork that you can add into a bowl. To that, I'm going to
add some cilantro, which adds a nice brightness and yummy flavor to it. You can use your fingers
for all of this, but there are cameras rolling here.
Some ginger, nice and minced up, and some chives. You could use scallions, as well.
If you're lucky enough to have an Asian market near you, you can use garlic chives, which
are traditional. This is going to add some crunch and nice heat and flavor to it.
Also, some finely chopped cabbage. Again, lots of nice texture. You can use savoy or
napa cabbage. The big, typical green cabbage, it's a little thick, but if you mince it up,
it will be just fine.
Now also some garlic, because I love garlic so much and so do most of the Asian recipes,
finely minced. To get it that way, the microplaner. Just grate it right on there. It's about two
tablespoons, and that's about four cloves in there. Then, just tap it, and that's that.
Now we're going to add some moisture to it. What great Asian recipe doesn't have soy sauce?
I prefer the low sodium soy sauce. It has just as much flavor and not as much salt,
and frankly, we eat too much salt. A little bit of rice wine vinegar. Again, that will
keep it nice and bright, add a touch of sweetness, but not too much.
Sesame oil, which adds a nice, nutty flavor to it. It's going to give it a good texture,
too, and hold it all together. See, no eggs in this, no bread in this, so we've got to
use these ingredients. Just a couple dashes of heat. You can use sriracha, which has chiles
and garlic, but Tabasco works, too.
Okay. Spoon? No. Hands. Get right in there with your hands, just like you're making meatballs
or meatloaf. Just keep going until the ingredients are really well incorporated and evenly distributed.
We'll come back in a few minutes and I'll show you how to stuff these bad boys.
Okay. So, I've given this a good mix with my hands, and then I gave my hands a good
mix in some soap and water because that's raw pork, and that's kind of gross. Okay,
moving right along.
There's all kind of different dumpling wrappers, and you can make them yourself. It's not a
difficult recipe, but it is a little bit labor intensive. At the regular supermarket I bought
these sort of squarish, rectangular ones. They work perfectly fine. In Chinatown in
Boston I found these nice, round ones which are a little bit more traditional. I'll show
you how to use both. The most important thing, though, is that when you stuff them, you seal
them well. Once we start cooking them, all this love that we made, we don't want it oozing
out the sides.
Okay. Let's get started. Square ones first. Line up, Henry Ford factory assembly style,
like so. I'm going to get this out of the way so you can see everything that I'm doing.
This is a regular teaspoon, and you want about two teaspoons of the filling. You don't want
to overstuff the meat in, or the dough will break and, again, you'll have split. There
it is, right in the center. I have a little bit of water. I'm just going to dip my hands
in it and rub that around the outer edges of the square.
For these square ones, pull the dough up and over. Then with your thumbs, squeeze the edges
in, and then really seal the edges well, like that. Perfect. Again, you can use these for
raviolis, too. Super easy. Then I line them up on a tray, pop them in the freezer so they'll
be nice and firm when we go to fry them.
Okay. Here they are, out of the freezer nice and firmed up, and into a frying pan with
a little bit of oil. We're going to fry these on both sides. Because we've got raw pork
in here, we're going to actually steam them, too. Now, you could just fry them and you
could just steam them, but that would take a little bit longer. We like speed. We get
crispy and steamed on this one.
They're nice and brown on one side, and now we're going to make them nice and brown on
the other side. So, with the [inaudible 04:58] getting a little bit brown on the other side.
To this I'm just going to add about another 2 tablespoons of water and then cover them
with a lid and they'll finish cooking.
So, there you have it, Chinese dumplings, or Peking raviolis, one of my favorites. For
this recipe, plus a recipe for a whole lot more, including this soy dipping sauce, go
to YankeeMagazine.com.