Dumplings - 31 July 2010 - Page 1

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Heres how I make dumplings

Some of you have heard about how I like to eat dumplings.
During the day, I happened to be in the Prospect region, which is where Julies Dumplings shop is, the best place in Adelaide to buy them. Julie opens only occasionally when she feels like it and surprisingly she was open, so today you get to see how I like to prepare her dumplings.

This meal is not meant to be a culinary extravaganza, it is a simple meal that is very cheap, but I think also very tasty. I admittedly ignored dumplings for many years and have only discovered them in the last year since my numerous junkets to Asian destinations disguised as work trips.

Heres all the ingredients except the actual dumplings. As you can see its mostly vegetables. I am very health concious these days due to my immense fear of growing old and ugly. I fail at conquering this fear.

This is the actual dumplings, I have purchased two kinds, vegetarian which also has vermicelli noodles inside the dumplings, and pork and prawn. Each of these packs costs $7, and I like a mix of both. I estimate that each pack is enough for 5 serves, so this is 10 serves in total.
If you are as excellent at maths as me, thats $1.40 per serve.

Ok, this whole thing is done in 1 wok. I use a chilli/oil/bean paste mix to cook it in. You can see the jar in the first picture. This stuff is delicious.
I add the dumplings from frozen to the hot oil and chilli mix, and try and get them coated in it, to get some flavour from it.

Whilst everythings heating up, chop up the onion, capsicum and celery. This meal takes all of 10 minutes to make if you are a cooking ninja like me.

After a while, the chilli smoking will become pungent, and theres a risk you will go blind or pass out, so be careful.
What you do though, is add just a touch of water to de glaze the pan and impart further steam/oil/chilli flavour into the dumplings.
I repeat this process about 3 times, then remove the dumplings from the wok.

Then I add the vegetables I had cut up earlier. Dont be stupid and spend ages cutting them up neatly.

Whilst your vegetables are sweating off in the pan, you can cut up your bok choi. At least its some variety of choi or choy, theres about 200 different kinds which are all exactly the same.

This is a superfluous picture of the vegetables now semi translucent or something like that.

Now add the noodles, the packet can be seen at the top. If making for 1 person I only use half a noodle cake and half the seasoning. Hot and spicy flavour is the best.
I like to break them up a bit as you can see, and put them in for a minute or so before adding the water and stir the seasoning through the vegetables and whatever as well.

Then add the bok choy, make sure you add all the stem part not just the wimpy green leafy bits.

finally re add the dumplings and enough water to just cover. Once it returns to the boil leave it for 5 minutes and its almost done, almost but not quite.

Last step is to add some bean shoots, you leave them until right until the end so they stay a bit al dante. Note I use wanky cooking terms like al dante, because I have studied with the greats at the actual michelin star factory.

Then finally, put it in a bowl and eat it. To impress your friends get some fancy chopsticks and a cool wooden soup slurping spoon (not pictured).
I like to add a lot of the chilli/bean paste that you can see here. Its fantastic stuff. If you dont like it then you are doing it wrong.